Emotion is the root of everything. It dictates how we react to any situation, whether we pay full attention to someone or something and whether we care to look or listen in to stuff in the first place. It’s an essential part of life, let alone the music we choose to spend time wrapping our heads around. Music that moves you in some way is vital. Whether it disgusts or pleases you; annoys you or gets you excited, it’s the music that provokes a response that you should pay attention to.

In a scene that’s focused around making a dancefloor react it can be hard to apply any kind of emotional response to tunes, bar the one you had when you were 70% cut and reaching for the nearest metal surface to bang on in drunken appreciation to. Some people, like Floating Points, Gold Panda or someone like Four Tet, manage to unite the two things, making music that works to encourage and provoke movement that also pulls at the headstrings with a nagging melody or an underlying kind of melancholy. Don’t let me be misunderstood, I’ve got time, hours in the day in fact, for tracks that make you want to cut loose and violently shake your appendages but some of the music I’ve connected to most recently has been a little paler in hue; a little grainier and a lot more sensitive to my own mood.

Much like his Push & Run label mate Ifan Dafydd and Gang Colours, who introduced us to his music in the first place, London based producer Pedestrian’s music is probably more concerned with weaving itself into the fabric of your day than it is anything else. Whilst it uses the same kind of drum sounds as a high proportion of producers operating currently and ‘Hei Poa,’ the A-side of his debut 12” for Push & Run, plays out at an easily digestible, mix friendly speed, there’s something incredibly organic about all of it. Flecked with vinyl crackle, reams of decay and reverb and that woozy sepia like hipster filter on his synthesizers, Pedestrian’s music is unobtrusive but wonderfully constructed.

It’s not so much subtle, his kicks punch holes in the mix just as well as anything released on Night Slugs might, it’s just that it’s all pensive and calm. ‘Led Astray’ is pure thought making music. Keeping his mixdowns brittle there’s space for all of his little flickers and layers to interact and poke themselves out at their designated marker. More importantly perhaps, he lets you fill in the gaps between the washes of tone and the drum lines and that’s probably the overriding reason why it can create such a strong response. Whilst he’s not alone in employing these kind of tactics, Pedestrian’s Sonic Router mix, one he named Dance Music For Home Listening Vol. 2, kind of runs with the idea, layering club tracks against their antithesis and creating a sound world that engages you but ultimately lets you veer off as far into your own head as you want.

A week ahead of the physical release of ‘Hei Poa’ b/w ‘Led Astray’ we caught up with the producer before he left to spend a couple of months overseas…

http://www.sonicrouter.com/2011/11/sr-mix-106-pedestrian-push-run/

Tracklist soon come.

Pedestrian’s ‘Hei Poa’ b/w ‘Led Astray’ 12? is out on 7th November through Push & Run.

http://www.sonicrouter.com/