STACK J#165 Jul 2018

MUSIC

NEWS

INTERVIEW

L-R:William Zeglis, Zaac Margin, Sam Margin, Elliott Margin, Scott Baldwin

like, “So, I’ve got it to here .” His vision was to get it to that point eventually, but we weren’t quite sure how to get it there organically. It was just about riffing on it and building on ideas and saying, “How about this? Would this work here?” Eventually we had a solid demo. Often it [happens that] you’re hearing something in your head but you’re not quite sure how you’re going to get to that point, and then it’s about collaborating and working on that together. The traces of R’n’B and hip hop we heard on Hoops (2015) are deliberately expanded on this album.Why did you decide to follow through on those interests at this point? I think starting out as a band, you don’t really know what it is you’re going for. When people start coming to shows, or writing about it, or talking about the sound that you have, that’s probably the first indicator of what your band is. You probably start to read: Rock band. Rock band. And in your mind you think, okay, so I guess we’re a rock band. But also, we love R’n’B and hip hop. You want to be able to make just the kind of music that you want to make. It’s about getting yourself into the right mental state where you are going to create something that you want to create. Doing

THE RUBENS Keys player Elliott Margin explains howThe Rubens' bunkered recording life let them pursue the sounds they knew they wanted to explore on third album LO LA RU – even if their corner seemed already carved. Words Zoë Radas

TOURING 3/7 - 23/8

would be on there somewhere. And then probably Cruiser the dog, that lives in the bunker. And a couple of tinnies. Stand-out track Freakout starts a capella and then slowly adds elements in a row: the

coverart. Have you thought about a coat of arms, or a currency? We have. When we first came up with [the concept], we were spitballing ideas – how far deep into this do we want to go? Do we want to have a national anthem, do we want to have a Constitution? Do we want to draw a map of this place? Then we were like, no, this is going too deep. Because it isn’t a concept album; it’s a reflection of the good time we had making this album, the world we’re in making this album. I imagine if we had to throw together a coat of arms, it would have Wilder [Zoby] and Torbitt [Schwartz, producers] – their faces

You recorded the album in a convertedWW2 bunker.Was it a complete Doomsday Prepper situation with a filtered air system and cans of beans? Well, it’s a big, long, concrete, half-cylinder thing beside a river, so half of it’s buried underground. Jimmy, the guy who lives there, has been renovating it and building it up. It became a party space and then a rehearsal space, and now it’s become a recording space. And it became your own little world – so much so it felt like a nation to you? The fun part was, we had really, really long days there. We’d have time to do experiments and kind of go down a winding path – because you’re not working on a studio’s hours. You have the luxury of being able to do that.

interviews like this – after the record’s been made and you step back from it – is probably the first time we think critically, and look back at the music, and see it in context compared to the first few records we’ve done. Which I think is a good thing – it means we were immersed in it. ZKR

tickering beat, then piano, bass, horns until it reaches its big climax. Did you map out a blueprint for its construction? Sam had the original demo for that idea for a while. Eventually he brought it to us and was

LO LA RU by The Rubens is out now via Ivy League.

THE SINGLE: NEVER EVER Sarah Aarons is a Melbourne songwriter (she's penned hits for Dua Lipa, Peking Duk, Lykke Li, Galantis, Cosmo's Midnight and more); she co-wrote single Never Ever , and provides the female vocal. "We wrote that together with Sarah in the same room," says Elliott. "It was kind of obvious: Sam sings, Sarah’s got an amazing voice, let’s make this a duet, in a he-said-she-said kind of style. It's really cool live, playing off each other."

'LO LA RU' is the country you created, and its flag is your

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