Rustie
Green Language
25 August 2014
Warp
2.5 stars out of 5
Glaswegian producer Rustie stumbles out of the studio with
his second LP, Green Language, coming
three years after his critically acclaimed debut, Glass Swords. Perhaps he was multitasking one drowsy morning,
taking out the trash at the same time as mailing off the finished mixes to the
Warp offices, and accidentally mixed up the two. That said, Rustie’s waste
by-products are still superior to many producers’ best work, so Green Language is not a total waste of
time. Still, is there really any reason to begin a record with not just one but
three fucking intro tracks? When is
this damned thing going to start, and when are you going to let me get into
your groove, Mr. DJ?
Even ignoring the several false starts, this record is a
conceptual disaster. Imagine that your friend made you a mix of some drugged-out
New Age-y instrumentals (based on bird sounds, no less) and then dropped a
Danny Brown track right in the middle of it. Fucked up, right? Well, there’s no
need to imagine this scenario because on GL
Rustie does exactly that. Now, I like a good Danny Brown track just as much as
the next old white dude trying to seem legit to his younger friends, but I have
enough wisdom appropriate to my age to recognize that there’s a time and place
for everything. Perhaps Rustie is hoping that at some time in the future the
New Age/Gangsta Rap genre will really take off, causing music historians to
point to Green Language as a point of
origin, but I suspect that unless it becomes possible to meditate to some dude
bragging about his 9mm, that future will likely never happen.
reviewed by Richard Krueger
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