Rüfüs Du Sol Ready To Reclaim Beyond The Valley NYE Countdown
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Rüfüs Du Sol Ready To Reclaim Beyond The Valley NYE Countdown

The year was 2015. It was the inaugural year of music festival giant, Beyond The Valley- the year that would stamp them as an Australian music festival staple. A bright-eyed Rüfüs Du Sol (formerly Rüfüs) were honoured with the first-ever NYE countdown slot to ring in the New Year. Behind the scenes commotion ensured; set times ran over, delays ensued. It’s now 10 minutes until the clock strikes midnight. Rüfüs Du Sol eagerly wait side stage- their countdown plan falling apart in front of them. What can they do but go on and play their planned set? Enter stage left.

“Our first song was like 15 minutes – it was an intro connected into a song – so by the time we finished the song the countdown had already happened and we missed it,” recalls drummer, James Hunt.

The stroke of midnight comes and passes without any celebration. “Rüfüs fucked the countdown”; the hate starts as blame gets forced onto the trio upon the stage, and a shame is bestowed upon the boys and has haunted them since. In a redemption set to surpass that of Shawshank and Jamie Lannister (forget GoT Season 8), Rüfüs Du Sol return to the BTV stage to redeem the countdown crown.

“This is our chance to reclaim the countdown which we are stoked about. It’s this funny folk law thing that Rüfüs cooked the countdown at Beyond The Valley so it’s time to nail it,’ he says. “We do have a specific Plan B of if we’re delayed – yeah we know what we’re going to do. We’ve got PTSD from last BTV. Like, you had one job!”

Sharing the headline title with the Sydney producers, and sure to make the EARFQUAKE, is the majestic Tyler, The Creator. Both acts are exclusive to the Victorian events, but will also be co-headlining sister festival, Wildlands, in Brisbane on 28 December. Further adding to the juice to the Beyond The Valley cocktail of talent are Confidence Man, Cub Sport, Hayden James, I Know Leopard, Mallrat, Matt Corby, Meg Mac, Methyl Ethel, Snakehips, and the untouchable Australian queens, The Veronicas.

Another welcome addition to the festival is sibling producer duo, Lastlings, who recently collaborated with Rüfüs Du Sol on their upcoming release, ‘Solace Remixed’. Following a mammoth year of touring for their third studio album, ‘Solace’, and gracing world-renowned stages at Lollapalooza and Coachella and appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ‘Solace Remixed’ is a collection of tracks from the highly-acclaimed album as re-imagined and remixed by a whopping seventeen renowned and emerging producers including Hot Since 82, Gerd Janson, Adam Port, Lastlings, and Will Clarke.

“Every time we’ve put a song out or an album out we had a dream list of producers and DJs that we hit up to try and get a remix for and initially it was a really ambitious thing because people had never heard of us so they were like ‘no sorry’, and then gradually we’ve gotten into a position that we’re actually able to reach some of these artists and DJs that we are obsessed with. Then also a few people reached out to us specifically wanting to remix a specific track from the album,” says Hunt.

The boys wanted to embrace and foster the EDM community through this project, allowing the producers and DJ’s to have full creative control over the remixes and the spin they put on each track.
“There’s a bit of a breadth to the style of the remixes. A lot of them are more dance floor ready which is cool because we love to have various versions of our songs that we play out when we DJ but not all of them are specifically 4/4 bangers…. I feel like each artist brought their own spin to each song.”

Hunt continues, “I feel like we definitely sit in the middle of a lot of worlds and it’s nice to have a nod to more of the purist electronic DJ community.”

The ‘Solace Remixed’ album will tie over fans until album four, which is in the trio’s sights, though this time the band may have to compromise on their writing process as logistics pose an issue.

“Tyrone [Lindqvist] just had a baby which is really amazing, but he is based in San Diego right now and me and Jon are in Los Angeles so we’re going to try a different approach where we are bouncing ideas around uploading ideas to the cloud. I think there will be some really cool unexpected results from the discomfort of doing something that way because we’ve always done it as a unit,” Hunt explains. “We’re all very inspired and I feel like we’re all very hungry to write again.”

Perhaps a taste of music may premiere at their Beyond The Valley redemption set. Who knows, but you wouldn’t want to risk missing it!

BTV sold out on the day of release, but you can get join the waitlist for tickets now at the official Beyond The Valley website: beyondthevalley.com.au

Written by Tammy Walters