Ring the alarm, baby: those rave sirens can only mean there’s a new Rusko track (set rip) percolating through the blogosphere and into the clubs, showing and proving that everyone needs to step up their game when it comes to making dance music with a pulse and brain, too. The Leeds-born, London-incubated dubstep wunderkind born Chris Mercer – a genius just barely into his mid-twenties – has been dropping innovative bangers since his breakout “Cockney Thug,” which wowed DJ heads spanning Switch and Diplo all the way to A-Trak; his latest, “You’re On My Mind, Baby,” finds Rusko reaching skyscraper heights at the top of his game.

Zomby seemed to have locked down the state of the art in rave nostalgia tweaked for today’ with “Where Were You in ’92?”, but “You’re On My Mind, Baby” finds there’s no half-stepping from Rusko upping the atomic-beat ante.  Rusko’s latest anthem is a crazed rollercoaster ride through various iterations of rave music from different eras, all slamming into each other with ferocious velocity: there’s the low-end terror of dubstep, sure, but also skippily vintage two-step beats, hardcore stabs, pumping soca grooves, housey pianos and disembodied diva howls make an appearance as song blazes forward relentlessly, dragging the dancefloor along with it. It’s like a medley not of songs but of musical souvenirs of great parties past, all hotwired together with the passion of a crazed DJ spiraling down memory lane. The track proves dubstep’s (and Rusko’s) vitality – before it gets stale, the genre just morphs like a science-fiction alien into whatever new form it needs to take, all within the same song.

Best of all, Rusko brings a sense of fun and humor to the track that hasn’t been heard ‘round these parts since, er (gasp!), the “big beat” era that brought us the likes of early, glorious Chemical Brothers (not for nothing does the title recall Groove Armada’s “I See You Baby…”). The lightness of Rusko’s touch takes us out of those dank caverns where beards are stroked to the darkest of sub-bass and into a more democratic, and frankly more exciting, realm:  “You’re On My Mind, Baby” just laughs all the way to the subwoofer in its ruthless ambition to the be the greatest party jam ever, and dance music is better for it.

Edit: If you like this, check out Rusko’s most recent mixtape, “For Christ’s Sake Do Good! Pt 1″, up at http://core.thomaslaupstad.com/rusko-dubstep-mix-for-fenchurch-for-christs-sake-do-good-pt1/