Rustie – Hover Traps
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Nearly out of nowhere, with only a handful of EPs behind him since 2007, UK upstart Rustie puts out one of the best albums of 2011. And you don’t need to call it sprawling, an epic statement of intent, anything like that—Glass Swords succeeds because it slices the post-dubstep spectrum into a series of delicious, bite-sized morsels, each of them ecstatic and joyous and perfectly at home in the future. He doesn’t fall into the lazy pattern of dumbed-down brostep or pop electrohouse sounds topping the charts, either … in fact, there ain’t a lazy thing about these packed-tight Pandoric boxes. A piece like “Ultra Thizz” will build, burst, and then peak again with a maniacal bass keyboard sound chomping out of your speakers like ravenous langoliers. But for all the raucous thump there’s no aggression here, just day-glo highs. You catch hints of Ikonika and Joker, but weirdly enough I’m reminded most of Mylo’s Destroy Rock & Roll, the jovial vibe of the album rather than its actual sound.
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Rustie – Hover Traps [download] [buy from Warp]
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