Put aside for a moment the impressive collection of awards, the stadium dates on both ends of the Earth, the critical love, and the clicks.
RÜFÜS DU SOL (RDS) tick all those boxes, and others. Dig deeper, behind the beats and the layers of digital cream, and you’ll find a cultural happening.
RDS are the rarest of animals. With Inhale / Exhale, the group (comprising Tyrone Lindqvist, Jon George and James Hunt) find themselves five albums into a career in electronic music that has produced no duds. Go on, find the filler. Take all the time you need.
Inhale / Exhale is the follow-up to 2021’s Surrender, which saw RDS collect a Grammy Award (for Dance/Electronic Recording in 2022 with “Alive”), their first.
A “very surreal” experience that “has relieved a lot of pressure,” notes frontman Lindqvist. In support of that LP, the group played multiple stadium dates in Los Angeles and open-air shows in Australia.
With their own brand of mid-tempo, accessible electronic music, RDS joins the likes of AC/DC and Sia as homegrown stadium fillers. It’s an achievement that isn’t lost on them.
“I don’t know where music is going. But there’s a fantasy, at least for me, that in 20 years’ time,” Lindqvist tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ, “we won’t necessarily be seen as electronic music.”
RDS’ lofty standards have galvanised believers everywhere, from different eras, doing so without swagger and antics, by resisting the temptation to reinvent. Their signature song, “Innerbloom” from 2016’s Bloom, clocks in at almost 10 minutes, a length that would cause a commercial radio programmer to come out in rashes.
Inhale / Exhale is the sound of a finely-tuned group, one that pays meticulous attention to production detail — the kind that appeals to a mass audience, partygoers and gym fanatics alike. Youngsters, mostly.
Less obvious are the rave survivors and folks weaned on ’80s electro-pop who’re transfixed by RDS’ blissful sonic textures, many painted by vintage Roland synthesisers. Grumpy old producers and fans of electronic music love this group.
“We’ve all been very focused on the sonics right from the very beginning of the band, when we started making music together,” says George.
“We did it in a more crude and simple way at the start and now, as everyone’s become more adept, we’ve been able to afford such beautiful synths and really lean into opening up that sonic space.”
On the new LP, they played with “foley,” notes George, by recording sounds off the streets and creating a “different sonic world that’s not just in the studio. Creating lushness that’s also got rawness.”
Annoyed by jackhammering on the street, George and Hunt stepped outside and recorded those industrial repetitive beats on their phones, giving the track “New York” its opener. “It’s got this edgy sort of art that starts to rise out of it,” he explains. “You move between those textures and create sonic worlds that would have been unattainable to us when we first started.”
Each standout from the RDS cannon — from “You Were Right”, “On My Knees”, and fresh cuts “Lately” and “Pressure” — has a sound that demands repeat listening. That was all part of a master plan.
“That’s been a very big, big passion of James’s in particular over the last few years, of really exploring synths and what’s possible with creating that type of ear candy.”
Their gear includes reissues of the Jupiter-8, 909, 808 and the TB-303, the cornerstone of Nineties trance music, which makes a welcome comeback midway through “In the Moment”. Lindqvist reckons their inventory includes 15 Sequential Prophet-6 instruments, several of which were on show for an Inhale / Exhale pre-release sunset concert on Sydney Harbour. “We all own them equally,” George remarks.
“We’ll have to figure out how to split them all up one day.”
Breathe in
There’s no place like home. When RDS played for several thousand at Fleet Steps, with the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge as their immaculate backdrop, the lads knew they’d come to the right place. Hunt described it as the “full circle” scenario, which will come around again when the band plays arenas in November 2025. Today, they’re internationalists.
When America wants you, you oblige.
“We haven’t lived in this city for eight years, but it still feels like home for us,” Lindqvist said from the stage on October 10th. “It’s where we played our first shows. I really think this is the most beautiful city in the world.”
RDS played a part in the most Australian scene possible when, during a performance of “Next to Me”, as Lindqvist was hitting the lyric “it’s in the air”, a Qantas jet flew overhead. Coincidence? In music, you make your own luck.
Inhale / Exhale took shape around the globe, from Los Angeles to Austin, Ibiza, Miami and during a two-week US writing block in early 2023. The Americas are calling again.
On RDS’ Inhale / Exhale World Tour 2025, the trio will play some of their biggest headline shows to date, including the Rose Bowl Stadium (Pasadena, California), Estadio 3 de Marzo (Guadalajara, Mexico), Red Bull Arena (Harrison, New Jersey) and Q2 Stadium (Austin, Texas).
Spanning 15 tracks, Inhale / Exhale is longer than any RDS album to date. And, after Atlas, Bloom, Solace and Surrender, it’s their first album with two words in its title. If it’s a concept album, it didn’t start out that way. “It sums up a lot of our experience of making it. We do ice baths and exercise together, breath work. We’ve kind of implemented those things into our touring lifestyle and to the recording lifestyle,” says Lindqvist. After the pandemic, during which time the trio locked down in the US, RDS buckled down and found freedom in their work. Inhale / Exhale “felt like a good summary of our last two years’ experience,” says Lindqvist. “We worked really hard on this new music. We always do. We definitely had the most fun we ever had making this new record.”
Breathe out.
This article features in the September-November 2024 issue of Rolling Stone AU/NZ.
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