Rustie - Glass Swords

There are prog rock synths and occasionally guitar noises all over this. But then there are prog rock synths over a lot of music I like from the last few years.

Sugar rush obviousness can be nerdy as well in its own right, especially given that most of this record sounds like an overdriven Nintendo soundtrack. I'm not even saying it's bad - it's very stupid, very enjoyable, ridiculously nerdy.

http://i.imgur.com/tXXEV.jpg

I think it's a bit of both. There's something really studied about those ravey builds and rush-ups. There's quite a lot of music coming out at the moment (some of Bass Clef's work is another example) that explores a kind of poignant nostalgia for what rave could have been. I guess it's not far removed from what people like Luke Vibert were doing 10-15 years ago, but these are "children of rave", i.e. they probably grew up hearing Tricky Disco and Charly Says on the radio and somehow feel that world needs a deeper excavation with more advanced technology.

Is that Rustie? Christ, he looks about 15. To him early dance music must sound like what Led Zepp sounds like to me....

Someone's stolen his umbrella

nerdy ? funkless ? dorky ? you haven't confused Rustie with Reso in power extreme mode have you ?

I'm just not getting the prog rock thing. At least not in a way i do from something like lol - me me, which along with this, is shaping up to be among my top picks of the year.

Rustie is definitely a big prog fan, as is Hudson Mohawke

http://www.theskinny.co.uk/music/features/300374-rustie_appliance_science

Glass Swords is also informed by music that pre-dates, and in many cases directly influences, hip-hop and techno. Rustie cites prog-rock pioneers Yes and the jazz fusion of Allan Holdsworth as pivotal (you can hear the latter's imprint all over the album’s titular opening track, an intoxicating perfume of flutes and chopped choral vocals that swirl around a naïvely epic, pedal-heavy guitar solo), as well as the pejoratively titled genre of 'yacht rock', as Rustie puts it – a "sort of smooth, sort of jazzy sort of rock from the 80s" – of which Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers were prolific practitioners

Im hearing Vince Clarke and Trevor Horn in Rusties sound palette more than anything. That'll be where the Clarke/YES thing comes in i suppose, combined with the ethos of Horn's collab with Malcolm Mclaren on Duck Rock. But the mish mash pastiche of reappropriated sounds reminds me most of Tim Simenon's breakthough with Beat Dis albeit with analogue patches rather than samples.

Is that Rustie? Christ, he looks about 15.

He looks like an exuberant Pokemon.

This album has been occupying my thoughts quite a lot recently. I had a very mixed reaction to it initially – I found the relentless maximalism and OTT-ness of it and the garish sounds and textures offputting and attention-grabbing at the same time - but I’ve come to get over most of my irritation with it and have been giving it a lot of play.
Matt, I’d have to disagree with you slightly about the undanceability of it. What you say about ‘standing in the middle of the dancefloor making manic largin' it hand gestures rather than actually dancing’ applies pretty perfectly to a tune like Ultra Thizz for sure, and then there’s tunes like the title track andIce Tunnel which are beatless, but – going off the top of my head here – Flash Back, Surph, After Light and City Star are all tunes with more consistent beats to them that I can imagine people doing something closer to conventional dancing to. I think the influence from crunk and Southern rap club-bangers that’s always been a part of his sound is part of what gives his tunes a degree of forward momentum.
Someone on dissensus was saying that it’s all the little moments and little details in the production that make this album for him, and that’s def a part of it – you can listen it many times over and notice a cool new detail each time. But on the other hand it’s an album full of big melodies and HOOKS that reach out and grab you straight away. It’s also relentlessly ‘up’ in terms of its mood, which I find kind of endearing, it almost has an innocence to it.

I finally made peace with my not being able to get into this! I'm just on the wrong side of Lex & Tim's sonic nerd vs rhythm nerd dichotomy. This is a total sonic nerd album where the beats are kind of an afterthought to all the bright synths and I'm one a rhythm nerd, so of course Lex loves it and it leaves me indifferent.

I guess this was kind of hashed out upthread. Matt DC otm

this stuff is very impressive but does nothing for me.

totally

relistening now and it still puts as massive a grin on my face as when i first heard it. so many hooks! so many amazing noises!

impossible not to move to it

My kids like putting on 'Ultra Thizz' and running round the kitchen table having pretend lazer fights.

I like to do that too.

