Rudimental know when to take things down a notch.
When the band perform live, they're often a blaze of melodic energy, their hits under-pinned by near relentless breaks.
New single 'Rumour Mill' is typically soulful, with Will Heard and Anne-Marie on hand for some stunning vocals.
Out now, Rudimental have handed a pared back video to Clash. Shot in their rehearsal room, it's a fantastic demonstration of the live show that has taken Rudimental from a small studio in East London all the way to the O2 Arena.
Check it out below, then find a quickfire Q&A with Amir Amor after the jump.
- - -
- - -
How did ‘Rumour Mill’ come together?
Like a lot of things it happened mostly by accident in our studio. Our studio is called Major Tom’s – I started it in 2009 and it’s now our record label, so we do everything here. We’ve got MNEK, he’s here in front of me right now. We’ve got us four boys, and we bring in singers to jam and make music here all day. This is just the product of one of those days, y’know? It started with a couple of chords on the keyboard, then I started putting some drums on it and MNEK walked into the room from next door – I think, to get a lighter! And he heard the beat, so he started humming to it. We kept him in the room and said, OK, let’s do this. He came out with these wicked lyrics and started writing it.
At first it was MNEK singing on it, and it was similar to ‘Spoons’ – that house vibe. So we thought, one of the things we’re good at doing is a duet, so let’s get two singers that we love working with. One of them is Will Heard, who’s like an old soul in a young, sleepy body, and Anne-Marie, who’s been touring with us for a few years now. She’s an incredible singer. We got them together, played them the track… and that’s how it came about!
Rudimental thrive on opposites – pop songs within an underground dance heritage. Do you think that’s why duets inherently work with your material, having two opposing voices?
When we first did ‘Spoons’ we basically wrote one verse and one chorus and it was like, alright. Now we’ve got to write another verse and another chorus. Why don’t we just get another singer. Why don’t we jut get a female voice instead? And we actually flipped it around and started with Syron and went into MNEK. So that’s how that happened, and that sort of became one of our trademarks. We just sort of ran with it.
Our influences are underground – we started on pirate radio, playing grime, so it’s moved on a notch since then. The house and UK garage culture that we came from it still very much in our bones and in our blood. It just so happens that we also love a strong melody and a good chord progression that moves you as well as makes you dance. So it’s not just for the feet it’s for the soul – that’s how we approach all of our music.
There’s plenty of soul in this stripped down version, do you remember how it came about?
We were rehearsing for our tour, basically, and we decided to film it and we called up a friend of ours who has a production company. They set up, it was all quite simple, we shifted the rehearsal room around and it was literally during our rehearsals. On the last day we thought, let’s do a day of filming and show people the true musicianship behind Rudimental. I think in the greater world out there people might think of Rudimental as a strictly production outfit, maybe two guys behind some decks. But it’s not that, we’re a band! So we thought filming our rehearsal would be a really nice way of showing that.
Speaking of tours, you’re playing the O2 Arena in London shortly…
It’s insane, really! The way things have gone is crazy. It’s got bigger and bigger in the last three or four years, or whatever it’s been. We can’t wait to smash that – it’s our biggest ever London date. Just the idea of it… if you’d asked me if we’d get the chance to do something like that a few years ago, I would have told you to fuck off! I wouldn’t have believed it! But we’re ready for it now. We’ve done hundreds of gigs, and we’ve been performing everywhere. We’ve come a long way as a live band, we feel like we can take it on. We came from London, we came from East London – and I came from Somer’s Town – so to play a gig in London… it’s our homecoming. So we can feel this nervousness, whereas we don’t get nervous at other shows. The idea of playing in London always gives us the shivers, because all your family and friends are there, it’s your home turf. It’s a high bar we’re setting for ourselves, but I’ve got some hope and happiness that it’ll go the way that we want it to go. It’s a little bit scary but at the same time it’s absolutely amazing… we’re ready for it.
This is where the band aspect of Rudimental becomes apparent, doesn’t it?
Absolutely. When we’re onstage, these are all guys that we went to school with. With the exception of a couple of them we’ve known them for a long time. We tour together… we just party together, everywhere! I think people really feel that energy because when we’re performing, we’re actually just having fun together and people catch on to that. We’re not there just doing a job, it’s more than that.
The beauty of all of us being musicians is that we can change it up, change arrangements of songs and flip things up on the fly – and we’re getting better at that. People who haven’t seen us live only get half the Rudimental story. We like to hark back, in a way, to Parliament/Funkadelic, Massive Attack, James Brown… even Basement Jaxx! It’s a high energy show, but with emotive content, emotional movements.
Do you perceive yourselves as being singles artists or album artists?
It’s funny because when we first started with ‘Feel The Love’ we had about half an album done. The whole thing about getting signed was to give them singles. That’s what labels do at the start. And it was like, the whole singles game is not fun! It’s not really fun. We are an album act and I can say that because we’ve had two albums that have been successful – so far – and actually, that’s the reason we’re still here. It’s not the singles.
The singles are like a flash in the pan – not to put them down, the singles are our favourite music, we choose the ones that we think will cross that line but will also have soul. We pick really raw voices to work with. But we’re an album act, we want to be here for a long time. This is what we want to do, we aspire to make the perfect, most beautiful album.
- - -
- - -
Catch Rudimental live:
February
26 Glasgow O2 Academy
27 Liverpool Guild of Students
29 Newcastle O2 Academy
March
1 Leeds O2 Academy
3 London The O2 Arena
4 Nottingham Rock City
5 Plymouth Pavilions
7 Birmingham O2 Academy
8 Manchester Apollo