Rustie - Glass Swords

^yeah this is something like what I think about my less favoured parts of the album - on the dance partisans thread I said that it just reminded me of millennial chart trance - which I don't think is entirely merit-free (and has obviously had some of its tropes revived in the last few years) but imo he doesn't do it that well

the great bits of the album are... great

aw c'mon guys, hudson mohawke has his thing too.

Dude evidently plays a lot of Nintendo and eats a lot of sugar, right?

This sort of minimal-attention-span nonsense has kind of awakened the question of what horrors we'd have got had Warp artists tried to make drill'n'trance a thing 10 years ago.

A bit like drill and bass it's kind of baseline enjoyable in its silliness and shameless rushiness but beat-wise and groove-wise it's completely functionally useless as dance music.

I don't think it's actually trying to be dance music though. It is kind of a puzzler in that i'm not sure "how" to listen to the album, but i still love it

idk, i think most of the highlights on this album seem made for the dancefloor

Belated thanks to Number None for starting this thread and thereby making me aware of this record. Have enjoyed immensely.

I think youre missing the point if you think this is unfocused or minimal attention span, I'd say the whole thing works as a very singular concept and whilst not totally linear its not got the floor clearing smugness that characterises drill and bass. Best Dance album since Sheds last

idk, i think most of the highlights on this album seem made for the dancefloor

But the grooves and beats that should underpin this sort of stuff just aren't there. Maybe it's the halfstep beats and/or the fact that Rustie's coming from a dubstep lineage but I dunno, it feels like this music is standing in the middle of the dancefloor making manic largin' it hand gestures rather than actually dancing.

i wouldn't know how to dance to it but i've seen it done. rustie doesn't come from a dubstep lineage though. there isn't much of that lineage in glasgow.

Yeah, he's pretty keen to distance himself from the dubstep label in interviews

the hot beats juxtaposed against the over-the-top rave & '80s synth sounds is a big part of what makes it work for me. if it was a four-on-the-floor record, it would probably tip over into schlock.

I am very excited about seeing Rustie, in Glasgow, tonight, what with this being out and him being a Glasgow native and all that.

Report back on the amount/style of dancing

This sort of minimal-attention-span nonsense has kind of awakened the question of what horrors we'd have got had Warp artists tried to make drill'n'trance a thing 10 years ago.

A bit like drill and bass it's kind of baseline enjoyable in its silliness and shameless rushiness but beat-wise and groove-wise it's completely functionally useless as dance music.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, October 12, 2011 5:16 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

i'm enjoying this album but after reading matt's post i'd been expecting something really CRAZY and INTENSE and SCHIZOPHRENIC and it's really not? like what makes this "minimal-attention-span"? i guess the tracks are on the shorter side?

agreed, most of the tracks have song-like structures that are very logical.

i wouldn't know how to dance to it but i've seen it done. rustie doesn't come from a dubstep lineage though. there isn't much of that lineage in glasgow.

― stirmonster, Friday, 14 October 2011 18:48 (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah, he's pretty keen to distance himself from the dubstep label in interviews

― Number None, Friday, 14 October 2011 18:50 (6 days ago) Bookmark

<3 rustie

some excellent writing about this album:

http://www.dummymag.com/reviews/2011/10/24/rustie-glass-swords/

This is probably closer to people like Crystal Castles and Justice than it is to dubstep, yeah.

It's good music to play Mario Kart to, I have discovered.

Listened to the first three tracks from this in a shop on Monday. Must say I was fairly blown away. That Dummy mag description is the most accurate I've read so far. Have now ordered the CD.

nice review, and it totally seems like rustie and hudmo are having fun trying to one-up each other. i don't hear it as a difficult listen at all though, it's pure pleasure.

agree with "emotive love letter" from that review, and wish the writer had expanded on that a bit. the primary appeal for me is the pathos of all the ravey flourishes.

WOW...just fucking WOW !!!

beat-wise and groove-wise it's completely functionally useless as dance music.

bad workmen always blame their tools.

if you can't dance to this, you probably just can't dance

^^^ this. How is this not-danceable? Each track is a banger.

That said, there's something a little flat-plan about the production that makes it at once exhausting and less punchy as the album wears on. It's better enjoyed track-by-track imo.

Like I said, it's full of the sonic signifiers of dancing - europhoric trance synths, enormous hooks and what have you - but without the beats and momentum underneath that make dance music. It's all icing, no cake.

The Dusted review above actually agrees with me that it's not particularly concerned with the dancefloor in the first place. Feels like a headphone/living room record to me.

It certainly helped me get the washing up done, although Ultra Thizz is one of the only one's I'd like to see played out. Then again, it does happily sit between Justice-style electro, big-room dubstep and IDM, so it's the eclectic DJ's wet dream. But it ain't straight dance, no. It all depends on what you wanna hear on the dancefloor. There's so much brostep stuff that sounds rhythmically disjointed out there and people go bonkers to that. Personally I love the disorientating switches in tempo/signature and don't think they make it anti-dance; it just keeps things interesting and fun. So yeah, it's kind of the Skrillex it's okay to like (mostly cos the metal/emo element is entirely removed).

