Glass Swords album cover
Glass Swords

Rustie

2011
Warp Records

In the map of 21st century dance music, this album is a vital nexus. Coming out of the Scottish Numbers / LuckyMe nexus where Drexciya and Aphex Twin collided with hyper commercial trance, trap and hardcore on dancefloors that crackled with deranged energy, Rustie condensed all of that into the most terrifyingly accomplished but also explosively immediate forms. Complex rhythms and forms burst across one another with prog-rock-like complexity, but it is never for one second not rooted in the turbocharged hardcore pleasure principle of those dancefloors. The genre of future bass owes everything to Glass Swords and vast swathes of global EDM and deconstructed club would borrow liberally from it too — its influence is huge, transmitting its own esoteric and hyper-local influences into the globe’s subconscious.

Joe Muggs

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