[Numbers]

Returning from the still-glowing success of his debut album, Glass Swords, Russell Whyte, aka Rustie, enters the first quarter of the year with Triadzz/Slasherr, his new single on Numbers. The Glaswegian wunderkind become famous for syrupy hip-hop rhythms bolted onto synthetic building blocks. His tracks are unbelievably fluid, though, borrowing from an entire kaleidoscope of genres and effortlessly morphing the most vertiginous of synth lines — “Slasherr” is no exception. Lead track “Triadzz” features a muscular but polite beat, almost like an Jay-Z’s “Hovi Baby” processed through every single bass music strain developed over the last decade. It’s a compromise of sorts, lumping together many ideas the growing EDM audience might enjoy and unfortunately forfeiting some originality along the way.

While “Slasherr” isn’t anything shockingly new either in Rustie’s repertoire, it does the job much better than its predecessor. Starting with rushing builds, he deceives us by evoking trance stereotypes while slowly preparing an impulsive leap into the unknown: a full-blown supernova of uplifting synths, rhythmically centered around an MPC session. But amidst the blinding richness of perpetual euphoria and lingering pop structures lies a refined by-product — an eerie sense of endless space trapped between the beats, wanting us to hear more of the same. It’s from this liminal space that “Slasherr” draws its energy from most of the time, not the gimmicky switch-ups. And that’s what actually sets Rustie apart from his many contemporaries. While many suffer from a hazardous misinterpretation of quality pop music’s basic templates, Rustie embraces them and efficiently crams them into self-sustained three-minute universes, leaving us with irresistible earworms for months to come. Still impossible to copy, repeat, or sing — only imagine.