Music like this requires a new way of dancing to it. If you just want to get your standard groove on, fine, but if you want to push the limits of your particular dancing 'style' you will be rewarded.

I say, do what Rustie did with the sonic signifiers and apply it to your body movement, but then again i tend not to dance to the beat of the kick snare. It's all about the hi hats, rolls, fills and breaks.

i'm surprised that people only seem to dance to one element of a track. dance to the melodies!!

My hips dance to the kick/snare, my feet to the hi hats, my hands/fingers to the melody/chords and my head to some shit only i can hear. Sometimes i open my eyes on the dancefloor and find i've cleared quite a little space around me.

Look I am trying to find nice ways of saying that this is really nerdy funkless music, okay? And that's alright! The music itself is pretty explicitly acknowledging how dorky it is.

This is all true, and I don't think "a lack of funk" is necessarily a bad thing (other elements of this more than make up for it - it's certainly got ENERGY). But where is it explicitly acknowledging its nerdiness?

Because it's like 80% prog rock and video games?

prog rock?!?!

i disagree, this album's strength is its sugar rush obviousness, it's the opposite of nerding out over complex rhythms or abstract sounds

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

I CAN'T PLAY THE COMPUTER GAME THAT UNLOCKS THE TRACKS!

having said that i did not think the lead single was up to much so i haven't tried that hard. sum total of time I've spent on computer games in my life = 5 mins of mario the hedgehog when i was 7, 5 mins spent repeatedly running it into a ravine

"mario the hedgehog" eh?

Games? Is that what you call them? Games?

This is sounding pretty great so far...

It's awful

d double e and danny brown 1-2 punch in the middle is undeniable

Just hit this section, and um... it's fairly deniable imo. Bit of a wasted opportunity. Prefer the instrumentals...

Some of the early tracks are dope, think I need to spend more time with this.

¯\(°_o)/¯

Pretty much.

feels like a bit like offcuts from the first album, all the sounds are there but the impact is not. "velcro" is alright and so is the d double e one; danny brown sounds weird like he's half putting on a british grime mc's accent. pretty blah album tbh

Rapture is cool, I especially like the first four tracks. Then it goes a bit off the rails and never really recovers.

ha, i felt the opposite - first half was most disappointing, got slightly better once it hit the rap tracks but never really hit the heights

just started playing glass swords again and while i mostly like it, it really is not the sort of thing i can listen to for very long

snd are similar in this respect

i used to like the early rustie eps from years ago, ep is probably the ideal format for him

i decided i only like the rap tracks

like almost all the vocal tracks on this, esp the danny brown one, but i think the instrumentals are easy to underrate. definitely more subdued than GS, and less ambitious, and sometimes just a bit deficient (ie the total opposite of GS where nothing could be seen as being deficient), but they still sound like no one else. i think he was thinking more melodically on this album. maybe its him trying to get more producer work, or do something 'proper' rather than weird/funny like the last one, not sure, but its still good. hopefully he hasnt gotten too self conscious.

Some parts of this album give me instant nostalgia for 80s arcade game soundtracks - I think its the general midi sounding slap bass noise he uses occasionally - but it takes me back to listening to this as an 8 year old: http://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/6_Amazing_Coin-Op_Soundtracks_from_Virgin_Games

I'm quite sure that's intentional

anyone still listening to this? i think its a bit of a grower. every track with guest vocalists is great except the gorgeous children one, and even though theyre a bit sketchy, the instrumentals generally have enough good things going for them for me not to write this album off. it doesnt attack you like glass swords, but i dont see that as a negative. or maybe you just really have to be a big rustie fan.

no Hudson Mohawke thread, huh? i'm sad that i haven't heard anything i like so far off the new Hud Mo album :(

(only heard the singles, not the full thing, i'm sure there will be a couple deep cut jams)

Ryderz is such a banger

could've sworn he had his own thread but i can't find it either

hahahahaha

http://soundcloud.com/rustie/first-mythz

listened to it thrice today

day's not over yet

um and apparently new album tomorrow?

https://soundcloud.com/rustie/peace-upzzz

better than the last one but still not as good as glass swords ....

hope this gets released on cd.

oof this album is absolutely dreadful

you mean absolutely brilliant and almost as good as glass swords

he announced on twitter a few days ago that he's no longer doing shows for the foreseeable future due to mental health/substance abuse issues :/

i need glass swords back on my phone

whats the verdict on the new album?

the reviews seem good...

but, i think it's very bad, and without getting too gossipy, i understand that warp were very unhappy with it, and it was recorded during a period of heavy substance dependency.

huh, i remember the reviews being bad, but liking what i heard and thinking that i need to give it a good listen.

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?