Right up there with democracy, fallen heroes and Oprah, America loves talented young people. I actually remember an episode of "Oprah" dedicated to kids who had memorized pi to over a hundred digits or something like that.
Sports Illustrated featured high-schooler LeBron James on a magazine cover claiming the teenager could be a top NBA draft pick before his 18th birthday. At the tender age of 15, Miley Cyrus is diving headfirst into swimming pools of gold doubloons and blowing her nose in magazines of which she is on the cover.
America may love young talents, but I don't. Real talk: Little makes me feel more incompetent than a teenage megastar. While these youngsters are out being inappropriately good at stuff, I'm scrubbing around college trying to get hired doing anything after I graduate. I'm majoring in AMERICAN STUDIES. Christ, I'd be lucky to get a job waiting tables without a recession, and this little Cyrus child is one of the world's 100 most influential people?
Enter Hudson Mohawke and Rustie, two of today's most exciting new producers and, judging solely on their appearance, not at all old enough to buy alcohol in the United States. There are few things for which I'll set aside my beef with filthily talented and successful youngsters, but the bumping, brilliant sets that these Scottish lads turned in over the weekend are toward the top.
I've heard that HudMo is 19 years old, but other than that, little biographical information exists about him and fellow Glasgow native Rustie, other than that, according to his website, Rustie is "older than he looks." This description doesn't help much: This guy could be 15 years old and still be older than he looks. Baby-faced and scrawny, he kind of reminds me of an adolescent David Spade. HudMo's not much different. Bigger, but he too sports the babiest of faces, except for a dirt stache not unlike the one that I had at my bar mitzvah.
But though HudMo and Rustie look young, they make music better than people who have been at it twice as long. While HudMo's beats may be slightly more accessible than that of his Warp Records labelmate, their music shares a tone. Part electro, part hip hop, part dubstep, but most notably experimental, these two take similar approaches to the off-kilter, Dilla-influenced production that tastemakers around the world love.
And who can blame them? HudMo and Rustie leveled Montreal's Coda last weekend with a monstrous back-to-back DJ set showcasing both the keen ears and depth of rhythmic influences that make their music so cool.
The mixing, disjointed and jerky, mirrored their production styles and the dirty-beat aesthetic of producers like golden boy Flying Lotus. The song choice, however, was wholly unique. From unreleased Machinedrum tracks to "Regulators" by Warren G, Rustie and HudMo cycled through all types of hip hop, electro and jazzy, dirty beats, both showing off what they listen to and putting together a ridiculous party.
The two jammed together T-Pain remixes, jazzy-smooth numbers from HudMo's Heralds of Change project, and a grip of the filthiest, evilest dubstep breaks around, intermittently peppering in everything in between, and somehow gelling everything into a rough, messy masterpiece.
I still don't know how they turned it all into a unified piece of music. With all different kinds of genres and tempos swirling around in the mix, it would be too easy to get lost in the madness, and how HudMo and Rustie both controlled it and turned it into a banger is beyond me. But then again, that's why I'll be obsessively following their careers from the unemployment line for the next decade.
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Mikey Goralnik is a senior majoring in American studies. He can be reached at Michael.Goralnik@tufts.edu.
