With Grammy wins, Coachella sets and sold-out tours, Australia’s electronic artists have won millions of worldwide fans. Is it dumb luck – or is there something in the water?
Jack TregoningTue 15 Oct 2024 10.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 15 Oct 2024 20.11 EDTShareOn a highly Instagrammable spring evening last week, 3,000 eager fans assembled on the Sydney Harbour foreshore to welcome Rüfüs Du Sol home. Timed for the eve of the release of the band’s fifth album, Inhale/Exhale, the pop-up show had sold out in under 10 minutes. As boats jostled for a free view and bats flew overhead, the trio filed on stage in all-black ensembles and designer shades, perfectly framed against the sunset. For the next 90-odd minutes, the rolling cheers and beaming faces left no doubt that this is one of Australia’s best-loved electronic acts.
Rüfüs Du Sol’s return to the limelight comes at a buoyant time for Australian electronic music. A 2024 study of Spotify monthly listeners identified Australia as the world’s third-largest streaming market for electronic music, while Creative Australia found almost one in four music festivals in Australia is an electronic music festival. Against a stark reality for Australian music since the start of Covid (no new local releases from 2023 made Aria’s 2023 end-of-year top 100 charts), the global success of Rüfüs Du Sol and others like Dom Dolla, Fisher and Confidence Man is a hopeful counter-narrative.
“Australia’s always been good at dance music, but the genre is having a real moment globally and locally,” says the Aria CEO, Annabelle Herd. “I hope we can take the momentum that we’ve got right now and build on it.”
View image in fullscreenJon George, Tyrone Lindqvist and James Hunt of Rüfüs Du Sol. Photograph: Boaz Kroon/Warner MusicRüfüs Du Sol are practised in building momentum. Breaking out with releases on Sweat It Out, the influential Australian dance label founded by the late DJ Ajax, the band have released a new album roughly every three years up to Inhale/Exhale, which stretches its emotive pop-meets-melodic house formula across 15 tracks. Now based in the US, the band cemented its stateside following with a much-watched concert film, Live From Joshua Tree, and a Grammy win in 2022. The trio’s crowning achievement remains their 2015 track Innerbloom, a slow-burn, nine-minute anthem with more than 500m streams across Spotify and YouTube. As darkness fell at the Sydney pop-up, the fan favourite was greeted by glowing phones and group hugs.
Speaking to Guardian Australia before the show, the band frame Inhale/Exhale as the culmination of a journey that has seen them trade hard touring for a regime of ice baths, group therapy, breathwork and ginger shots. “We’re the happiest and healthiest that we’ve been,” says singer Tyrone Lindqvist. “I’ve felt a lot of love in the last two years, gratitude for where we are in our career – and just the luck. It does feel more like a miracle that we’re here.”
View image in fullscreenRüfüs Du Sol released their debut album in 2013, when all eyes were on Flume and the so-called ‘Australian sound’ … Flume performs at Coachella in 2022. Photograph: Amy Sussman/Getty Images for CoachellaThe band came of age in an era ruled by Modular Records, home to the Avalanches, Tame Impala and the scrappy indie-dance of Cut Copy, Van She and the Presets.
“I grew up playing in rock bands, and electronic music was this very separate thing,” Lindqvist recalls. “Seeing Kim [Moyes] from the Presets playing live drums just opened the door for me, like, woah, there’s a lot more in this.”
Rüfüs Du Sol released their debut album, Atlas, in 2013, when all eyes were on Flume and the so-called “Australian sound”, a loose definition encompassing electronica, future bass and house. Like Flume, the band carefully chose their moment to level up. “Once we’d gotten to a certain point in Australia, we decided to go take that challenge up in America and do the same thing,” says keyboardist Jon George.
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David McCormack on Custard’s new album – and living in Bluey’s shadowRead moreIn recent years, Australia’s biggest electronic exports have folded neatly into international trends. Rüfüs Du Sol’s high-drama DJ sets have clicked with Burning Man and luxury clubbing hotspot Tulum, where the band have staged a wellness-forward dance festival.
Dom Dolla and Fisher’s brand of mainstage-ready tech-house coincided with the sound exploding in the US, which has then translated into major headline shows back home. (In 2023, Dom Dolla achieved the quickest sellout in the history of Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl, and will return next month for a largely sold-out national run.)
Meanwhile, the absurd dance-pop of Brisbane duo Confidence Man – a world away from the sincerity of Rüfüs Du Sol – has also found its place in the UK festival and queer party circuit.
But the biggest names only tell part of the story. Australia is widely represented globally, from the label rosters of tastemaker DJs like Mall Grab and Nina Las Vegas, to US festival draws Anna Lunoe and Alison Wonderland, to the house and techno scene’s embrace of artists including Skin On Skin, Logic1000, CC:Disco!, Sam Alfred and X Club.
Jane Slingo, an artist manager and director of Australia’s Electronic Music Conference, points to a healthy “reciprocal exchange” between Australian artists and the world. “Certain communities within dance music don’t care at all about metrics like 10m Spotify streams,” she says. “It’s about making creative friendships and connecting across borders more organically. International success does not only mean playing Coachella.”
Since 2018, Rüfüs Du Sol have released music from like-minded artists via their Rose Avenue Records label, including Australian DJ-producers Cassian and Luke Alessi. One of the label’s standout signings is Kaytetye musician Rona, who was drawn to the “whole world of sound and community” that Rüfüs Du Sol created. Having made a buzzy debut on Boiler Room featuring a host of her own radiant house productions alongside snippets from the Aboriginal History Archive, Rona is attuned to the daily struggles of emerging electronic artists.
“Where value is placed more on streams, likes and followers than on the actual art, it can be incredibly exhausting,” she writes over email from London, where she’s working in the studio with Flight Facilities’ and Confidence Man’s go-to mixer Ewan Pearson. Conscious of fostering her own community, the producer has launched her own label as an outlet for her latest releases and in turn “other First Nations artists to release music on their own terms”.
For Rüfüs Du Sol, Australian electronic music is the product of many overlapping influences and instincts. “One big thing for me is that we grew up listening to Triple J and being exposed to all genres of music,” Lindqvist says. “I feel like the music that comes out of Australia and the music that we make is unintentionally influenced by so many genres, and that feels uniquely Australian.”
Others are not so quick to offer a unifying theory of the moment. “There’s something in the water here, and I always get asked in interviews what it is,” Dom Dolla said in his 2023 Aria acceptance speech for best dance/electronic release. “I won’t tell them if you guys don’t.”