Rudi Zygadlo returns with his third album Doggerland, his first in ten years. It’s available digitally now and physically on 22nd September via the Republic of Music. The album is an appropriately dreamy skewer of earworm indie-pop, queer folk, and hip-swinging psych rock. These are songs dealing with affairs of the world and affairs of the heart by an apprehensive, disaffected and amused millennial.
Drawing on reference points that span Greek mythology, Aldous Huxley, Stevie Smith poems, and the everyday bathos of modern urban life, Doggerland guides the listener through a strange, playful, uncanny valley of his own imagination. As Zygadlo further explains:
“I had for a long time an image in my head of me in a bath, wearing a VR headset, with a dog on my lap and the Union flag hanging in the background. The bath is overflowing, but I’m plugged into fantasy land. I think that image captures a lot of the anxiety and mischievousness on the album.”
Written, performed and recorded by Zygadlo the album is mixed by Dave Eringa (Kylie, Manic Street Preachers, The Who). Zygadlo admits that Doggerland comes from an unsettling place:
“It’s the end of the world but it’s eerily upbeat.”
Lead single ‘Somewhere in Glasgow’ reflects on the sanctimony of COP26 and is accompanied by a music video with Zygadlo in a cemetery that has been reclaimed by nature.
“I wrote this after COP26 in Glasgow, when I let out my little flat to an NGO for hard cash. My Dad and I nearly fell out over the morality of this enterprise. The trouble with COP is how ‘Co Op’ ted it has become by nefarious opportunists – most of the attendees being fossil fuel reps etc. In the song I posit that soon enough our only interaction with wildlife will be through a VR headset (ouch) and list the various COP celebs spotted somewhere in Glasgow.”
Rudi Zygadlo Tour Dates
November
07 – Manchester – Castle Hotel
08- Nov – London – Old Blue Last
10 – Glasgow – SWG3 Poetry Club
12 – Edinburgh – Voodoo Rooms
For more information on Rudi Zygadlo including tour information please check out his website and instagram.