BORN RUFFIANS [16:04:08] GET LAYERED Born Ruffians’ full length, ‘Red, Yellow and Blue’, could only be Canadian. There isn’t another nation on earth that is as delightfully aloof and insulated from the world as to nurture a band as happy and optimistic as these guys sound on tape. It’s like a Young Republicans meeting, full of youthful yelps and boyish ballads, without the politics or the world domination vibe. The vocals definitely play a huge part in this band’s sound. Drummer Steven Hamelin attributes this fact to necessity. “We have been together five and a half years,” he says, “and we started recording really early on in our basement. Because we were using computer software, where you aren’t limited to tracks, we would record a song and Luke would just go off with headphones improvising vocals to see what we could come up with. We ended up really liking that sound and that style of having lots of vocals as instruments. Because we’re only a three-piece, if we add a lot of vocals we can up the members of the band.” Rusty Santos produced ‘Red, Yellow and Blue’ for the band, a fortuitous collusion as they were huge fans of his. Recorded in Toronto at Chemical Sound, they brought Rusty up from Manhattan after they heard he had worked on Animal Collective’s ‘Sung Tongs’. “That’s one of our favourite records, collectively as a band. Our manager knew him personally from Animal Collective touring with her brother. There was this personal connection and we were looking for producers and his name got mentioned and we were like, ‘what has he done?’, and they said he did ‘Sung Tongs’ and a Panda Bear album, so we knew his style would fit. We had other producers lined up and things fell through and got sticky, and Rusty was right there and got onboard. He wasn’t trying to rip us off with percentages, and he wasn’t asking too much; we could afford him. It was the best choice we could have made. Hopefully we will get him for the next record. We really liked working with him. He brought out the best sound in us. He didn’t polish it too much or make it too slick, which would have ruined what we had, because we played live for most of the record.” Having the right manager definitely helps. It was the band’s manager, Leila Hebden, who originally got them signed to Warp Records in the US, through another lucky bit of networking. Leila’s brother is Kieren Hebden, aka Four Tet. “We recorded our EP on our own before we had a label or a manager or anything. We just knew a guy that was recording it and we went into the studio and recorded our EP. We met our manager right after recording our EP. She saw us play and heard the recording, and it was perfect timing. She took copies of the demos and she had a lot of ‘friends’ in the music industry. She was working at a Canadian record label and had some friends at Warp in the US through her brother. She ran into the head of Warp US, Simon Halliday, and she gave him the demo because he said they were looking to sign more guitar-based bands. She gave him the demo, he didn’t really like it at first, and two or three weeks later he contacted her and said that he had been listening to it again and it really hit him and he liked it and he wanted to come see us play. He flew in the next week and saw us and we signed, and a year later we signed for four records.” Luke writes most of the lyrics and tends to take the steering wheel of the band most of the time too. Steven says that he and Mitch, on bass, will add parts where necessary. “Luke writes the lyrics and the lead vocal melodies and the guitar line and some of the back-up vocal melodies. Then me and Mitch write our drums and bass on each song. Sometimes we come up with the backing vocals, sometimes we’ll improvise something and it will stick, or Luke will have an idea of what he wants already. It changes from song to song. For example, ‘Hummingbird’ was written piece by piece over six months, with all of us putting it together. We would play it together, re-arrange things, make up parts. Then a song like ‘Little Garçon’, Luke had demoed that completely on his computer and we just recreated it on the record. “The album is a lot better than the EP. We are really happy with it. The record was written from right after recording the EP. So in February 2006 we started working on it and we worked on it until May 2007 and then recorded it. It was recorded a year ago, written two years ago, but written over a span where we knew what we wanted for the album.” Carlisle ‘Red, Yellow and Blue’ is out now through Warp Records / Inertia. back to top ^

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