The so-called ‘difficult second album’ hasn’t lived up to that name for RÜFÜS and their confident frontman, Tyrone Lindqvist.
“I feel like we weren’t ever challenged,” he says of the recording process behind Bloom, which is due out this week. “I don’t ever feel like there was a struggle, or us trying something that didn’t feel comfortable. We’d never really consciously go, ‘This will be something that we’ve never done, let’s do it,’ and then it was hard. It was always easy.”
Despite the ease with which their tunes came to the surface, the Sydney-based dancefloor-fillers weren’t exempt from the ups and downs of the creative experience. Lindqvist admits recording an album can still be a long slog.
“I think the hardest bit’s when you’re making an album and you have three guys that are really passionate about making something you’re all really proud [of] – you get on such extreme highs when you stumble on a chord pattern or a song or whatever. It could be shit, but in the studio you feel such a buzz. You go through the moments where it’s like a roller coaster; you get on those highs and then three months down the track you’re like, ‘How are we going to all be happy with this thing that we’ve made?’ and then in another four months you’re like, ‘Fuck, this is amazing! We’re going to push it!”
After releasing their highly successful debut Atlas in 2013, captivating Australia’s dance scene and touring internationally for 18 months, RÜFÜS were itching to start work on new music – and they had a myriad of inspiration at hand.
“Touring Atlas for a year and a half, we were so hungry to get back in the studio,” Lindqvist says. “While you’re touring, you get so much time on planes or [in] hotel rooms, so we’re all just sharing random tunes from anyone we hear, so that we come to this melting pot of shared music. By the time we got to the studio, there were heaps of things that we wanted to try and explore. We had heaps of stuff that we could just draw upon if we were lacking inspiration.”
Even if that failed, the band’s positive mindset and temporary home in Berlin gave its members a safety net when they settled in for a few months in late 2014. “When we went to Berlin, we had two months over there, and not getting to write for that long [beforehand] made us that hungry to try a million and one things,” says Lindqvist. “The fact that you get to try – and don’t really have a fear of trying – is so nice, and I reckon that made the record for us, just because we tried so much. It’s something you can’t reallymake if you haven’t gone on those little wild goose chases.”
The appetite for experimentation proved fruitful. As the title of its opening track ‘Brighter’ suggests, Bloom is a richer yet more personal record than its predecessor, and the Berlin influence permeates throughout. “We were listening a lot to David August,” Lindqvist explains. “He’s from Berlin and his album Times was full of textures and audio-based stuff that feels really grounded and rooted. I think we were just really excited to do that. On the first album we didn’t really do that as much; we were using soft synths and we were more in the box – less hardware, you know, less imperfections on the first one. And we were trying to embrace imperfections a lot more on this one.
“When we set out to do the record, we were listening to The Avalanches and sample-based stuff. They sample things that are 30 to 40 years old, and we really wanted to try that. We gave it a go so many times and it didn’t really feel right for us.”
What clearly did feel right was anything natural. As with Atlas, the outside world never seems far away while listening to Bloom. All songs had working titles named after animals, including ‘Seahorse’, ‘Ocelot’ and ‘Alligator’, and subtle surprises filter through to prick the interest of keen ears throughout – including the tinkle of shells, whale noise guitars and pouring rain.
Those organic samples, Berlin-soaked bass, longing lyrics and gospel harmonies add euphoric soul to Bloom, with the aforementioned ‘Brighter’ introducing the uplifting sentiment of the record. At the other end, third single ‘Innerbloom’, the album’s epic closer, is a lush return to reality after 52 minutes of the raw and sunny dance RÜFÜS have carved out as their own sound.
“I’m really proud of ‘Innerbloom’,” says Lindqvist. “We had so much fun that we didn’t really think about it, we just knew that we wanted to let it go for as long as it needed to go until we were bored of it ourselves. Even just sonically, it’s a real nod to our time in Berlin. It felt like an honest, naked song, like us literally taking our clothes off, standing there and going, ‘Hey! This is pretty hard to do, thank you so much!’ So that’s really nice. And that it’s the last track on the record – I feel like that’s exactly the feeling that I want to feel after having heard [it]. That’s what I’d love, for people to come away and go, ‘Oh man, that’s actually really nice!”
After the recording had wrapped, the group first heard the finished product in a picturesque setting while on an American tour with Odesza last November.
“We listened to it through the mastered copy on our drive from Detroit to Chicago. It was snowing and our driver’s like,” Lindqvist imitates with an amusing American twang, “‘Oh, gotta stop over and get beef jerky, we could get snowed in!’ Then we got the email saying the masters had come through and we all plugged in our headphones and pressed play very easily. Getting to sit back and listen to it was just so sick; it was so nice for us to just sit back and listen to what the fuck had happened in the studio for the year. Especially being on tour, it’s such a topsy-turvy space, so to get to have that moment where we were just listening to the record was pretty special.”
Even before its release date, Bloom has already delivered plenty for RÜFÜS, with an ARIA Award and gold sales for single ‘You Were Right’ and a spot on the 2016 Coachella lineup rounding out the six months since fans’ first taste of the new material. When asked if there are any pre-release nerves for what’s set to be the summer soundtrack of the year, Lindqvist laughs.
“To be honest, I have none. You’ve gotta remember who’s making it and why – for me and the guys, I didn’t make it for anyone else. It sounds selfish, but we went overseas to have fun, to make this project that we were excited about, and we made it. To get to listen to it from start to finish, feeling so proud and sure that is what we want to put out in the world, it kind of strips any nerve. You can’t give me a nerve from that. I made what I wanted to hear and I made it with my two best mates, and we are all stoked with it.
“I’m never going to know what A, B, C or D think. The only thing I’ll ever know is how I feel towards that record, and same with the guys, and we couldn’t be more proud. Like, I really love it.”
RÜFÜS’Bloom isout Friday January 22 through Sweat It Out.
