For a few years now, the artist and producer Rusowsky has found himself at the center of Madrid’s music scene, coming up with several other underground acts in the mischievous avant-garde collective Rusia IDK. Rusowsky and his peers, including Ralphie Choo and TRISTÁN!, have drawn the attention of established Spanish stars Rosalía and C. Tangana, gaining a reputation as free-thinking genre-benders ready to twist dream pop and electronica into new directions.
Rusowsky has emerged as one of the group’s most playful experimentalists. A conservatory-trained pianist with an anarchic side, he shows fans the full scope of what he can do with his debut album, Daisy, out this week. “It was kind of a personal challenge, to see if I could do a full project, where everything is cohesive and interesting and makes sense,” the 26-year-old artist says on a recent call from his apartment in Madrid, his long hair out and flowing. “I had told myself I was going to do it a bunch of times and never did; everything was all up in the air.” Now, he’s sharing his vision with the world.
The story behind this song is the most fun because at one point, I made a song that I thought would be perfect for [BB Trickz], but it wasn’t this one. Someone who was the intermediary sent her this track, with no voices. She sends it back to me with the vocals and I’m like, “What is this?” So I was kind of unprepared for this song, but I have this love for it now.
“Altagama”
This was the last song I made for the album. I went away for a few days to bunker in and work on the album, and I was working on arrangements, on choruses, on harmonies for this other song and I felt like I was overwhelmed. It was all intense, there was drama, and I was like, “I’m getting tired of this. I need to make something silly, something a lot simpler.” And then in an hour and a half, I had the lyrics and everything, and I was super happy with it.
“Liar?” feat. Kevin Abstract
[Having Kevin Abstract] on this song is crazy. It’s one of the things I’m happiest about in the world, honestly. I had it so clear in my head. The song was kind of on this guitar vibe, like Alex G almost, so I started asking, “Please, please, try to get [Kevin].” And when he said he liked it, I went nuts. Later, he wanted to jump on it and we started talking, and to be honest, it was super easy. I told him to sing whatever he wanted, and a lot of the song is in English, which I like writing in. He’s honestly such a wonderful guy.
“Johnny Glamour” feat. Las Ketchup
It’s so funny, right? I went through this phase of listening to everything [Las Ketchup] made. They have one of the most well-known songs in Spanish [2002’s “The Ketchup Song”], and I decided to sample them. We were like, “Do you think we can ask Las Ketchup to let us use this?” And they were into it. It’s not a proper collaboration, just a sample, but I’m still glad we got to do it.
“99%”
This was a little bit of an exercise in getting a maximal sound using as few things as possible. The song is pretty much just a chorus. I was trying to make the album sound like a big production, with a ton of people, when in reality it’s all just me.
“Sophia”
I felt from the beginning this was a single. It was also one of the most fun to make, because I’ve been finding myself with music from the 2000s. I’ve been listening to a lot of Timbaland, a lot of Mya. I wanted to do something like that, but I wasn’t thinking about it too much. I bought a Minilogue synth, the only one I have, and I wanted to use it in the song, so it almost had these two things super far away.
