Ian Gittins 

Rustie – review

The sublime techno producer Rustie makes that rare thing – headphone music that lends itself to mass public consumption, writes Ian Gittins
  
  


We rarely look to dance music for profundity. The currency of the dance floor is instant gratification, the quick hit, with any greater depth or nuanced musical tropes wantonly abandoned in the rush for the next euphoric controlled explosion to sustain the mood of hedonistic abandon.

Rustie may just have squared that circle. Glasgow dance music producer Russell Whyte last year won the Guardian first album award for his glistening debut, Glass Swords, a record constructed almost entirely of pulsing rave synths and sublime techno highs, yet undercut with a very human, yearning sense of agitation and reflection.

It is no easy task to convey such complexities live, and the shy, studious Whyte, hunched over his laptop as if attempting to compose a particularly problematic email, provides little by way of visual stimulation. Despite the images of moonscapes and space detritus playing on a loop behind him, tonight feels like watching a DJ.

Thankfully, his music requires little visual augmentation. Rustie unleashes an hour of symphonic digital earworms, a cerebral bleep frenzy that can tend towards the quirky but is never even remotely cheesy. It's a tribute to his dexterity that even Hover Traps, a track built around the buffoonish, loping slap-bass theme to Seinfeld, comes over as exhilarating rather than an arch novelty.

It's that rare thing: headphone music that lends itself to mass public consumption. The correct audience response to Rustie is outbursts of frenzied dancing interspersed with chin-stroking contemplation, which is exactly what tonight's crowd does. The delirium even rubs off on its self-conscious creator: by the end of the night, he is at the front of the stage, high-fiving his fans.

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