Race The Flux - Matty Rusko
- Review by Noël Duplaa
Info: Genre obliterating four piece Race the Flux have released the follow up to last year’s excellent Olympians EP in the form of standalone single ‘Matty Rusko.’ As manic and energised as you’d expect from the riffing Galway powerhouses, it also proves a marked step forward in the evolution of the band from tuneful math rock wizards to something singular and powerful.
Race the Flux have a hard earned reputation for killing it live - they’re all excellent players, they write big explosive rock songs that combine massive riffs, intricate fretwork and whiplash dynamics. Traditionally, the big stumbling block that can happen at this point is the failure to translate that kinetic energy to record. However, as with their previous EP, they’ve nimbly sidestepped this problem by calling in Rocky O’Reilly, the man responsible for translating ASIWYFA’s genre smashing live power; a trick he repeats here, successfully luring the lightning into its bottle.
What Race the Flux pull off so well here is that classic postmodern Quentin Tarantino trick of setting you up to think that something awesome is about to happen and then giving you something not only completely different but way better than what you were expecting. This song is literally bursting at the seams with an entire album’s worth of ideas, as new moments compete to outdo everything that’s gone before, sometimes seeming to shove them out of frame as they take over, all building towards a truly epic ending.
This is next level stuff for the band - making the long list of Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent competition speaks both to their skill and ambition - and this is a defiant, triumphant single that handily accomplishes the trick of both building on last year’s excellent Olympians EP, while also confidently chainsawing open a wide shining path of possibilities all resolutely their own. With technical chops to burn, explosive live power and stadium ready choruses, where they go next is pretty much guaranteed to be interesting.
The Irish math rockers play their Debut UK headline show this month at The Old Blue Last, London on March 24th with support from local acts You Break, You Buy and TYKE, presented by Robomagic.
Irish headline shows at Sweeney’s, Dublin on March 23rd (tonight) and The Crane Lane Theatre, Cork April 7th with support from Pranks have also just been announced.
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