From the upstairs railing I spied the three Rufus boys serenading, trancing and grooving their tunes into the swarming mass of humans that were gathered together on a Thursday night (15 Oct) at The Tivoli Theatre. It was packed.
Downstairs on the dancefloor, the mosh was a squelched-together heap that pushed as far as the back wall. Upstairs, arms in their multitudes were being hung over the railing that curved in a semi-circle above the mosh, with people on tippy toes behind those by the railing and people standing on couches behind them.
Rufus for the most part bring a dreamy, blissed-out, big, spacious, landscape kind of vibe. It’s like house with a little bit of trance, but not quite as subdued. In fact, despite their sleepy-soft sound those Sydney boys know how to bring a drop. There’s something very Berlin about it too and something vaguely '90s as well – for some reason it brings a memory of my mum and her uni friends playing Bexta CDs when I was but a wee lad.
The music is definitely in the electronic dance genre... Tyrone Lindqvist was up the front on guitar and singing, James Hunt was to the right giving the drums a good smack and Jon George was to the left managing a synthesizer and a sound pad.
Their sound is definitely led by the magical workings of the synth, lots of little, trickling-high tones and big siren-like sparse and trancy build-ups before an always very-bouncy bassline drop, balanced and held together with Tyrone’s vaporous voice fading in and out through the music like an aurora dropping in to encourage you to drift away from concern and embrace the night and live it up with some soothing revelry.
They played most of their first album, 'Atlas'. Busting out tracks like ‘Sundream’, ‘Take Me’ and ‘Desert Night’ while squeezing in their new tracks ‘You Were Right’ and ‘Like an Animal’.
You could feel they put a lot of love into their music, and the crowd (including myself) was loving it too. There were many smiling faces and sweaty, grooving bodies to be seen from my perch above.
And by the end, the whole Tivoli was amped with energy and dreamy vibes that could only be poured out into the Brisbane streets.
