Rusty Santos is a producer, mixer, and musician active in Los Angeles, New York City, and beyond.

My discography spans continents.  I’ve worked with pop experimentalists Animal Collective, the footwork pioneer DJ Rashad, avant-garde jazz innovators Dawn of Midi, and I have credits on albums by Beach House and Weyes Blood.  When I’m drawn to a sound or movement, I embed myself in the scene.  I’ve worked extensively in Beijing, Mexico City, and Lisbon, and spent formative years in New York City and Los Angeles. I go where the music takes me, and the best music finds its way to me.  

My work is with the artist, an approach that invites collaboration.  Music is shaped both by internal and external forces. I create from an intuitive state, seeking out where the acoustic (the outside world) and the conceptual (music production) intersect. The recording process, which I call electro-acoustic, can include composition and technical elements, but they are not the emphasis of my work.  For me, the technical represents instrumental and electronic sounds, a vocal performance, the acoustic, or anything captured by a microphone.  Whether the sound occurs on stage or on a recording, my task is to capture both the electrical and biological aspects to emphasize the human.  

Activating the listener's imagination is key. As sonic textures unfold, they act as my means of communication.  The goal is not to create ambient music; experimental records are made to engage the audience, to exist in the context of scenes, and as the fodder of our music communities. I work with these scenes and also within them, and people are the stylization of sound itself.  The music of the scenes we inhabit begins as experimental; then, as it evolves, the most rarified sounds are absorbed by tradition.  For that reason, what I produce is part of a cycle of song-based music, even where it’s pushed to electronic extremes.  I intend to help artists make music for the sake of artistic evolution.  The recordings I make are for anyone who has use for them.