Rise

Format

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  WARPLP217Long Player  £15.00

Label

Warp Records

Rustie

Glass Swords

After taking shape in the studio over the course of the past two years, ‘Glass Swords’ arrives, and as the otherworldly landscape of the album artwork suggests, it is epic and alien.

Glass Swords is almost entirely composed of dancefloor highs, a series of those hands-in-the-air peak-time moments that stick in the memory long after the rest of the night has turned hazy. Rustie constantly chases the next thrill, with rhythmic switch-ups and vivid synths firing in all directions as the album twists, turns and veers off at tangents; echoes of everything from early 90s rave and booty bass to Ginuwine's Pony (the belching bass of the aptly titled Ultra Thizz) indicate his own club tutelage. It's far from a scattershot ADD affair, though; fundamentally, Rustie has a knack for an irresistible hook, and for knowing when to stick with it and when to move on. He lands hammer blows of bass on Flash Back as a funked-up melody zigzags overhead; he cycles through the jabbing riff of Hover Traps in one sound after another, like a call-and-response among friends. "And you know I wanna ride out," croons fellow producer Nightwave on Surph, sounding utterly blissed out in the sweet shop of synths that surrounds her: by the time Glass Swords ends, she's singing for us all.

Tracklist

• 01 - Glass Swords
  02 - Flash Back
  03 - Surph
  04 - Hover Traps
  05 - City Star
  06 - Globes
  07 - Ultra Thizz
  08 - Death Mountain
  09 - Cry Flames
  10 - After Light
  11 - Ice Tunnels
  12 - All Nite
  13 - Crystal Echo