If you were lucky enough to see Rufus at Falls Festival and at The Tivoli on Saturday night, then you’re probably feeling just as disappointed as I am.
The Sydney indie-dance trio were undoubtedly energetic and enjoying themselves on stage but the sound quality was terrible. I wasn’t able to see the stage properly due the venue being at capacity, and me being a very short 5’3”, but I assume there was some form of drum kit/ machine on stage because that’s all you could hear.
The stupidly loud vibration of that drum took all the attention away from whatever musical musings that may have been happening on stage. I wish I could say it was the crowd’s cheers that were the problem, but it wasn’t. Even when there was a short gap between songs with no drums playing, main singer Tyrone Lindqvist would engage in light-hearted banter with the crowd and even that wasn’t audible. Now imagine him singing with music over the top. Bummer dude. This said, though, the crowd was super-hyped up and managed to find rhythm in the overly-loud drums, which had a lot of people sweating, grinding and bopping away.
There were a few other blips as well during their performance, but luckily we can thank the punters for that one – twice I saw two different groups of men get into fisticuffs, which drew the crowd’s attention away from the stage and into these incidents. Rufus managed to win the crowd’s attention back with new hits such as ‘Take Me’ and ‘Sundream’ and old hits for diehard fans such as ‘Paris Collides’.
Overall, my heart goes out to Rufus – you had fun up there, you tried, and the crowd (albeit heavily under the influence) seemed to enjoy it as they called the trio back out for an encore; of course, muffled by loud drums.
