“It’s awesome touring with such big acts,” he says, “and it’s helped us refine our own sound. I mean, I think we’ve always had our own distinct sound based on shared influences, but playing with an act like Röyksopp allowed us to refine it even further. It’s awesome to see your favourite bands and figure out what you want to be doing like them, as well as what you want to do differently.”
For the last several months, the band have been hard at work on their debut album, due to arrive around the middle of this year. “We packed up all our gear in July of last year, and went down to the South Coast,” George says. “We rented a house in Berry for a month, and came out with a bunch of tracks we liked. When we went back to Sydney, we renovated an old water tank at my parents’ place and turned it into a studio – we put some acoustic panelling in there, and some cabling, and we kitted out our own little studio.”
Their set-up is something like a bunker, an escape from the outside world, and the guys have been spending hours in there, polishing their new tracks to perfection. “We’re in the studio pretty much every day,” George says. “It’s turned into a massive project. The studio’s great, though – we’re protected from the elements, and we feel like we’re sheltered from the outside world. We can go in there and work all night if we want to – I’m really happy with what’s come out.”
The first single to come from the album, Take Me, is just the kind of track you’d want from RÜFÜS – slick, sleek and danceable, with a decidedly sinister edge. “We were tossing up the first single for quite a while,” George explains. “Take Me is the most poppy song on there, but we decided we wanted to lead with something like that. There are a lot of deep tones, a lot of round tones through the album, as well as a lot of soulful vocals. We still have all our bells and whistles, so you can expect to hear all of that and more.”
RÜFÜS are all set to hit the road in support of Take Me, and promise that fans will be hearing at least four or five songs from their upcoming album. “We’re figuring out how to play them all right now,” George says. “It’s fun adding new stuff to the show. With the old tracks, we’ve revamped them in different ways – we’re not straying too far from the originals, but we want to give people something they haven’t seen before.”
George is confident that the band’s next single will come out on the tour, even if it doesn’t have a name just yet. “We’re tossing up between two at the moment, so I’d better not say anything just yet,” he laughs. “You’ll find out soon enough! I’m very excited for people to hear songs they haven’t heard before, to hear another side of us, or at least a different shade.”
BY ALASDAIR DUNCAN
