RÜFÜS DU SOL have found a new rhythm

A strobe blast of orange light beams from Portola Festival’s main stage, where Australian trio RÜFÜS DU SOL stand in front of a roaring crowd. They’re about to close out the first day of the festival's 2024 edition, and the energy is at an all-time high. Only in its third year, Portola is quickly positioning itself as San Francisco’s premier electronic music festival, building up a formidable reputation as a tastemaker event in a crowded West Coast festival circuit. It’s a place where DJs and electronic artists want to be booked, not only for the creds, but so they might be able to catch their favourite DJs performing on the line-up, too.

Today marks RÜFÜS’ only live festival appearance for the year. Plus, it’s been two years since the band has performed in San Francisco. At this moment, it feels like the entire city is welcoming them back. A layer of San Francisco’s signature fog is electrifying the chill in the air as it rolls in from the nearby bay, and the impressively phone-free crowd erupts at the first strikes of 'Lately', one of the singles released in the lead up their fifth studio album, 'Inhale / Exhale', which drops today.

“It’s so good to be back, San Francisco,” says lead vocalist and guitarist Tyrone Lindqvist. For the past year, the band has been on an extended and unprecedented break as a unit, both on tour and in their personal lives.

Back in 2022, a year after the release of their last album 'Surrender' and following a big run of shows that ended at Los Angeles’ esteemed Hollywood Bowl, the band gave fans a momentary scare. Lindqvist, doing a routine round of thank yous and a sign off towards the end of the show, explained that the performance “marked the end of a chapter for [them] as a unit.” While rumours of the band disbanding were as quick to swirl as they were dispelled, the statement did in fact mark an end of times for the group.

Previously, the band had always lived in the same city. The influence of these shared places would imprint upon the music they made during that time – first in Sydney (their debut 2013 album 'Atlas'), then Berlin ('Bloom', released in 2016), and later in Los Angeles (2018’s 'SOLACE'), making the location and physical togetherness of the group an important, if not essential theme for RÜFÜS DU SOL. So when they decided to live apart for the first time (Tyrone staying in California with his wife and young son, while synth player Jon George and drummer James Hunt moved to Miami), the moment felt like a milestone.

When it came time to reconvene, this time in studios around the world (in Austin, Los Angeles, and Ibiza), it became apparent that living apart and having limited time together would require the band to adopt a new rhythm for making music. They admit, their first day back was filled with nervous energy — an unfamiliarity after coming back from spending real time apart for the first time in over a decade.

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Thankfully, they were quick to slip back in step with one another. After all, before anything and everything, they were firstly just three mates in Australia who wanted to make some music together. It wasn’t all exactly the same upon return, though; during their dedicated two week blocks, the band also adopted new rituals. They built in a sort of super wellness routine to amplify their time together, made up of ice baths, the gym, breath work, and group therapy. (There’s a joke to be made here about leaving Los Angeles, but taking the health-crazy habits of the city with them.) “Discovering those practices allowed us to be our most creative selves and it became an incredibly prolific writing process for us,” George says of these sessions. “There was a healthy pressure on those writing periods. In a way, it felt strange because in advance I was really wondering, ‘Are we going to be able to write as much material with us living separately? Is it going to be good enough, even for ourselves?’”

Reunited and laser-focused on their task at hand, they describe this time spent in the studio as hyperproductive, but also playful, in a way that felt reminiscent of their early career. “We’ve talked before about 'Innerbloom' being written in one sitting, from start to finish. That happened at least four or five times on this record,” Hunt reveals. “I think it speaks to where we were as a unit, and how free we were, to be able to just try things without a preconceived idea.’”

Dance heads at heart, the band name-check titans of the ‘90s as their references during this time: Moby, The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Armand Van Helden, Roger Sanchez. Creators of some of the most timeless, lasting dance music tracks, but more pertinently, artists with an impressive breadth across their bodies of work. “We have a shared love for a lot of the stuff from the ‘90s – stuff we grew up on, listening to the radio and watching music videos on MTV. Now it’s been long enough that that nostalgia feels even richer, you know?” Hunt says. “Those acts made creative, bold choices. We were thinking more consciously about that with this record, wanting to make it more dynamic in this very free space. We were down to try any idea, and that resulted in us experimenting with different tempos and grooves that were really fun to explore.”

