Biography
edru was born Edward Anthony Rubio III in the capital of the Lone Star State; Austin, Texas. Amongst many memories of his childhood, one stands out clear, the day he heard Tribe Called Quest's "Electric Relaxation". From then on he had a true love for hip-hop.
At the age of 12 he began to play the saxophone. He only played for 2 years, but it would turn out to be an establishment of his basic understanding of music. Around 1999 he started to experiment in the world of DJ'ing. That's when it stuck and everything else in life dropped. All other hobbies no longer made sense.
Over the years edru would dabble in various styles of DJ'ing; from Hip-Hop, to Drum and Bass, to Down Tempo, and then landing in turntablism. This was his true love when it came to DJ'ing. He was not a big fan of just mixing tracks; to him it was simply playing records synchronized. In turntablsim he found what he was looking for; the turntable as an instrument.
In 2004 edru was scheduled to attend IAR in New York, New York. Three weeks before his departure he had to go to Los Angeles on family business. While driving back to Texas with his sister she hit a deer in AZ and totaled the car. With no money, no car, and no way to get back home, he called his friends in Los Angeles and had them pick him up. He was then essentially stuck there. This was the one event which would trigger his future. Even though the world had appeared to be against him at the time, he would soon learn it was all going in the right direction.
In 2005 edru attended the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, CA. There he was able to brush up technical skills in the art of recording, mixing, and mastering while learning big pieces of hardware such as Neve & SSL consoles. This only fueled the fire, making it grow brighter and more intense.
After finishing school he set a couple goals he wanted to achieve within the next year. He wanted to start a group, start an album with the group, and he wanted to begin work on his first instrumental album. These dreams have now become reality. Formed in March of 2006, his group Low Eyes started work on their first album entitled "WARNING: May Cause Low Eyes!" which was released on 12/05/2006 (L/E/2006). Low Eyes went on to perform their first show at the Parish, Austin, TX, for the CD release. edru has been interviewed about the album "WARNING: May Cause Low Eyes!" by MVRemix which can be found at http://www.mvremix.com/urban/interviews/edru.shtml
edru went on to make an EP with the group Low Eyes. On Sept 22nd 2007 "Smoke a Suite" was released. The EP had a theme which was to honor classic music with hip-hop. They took the terms of what defined a classical suite and updated them to there terms. In the EP's liner notes they described it as:
Suite: In music, a suite is an organized set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed at a single sitting, as a separate musical performance, not accompanying an opera, ballet, or theater-piece. In the Baroque era, the pieces are usually in the same key, and generally modeled after dance music. The suite was also known as Suite de danses, or Ordre (for example by François Couperin) or Partita. In the eighteenth century, suites were also known as concert overtures or overtures. After the symphonic poems of Franz Liszt in the 1840s and 1850s, suites also included collections of tone poems.
Tone Poems: A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in one movement in which some extra-musical program provides a narrative or illustrative element. This program may come from a poem, a story or novel, a painting or another source.
A symphonic poem may stand on its own, or it can be part of a series combined into a suite (in the romantic rather than the baroque sense). For example, "The Swan of Tuonela" (1895) is a tone poem from Sibelius's Lemminkäinen Suite.
In "Smoke a Suite" we have portrayed our version of a suite with tone poetry within hip-hop. All samples taken are from tracks all belonging to a single artist.
The way that they had updated this for use in hip-hop was for edru to sample a single artist, Dionne Warwick, for all tracks as well as having Valdez write his rhymes, or symphonic poem, to tell a story and illustrate what the EP was all about; a love for music and the feeling it gives you.
After this EP was released work was started, but never finished, on a 2nd full length LP. In March of 2009 Low Eyes officially put a halt to work as a group. Due to conflicts outside of the group things were put on hold with no "restart" planned.
Since then edru has focused on gearing up a solo album entitled "What I Should Have Said…" which will be an instrumental collection of tracks. The album will consist of instrumentals from both Low Eyes releases as well as tracks that have never been released to the general public.
And lastly it's edru, not Edru or EDRU; All lower case. And it's pronounced eh-drew not ed-roo.
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