Rusty Santos is a musician and producer who has long existed on the margins of the music industry, art world, and fashion scene.   He began his career in New York City, where he ran the record label UUnited Acoustic Recordings (UUAR), which was the musical arm of the fashion label United Bamboo, and where he started working with the group Animal Collective, whose core member at the time was working at Colin Deland’s gallery American Fine Arts, then a hub of the downtown scene.  He produced the album Sung Tungs, which acted as a catalyst for a new strain of experimental pop worldwide. He continues to work with the artist Panda Bear, a key member of the band, mixing the album Person Pitch, which Pitchfork awarded album of the year.  Around this time, Person Pitch’s success led Rusty to work on a series of key albums by experimental and progressive artists, including Beach House, Owen Pallett, Born Ruffians, and many more.  

During this time, Santos maintained a parallel career as a solo artist, releasing four albums during the 2000s and touring in the US, Japan, and Europe, appearing at festivals such as La Route du Rock and Midi Festival in France, Goldmund Fest in Germany, Club to Club in Italy, and more.  His album The Heavens, released on his UUAR imprint, gained popularity in Japan, and Rusty began focusing on Japanese music.  He produced an album for the pop singer Fayray, and soon after, this artist joined Santos’s touring band.  At this time, Rusty changed the name of his music project to The Present and released two deeply avant-garde experimental albums, “World I See” and “The Way We Are,” on the UK label Lo Recordings, and toured the United States and Europe extensively with Fayray in the band.   These albums were widely regarded in the music press and pointed to an experimental future that Rusty would later pick up.

After The Present released on Lo Recordings,  Rusty began to seek out how to make music for the dance floor, and he found a mentor into this arena in DJ Rashad.  The two collaborated on the song ’Too High’ which was credited to DJ Rashad & The Present, and he engineered and mastered DJ Rashad’s album ‘Welcome to the Chi’, which received Spin magazine's dance music album of the year in 2012.   This album’s success let to Santos working on a series of releases of leftfield club music, mastering for artists liek DJ Marfox, DJ Spinn, Traxman, and with electronic musicians like Rat King, Eric Copeland, Austra, and many more.  Yet it was an avant-garde jazz group called Dawn of Midi that provided Rusty with his next cultural milestone.  He mixed their album Dysnomia, creating electronic treatments out of acoustic recordings, and in doing so fully picked back up on the electro-acoustic sound he helped pioneer on Sung Tongs.  It was his work on Sung Tongs, combined with his collaborations with DJ Rashad, that led Dawn of Midi to work with him in the first place.  Dysnomia was as trailblazing as either of those works, and led to Rusty Santos working with other avant-garde jazz innovators such as Aron Ottignon for Blue Note Records and Daniel Brandt for Erased Tapes.  

During this time, The Present continued to release albums, FSG on the label Group Tightner, and Break the Dawn on the label Styles Upon Styles, but Rusty became increasingly busy as a producer in the global pop scene.  He co-wrote and co-produced the song Nos Funana by the artist Dino d’Santiago, which was such a success in Porgugal, that the pop star reworked it into Now Funana, and included it on her Madame X album.  Rusty also engineered and executive-produced a collaboration between the Chinese rapper Vinida Weng and the American super-producer DJ Mustard, on the song ‘Run This.’  This was during a time when Rusty was working heavily in China, having helmed the postpunk outfit Chui Wan’s releases for the post punk label Maybe Mars, and mixed the band Nova Heart, whcih recieved album of the year on the influentical site Douban.  This led to him meeting the Chilean reggeatonesse Tomasa Del Real at a festival Santos put on with the Kuduro label Principe Discos, and marked a shift of his focus onto latin music.  

Once The Present had disbanded, Rusty moved to Mexico City to focus exclusively on Latin music, where he produced a series of singles for the artist LIZZ, which were released on Aftercluv, an imprint of Universal Latin.  It was also at this time that he reunited with artist Panda Bear and they made the album Bouys.  Co-produced by Rusty, Bouys is unique that if features performance by both Dino d’Santiago and LIZZ, the album is a point of intersection where his work in leftfield club, internation pop, came face to face with his indie roots.  Soon after, Rusty relocated to Los Angeles, where he dove headfirst into the recording culture there, producing for a wide range of artists who wanted to incorporate the psychedelic elements of his avant-garde approach into something that was more pop. He began a long collaboration with Jackie Mendoza, an experimental pop artist from the border town of Tijuana, and Rusty produced her critically acclaimed EP LuvHZ, where they combined techno and reggaeaton with personal lyrics to a highly personal effect, and her full-length follow-up Galaxia de Emocions, where all the influences of his contemporary productions are on full display. Other key releases are the Ginla & Adrianne Lenker song Carosal which he co-produced and the cr1tter song 500 degrees, which he produced, and the Bedrooom album Thread which he mixed.   Rusty’s sudden immersion in the pop world sharped his studio techniques, but highlighted that he needed to re-focus his enrgies on his output as an artist.  In 2022, Rusty Santos once again worked with label Lo Recordings and released the album High Reality, a collection of self-produced songs that pick up on the electr-acoustic sound on Bouys.  The following year he released New Wave In Calfornia, an album featuring collaborations with Panda Bear on the song Mirror, the artist Bedroom, and Jackie Mendoza.  

Rusty has currently shifted his priority to performing live, he has a montly radio program on the nonprofit statino Dublab, and he has an niche yet influencial Tik Tok account where his formed a community around his ideas in avant gard and experimental music.  He believes that algorithmic forces in the digital realm have necessitated that experimental music begin with community.  In late 2025, he performed on Highland Park TV, a Los Angeles public access station and Youtube channel that highlights contemparary American underground music.  His live set consists of acoustic guitar played through two columns of speakers, approximately the same height as he is, and deep delay and reverb treatments on both the guitar and vocals.  A full length album of this sound titled Psycho Horses will be released in February, 2026, and Rusty will be touring the West Coast of the United States during the Spring in support of this.  In addition to this touring and release schedule, Rusty is producing a handful of artists in Los Angeles within the orbit of the Dublab scene.