Across its 15 tracks, the album is a composition of all sides of RÜFÜS the world has come to know and love, but the songs feel more full-bodied, confident, and are, at times, just straight up fun. 'Music is Better', the lead single from the album, is a blissfully utopian earworm that calls back to the bright, carefree hits that initially put RÜFÜS on the map. The track shot to the No. 1 position on dance radio, marking the first time the group has topped the charts. Long-time fans should be able to recognise what’s happening here; there’s a whole new wave of people falling for the sunny, iridescent charm of RÜFÜS DU SOL in the same way they did, however many years ago.

Throughout their discography, the trio have traditionally been hardware heads in the studio and masters of analog synths like the Prophet 6 or OB-6, both of which were considered essential in the creation of their past two albums. While detailed synth work remains across 'Inhale / Exhale', there are new hints of experimental sound design that are free-flowing. Sharp-eared listeners might be able to pinpoint the samples captured and incorporated into the record from unexpected parts of their every day, like the sound of a truck coming to a halt, or the bustle of construction work outside of their studio.

If their last album 'Surrender' was the band’s ode to facing life’s challenges during a heavier time (created during lockdown at the top of the pandemic), 'Inhale / Exhale' is the processing and the reformation that comes after. Darker, punchier songs of longing that RÜFÜS often disguise as peak-time bangers anchor the album with tracks like 'Lately' and 'Fire / Desire'. 'New York' is a striking, vocal-forward interlude that captures the loneliness of missing home. 'The Life' teeters on the edge of breaking the fourth wall, a sort of self-realisation of growth, realising that things have changed and knowing that there is no way out but forward. The end of the album soars with love songs like 'Edge of the Earth' and 'Belong' that are uniquely RÜFÜS: minor-toned tunes, warmed by a lasting sense of longing and hope that are equally as grandiose as they are intimate.

Unlike their albums before, the new record foregoes RÜFÜS’ tradition of closing with an extravagant seven-minute final track. Instead, the album is bookended by the aptly titled 'Inhale' opener, and 'Exhale' closer. 'Inhale' is brief, but persuasive in its one minute and 48 seconds. Made up of mystical synths and a twinkling melody, Lindqvist’s vocals chime in with a statement that sets the tone for the tracks to come: “Feel like / There’s a new light / And it’s burning as bright as the sun.”

“With us, there’s always going to be light, but there’s also going to be heavier, denser songs. Maybe it’s not even heavy, it’s just real,” says Lindqvist. “Our goal is to be authentic in what we do, even if it’s club music or dance music. We want people to feel it, for real.”

Back on the Portola stage, RÜFÜS DU SOL are dropping into the first grinding, synthy notes of their last single, 'Pressure'. “You’ll never break me down / ‘cause I can take the pressure,” sings Lindqvist.

The band have had a monumental past few years: leading the charge as one of the largest electronic acts in the world, winning a GRAMMY (Best Dance/Electronic Recording for their song 'Alive' in 2022), playing massive sold-out stadium shows, launching their own festival Sundream in Mexico, and helming their own label, Rose Avenue. All the while, they’ve also managed to stay rooted in their dancefloor origins, making DJ appearances at all the world’s most coveted tastemaker decks: at Circoloco in Ibiza, at Coachella’s brand new DJ-centric Quasar stage, atop the Mayan Warrior art car at Burning Man, and in London for a recent Mixmag stream. Their appearance at Portola is just the beginning of the live experiences to come for 'Inhale / Exhale'. Plus, it also seems to mark the start of a promising trend of the band stepping into their time as major, leading headliners for marquee festival events. (They’ve already been announced as the only electronic headliners for Lollapalooza Chile, Argentina, and Brazil.)

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On stage, the three members of RÜFÜS DU SOL are positioned at their individual, opaque podiums. Bright lights diffuse through hazy, grid-like designs of the risers, creating a glowing, halo effect. “It’s all starting to show itself now,” Lindqvist says of the show design. “It’s about retaining the balance and interplay of the musicality on stage, between me and the guys, and also using the lights, the bigness, and the spectacle of it all.”

“We love making that within an album too – having your big, high moments and then also your low, more introspective moments. The dance between electronic and organic, or between live and sequenced. Doing that, now in the expression of a live show, is really exciting. It all feels like a new chapter for the band.”

RÜFÜS DU SOL’s ‘Inhale / Exhale’ album is out now, find it here

Valerie Lee is a music and entertainment presenter/host, freelance writer, and former music journalist, follow her on Twitter