Once upon a time there was a Berlin-based artiste called Rudi Zygadlo who recorded a couple of electronic albums for the respected Planet Mu label. By his own admission, the music was ‘all a bit sincere, and the lyrics were a bit po-faced’. But that was before Rudi grew a moustache, reacquainted himself with his first instrument (the guitar), moved to Glasgow to form a band in August 2020 and activated the prancing popster Rudi Zygadlo that the world should come to know and love.

The real moustache comes and goes but is now always replaced by a painted one, like a Rudi talisman. ‘I think that mark is the transition,’ says Zygadlo. ‘I like it cos it’s a bit Groucho Marx vaudevillian and so obviously artificial.’ 

Zygadlo also cites Frank Zappa as a hirsute hero; thanks to creative parents and three older siblings, he was guaranteed an eclectic musical upbringing in rural Dumfriesshire, hoovering up jazz, rock, folk and classical music before creating his own DIY electronica on ‘a whole bunch of questionably sourced music software when I was in my early teens’. 

‘My home environment was conducive cos it was in the middle of nowhere,’ he says. ‘But I thought I could do music wherever. I wanted to live in Berlin cos I loved it when I played there, but during that period most of the industry stuff was London-based and I felt a bit disconnected. So after a while I moved to London and continued to feel disconnected there . . . ’ During eight years in London, he recorded using a number of aliases as well as undertaking some ‘survival bread and butter’ side hustles, including sound design for Gorillaz, a soundtrack for a lengthy Tim Yip documentary and podcast editing. 

‘My own project is the most important thing to me,’ he says. ‘However, there are periods of my life where I haven’t felt that clear-headed about my own stuff so I’m more than happy to get stuck into collaboration.’ 

Now his collaborators are his own band, featuring musicians who have played with Fat White Family, C Duncan, Alex Rex and in Zygadlo’s first ever group, Velcro Quartet. Together, they have produced a number of singles which will be gathered together on the forthcoming ‘Chattanooga’ EP, with a new album, Doggerland, to follow at the start of next year. 

‘It’s come full circle,’ says Zygadlo. ‘I don’t think I’d have developed a live band in London, it would have been too logistically challenging and expensive, but the two gigs we’ve done have been the best performances I’ve ever done; me in a mischievous mood, just amplified a bit. There’s solos and spoken word bits and a bit of audience immersion; getting a bit hysterical in the crowd. It felt quite freeing. Electronic music, for me, had become quite grid-like and constricting and I just wanted to blast out some messy guitar and bring more humour and rowdiness and irreverance and brashness into it; not light-hearted, because there’s plenty of dark themes going on, but I think there’s a raised eyebrow that wasn’t there before.’

Rudi Zygadlo, King Tut’s, Glasgow, Thursday 8 September.