Maarja Nuut & Ruum have been playing together for three years after becoming a duo in the summer of 2016.
After releasing their debut LP in October 2018 titled Muunduja, they now find themselves about to embark on their first Australian tour.
Nuut, who utilises violin, a looper, vocal experiments and keyboard to write music, has been to Australia twice before and performed in Sydney last year, but this is the first time her and Ruum will be playing in Australia together. Nuut says she’s very excited and is looking forward to coming back and experiencing some nice weather.
“The main goal is to enjoy ourselves and to share music with people,” she says. “Usually when you go there the beginning can be quite challenging because you have all this jetlag. We improvise quite a lot in our shows, so you really need to be very present, here and now and focused to be able to improvise.”
Usually when the duo plays in Europe, they have visual elements in their shows, however they will just be bringing their music to Australia this time around. Coming to Australia with her partner Ruum and a completely different project, Nuut sees this tour as being more experimental with new electronics and a new album, and she’s interested in how people will react.
“The moment you walk on stage and you see the people and how they react, that influences you as an artist as well. We are actually pretty used to it because we play the same program often in very different environments.”
Maarja Nuut & Ruum, will also be making a stop at WOMADelaide. The pair aren’t shy of festivals and Nuut says that she’s not really worried about playing there. “Our music is quite demanding in some ways. It’s not so easy to listen to it, while you have a lot of noise around you, you really need to focus to get into it because it’s very subjective and it’s dark,” she explains.
Songwriting for Nuut doesn’t follow an organised rule, however she does find that some things run in a certain pattern. She writes a lot with her looper, which she also uses in concerts, improvising with vocals and collecting bits and pieces she may want to use. Then she might shelve it for a few weeks, or months, and when she comes back to it, it all comes together naturally.
“When I work with Ruum, it’s also like ping pong,” she explains. “I have something, I send it to him, he works with his parts, then he sends it back to me and then I again send it back. It can be that there’s a starting point of a piece, that is totally different from the outcome later on.”
After this run in Australia, Nuut and Ruum will be doing some festival dates across Europe but also plan on writing new material. Last year, Maarja spent a lot of time on the road, touring and travelling and transiting between airports, so she’s enjoying being at home and wants to focus on writing and creating music. She gets inspired by everyday things, describing herself as a sort of sponge. “I just gather information from the places where I go or what I do from everyday life from everything. Obviously a big part of inspiration has come from older archive materials but equally I’m inspired by what I’ll see everyday.”
As an artist, she says that even though the debut album is still fresh and new, artists are always looking at what the next project will be, even while the current one is still happening, and believes that there will be new music soon. “We are not doing that much in February, so we are planning to create already some new material for a festival in Estonia which happens after the Australian tour at the end of March, so let’s see.”
Maarja Nuut & Ruum will be performing at Howler on Thursday March 7 as well as WOMADelaide which takes over Adelaide’s Botanic Park from Friday March 8 until Monday March 11. Head to the respective venue and festival websites for ticket information.
