The Sydney trio are now nationally, if not globally adored, for their low-key, almost liquid sounds marked by eloquent productions.
Beat was lucky enough to get the man behind the drums, James Hunt, who slid a few details about their latest release Solace, its accompanying tour, and just how they managed to crank out album number three amid changed creation and production landscapes since their earlier successes, Atlas (2014) and Bloom (2016).
“To paint the picture, we’d just moved to Los Angeles a year and a half ago to embark on writing this record. We uprooted our lives, moved away from our families … we found an Airbnb in LA and we were super excited to get into the writing process,” Hunt explains.
“We’d been touring for two years straight and then dove head-first into writing. We decked out the studio with a bunch of analogue synths, guitar pedals and drums, we were just playing for ourselves, which was so exciting and we were really swept up in this euphoric, exciting time. We were really creatively inspired, and really creatively driven.”
But as Hunt goes on to explain, it was certainly a murkier, much more troubled time when these songs were produced. “Throughout that process, we started becoming so lost in the world that we were writing till 6am a lot of nights. They were pretty unhealthy working hours. We were living with our girlfriends but in a lot of ways, we neglected our personal lives because we were just working and working and working, you know, purely out of the love of it, but during that time, we became really emotionally tumultuous, it was a bit of a roller coaster,” he says.
“But I think that some of the tumultuous emotional experience bled into the record a lot more. I think we improved a lot as songwriters and producers, we were able to channel some of the darker elements of our lives as well as some of the brighter moments and get the light and shade more into this record. [It] definitely covers a broader emotional spectrum than the last ones.”
Hunt goes on to shed some incredible details on Rüfüs Du Sol’s Australian tour, with the focus being on their performance at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, in early 2019. It’s quite a show they have planned – complete with a brand new light show – and the lads are amped for it.
Even after the metric ton of touring that Rüfüs Du Sol have done of late, they show no signs of wanting to let up. “It’s definitely a new energy. When we get a chance to write a new record and play it out loud, I know it’s the same for the other guys too, it completely refreshes the excitement to play these new songs in front of a new crowd.”
Hunt also touches on the emotional poignancy of this record, which came from living and working in the studio almost 24/7.
“The only thing we found solidarity in was making music,” he says. “We came onto the title of Solace because when we had times that were a bit tough or times that we were dealing with so much shit in the outside world, that was the one thing we could return to.
“I think if this album can just hit people to their core. If they could relate to any of the things that we bled into the record, whether it’s the feeling of being isolated or stuck in something or the anxiety of being forgotten or a relationship crumbling or even the celebration of a relationship or anything we captured on the record, if anyone can relate to that, I’d hope they could find some solace.”
