The avant-garde Spanish collective Rusia-IDK has set the bar for the rest of the scene coming out of Madrid with their genre-blending experimental music. Though all five members are excellent, tight-knit, and supportive of each other’s solo projects, there’s always someone who gets more recognition on the global stage. For Odd Future, it was Tyler, Frank, and Earl. For Spain’s most interesting group, it would be free-wheeling experimentalist Ralphie Choo and the more reclusive—but no less compelling—Rusowsky.
A classically trained pianist with a taste for unhinged beats and sentimental love songs, the 26-year-old producer has been co-architecting the strange, danceable, and thought-provoking soundscape that has put Rusia-IDK on the map. A “kinky Figaro,” if you will. On his debut, DAISY, Rusowsky goes full-throttle, doling out both mournful piano ballads and bouncy mosh-pit tracks with ease.
Like many producer-fronted albums, DAISY is impeccably curated. Right from the start, “KINKI FÍGARO” taps rising experimental rapper Jean Dawson, who ushers us out of an orchestral intro and into a hard beat that lays out the album’s possibilities and its off-kilter approach. Ravyn Lanae’s cheeky chorus on the angelic “pink + pink” prances around rattling percussion and handclaps before Rusowsky’s voice comes through a flurry of electronic harp. His vocoder-tinged duet with Kevin Abstract on “Liar?” keeps a song about feeling lonely with a partner humorous and light.
The early 2000s are alive and well on DAISY. Rusowksy channels Timbaland’s polyrhythms and softens them with pitched-up guitar strums ready for a slow dance on lovelorn “SOPHIA” and “BBY ROMEO,” where Ralphie Choo appears for one of their reliably excellent tag-teams. Andalusian Y2K icons Las Ketchup are sampled to brilliant effect on “Johnny Glamour.” A rumba built around twinkling piano that also interpolates his early Ralphie Choo-assisted single “Dolores,” Ruswosky successfully makes a bridge between generations of Spanish pop.
The legendary chorus of Panamanian reggaetonera Lorna’s “Papi Chulo… Te Traigo El Mmmm” serves as the jumping off point of club juggernaut “sukkKK!” Though minor neoperreo diva La Zowi adds very little with her vapid verses, the song is saved by the sheer fun of its expansive chaos. During its all-too-short two minutes, a fuzzed-out bass ready for a sweaty mosh pit breaks into handclaps, an explosion of electronica, and the top of a ’90s dembow drum machine that quickly turns into Brazilian funk.
DAISY isn’t tied to any specific narrative, but its name seemingly evokes a key reference. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, as the HAL 9000 supercomputer shuts down, the proto-AI sings an 1894 standard called “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)”. Rusowsky’s “4 Daisy” might be an answer, the original song’s “I’m half crazy all for the love of you” channeled by way of layered guitar and Rusowsky crooning, “If you always looked at me like that/I know I’d die” in Spanish. Really listen to his lyrics: beneath the multitude of effects and the playful sonic laboratory’s explosion is a hand reaching out to be touched. With the robotics of modern production and the freakish and sweet longings of the human heart, Rusowsky has achieved something as expansive and existential as it is technically impressive and touching.