This is a total sonic nerd album where the beats are kind of an afterthought to all the bright synths and I'm one a rhythm nerd, so of course Lex loves it and it leaves me indifferent.

totally disagree, this is a super rhythm nerd record. so many of the tracks are based on a clever rhythmic hook or idea, they sound like a drummer wrote them.

not sure if i'd use the word clever.

admittedly, i just don't get this record tho.

is it strange that i agree with nearly everything in this thread? this is catchy but not, in your face but not, rhythmic but not, interesting but not. It's like, I can listen to and enjoy it maybe three times and then I'm tired of it I guess. I'd like it to be a little MORE overall.

Really, this is a good tide-over until Girl Unit release an album and blow us all away.

Everything Girl Unit has put his hand to that hasn't been on the Wut EP has been pretty shonky.

i think 'after light' is a pretty smart idea (how he combines that classic rave dotted 8th note line with the half-time beat), well-executed.

but not quite as clever as the main beat in hudmo's 'thunder bay': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my_Efk19OJw

I'd like it to be a little MORE overall.

more?!

Half-step beats pretty much code as "no interest in groove" to me by this point.

i can't even

backbeats are america

America has generally done more interesting things with them then yr current post-dubstep diaspora has managed.

I'd like it to be a little MORE overall.

more?!

― the third kind of dubstep (Jordan), Thursday, 19 January 2012 16:30 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Sure. I'm not saying it should go into full-on brostep - that would be horrible - but the alternative seems to fall somewhere in the middle with Rustie. It's a fun album, but is it THAT much fun? It's dancey, but when it came to the crunch I decided to pull it from my dance set on NYE. It's rhythmically interesting, but is it pushing the envelope a bit or a lot? It seems to only just about reach the top of the hill, but never quite pushes itself over the edge.And I want more - just a bit more.

perhaps you are saying you do not want a mind trip, but a body journey

whoa this mix

(xpost) mind you, that Thunder Bay beat's great neanderthal insistence owes more than a wee bit to this old grime number....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q1Z6KQ49tU

kinda weird that Pitchfork reviewed it

yeah i thought it must have gotten a physical release or something

rev you so crazy

how you say the rhythm here is an afterthought

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKm1m1NJysk

i mean on a conceptual level it sounds to me like a basic crunk / southern rap beat (admittedly i'm not a big expert on those genres) w/ crazy-ass synth work on top BUT i think it's an extremely competent and well-crafted basic beat and not at all an afterthought or half-assed beatwork

actually "extremely competent" is probably an oxymoron, maybe i just mean "completely competent"

that's my favorite track of glass swords BTW

i think the "maximalism" of rustie is somewhat overstated

on the essential mix last saturday -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01f15yf

was listening to the essential mix today and it seemed like he's a huge chick corea fan

I like rustie, for whatever reason I'm not angry when I listen to whatever shit of his I've heard, think he's kind of boring to me in an overall musician way but still it's not the worst

Apparently he's been approached to work with Justin Bieber and Shakira. He wisely said no. I can't see how that would have worked.

Hudson Mohawke appears to be making that move

was listening to the essential mix today and it seemed like he's a huge chick corea fan

hahahaha this is like the most predictable thing ever. can't wait for the bela fleck collabo.

people say a lot of ott things about how much is going on in rustie tracks

to me rustie basically sounds like hip hop jacking IDM of yore, except updated to reflect the cadences of 00s rap tunes and ukg / grime and really creative / cheesy / goofy synth textures

i definitely agree with that. although i think those write-ups are mostly trying to call attention to his aesthetic/attitude, i.e. going big rather than creating an atmosphere.

metacritic is 74%, pitchfork 7.3.

line from the pitchfork review:

"It is a rawer, scrappier record than either of his prior LPs, and the way he flips the bird at conventional notions of fidelity is almost punk."

part of warp's problem with it, it sounds terrible because he produced and mastered it himself

ill hear a few tracks on youtube

but i did not like the second one at all and im afraid of the long track list of the third

it was better than green language but still nowhere near as good as glass swords, especially due to how rough-sounding it is

I haven't really liked much by Rustie since Glass Swords, so I kind of forgot about how much I liked that album. Listening again now, and it still slaps.

He hasn't done much since. :(

I think it's hard to overstate the impact that Glass Swords had (even if much of it is on EDM that's all worse than Glass Swords).

I enjoy EVENIFUDONTBELIEVE. Has a cool vaporous quality where everything seems to be constantly fading into white noise.

9 years on and it's still the album of the year for me

Globes has always been the standout imo

After Light no question

So he released this excellence last April, can't imagine why I missed it: https://hypebeast.com/2020/4/rustie-russell-whyte-project-tease-new-song-music-video

And then nothing apparently?