Rusko tickets and 2024 tour dates

Biography

Hello, world: Rusko kindly requests that you wake the fuck up.

The Leeds-born DJ/producer who ascended with the original U.K. dubstep movement – and gave it one of its first and most enduring anthems, a bolt of foul-mouthed rave lightening called “Cockney Thug” – is here to tell you that music is not about labels and dance is no fad. And to prove it, he proudly presents “SONGS”: His gutsy, freewheeling, brilliant second album.

“The sound of my early releases was very dub-influenced, and just good, fun, bouncy vibes,” he says. “The majority of dubstep at the moment I think is aggressive, and I don’t like angry music; I don’t want to be angry in a club. So I wanted to make something really happy, but still heavy.”

“Happy and heavy” is a proper way to describe the vibe that has carried Rusko from the first moments of dubstep’s life to the biggest stages in the world; from a single, seminal bass wobble to a swath of sounds that can’t be capped in a few simple syllables. He might be one of the guys who started it all – but he’s sure as hell not going to leave it at that.

A staple of the global electronic underground, Rusko has packed nightclubs, concert venues and festivals across the world, and not only dance-dedicated ones: From Electric Daisy Carnival and Ultra Music Festival, to Coachella and Lollapalooza; from Germany’s Melt! to Australia’s Good Vibrations. He created the majority of “O.M.G.!,” his hard-hitting debut artist album, on the road, cutting tracks by day, and testing them on living, breathing dance floors by night. But for the follow-up, he wanted to try a different strategy.

“From January to late September 2011, I didn’t make a single track,” he says. “I spent all that time touring around the world, building up a massive swell of ideas inside me.”