Roll up, roll up… The big top is standing proud early this year and we’re already getting into the festival mood: big tunes, even bigger moves and more silly sing-alongs than that karaoke you rented for your nan’s 75th.
Next up for a sweet emotional croon under the glitterball: Rua Tui. A Bristol duo with a Maori name and a seismic collection of tongue-in-cheek bangers that could slay any field from Balter to Boomtown, many of which are their own creations… And are often comprised using all manner of unusual, oddball and out-there samples.
Recent examples of their experimental technique include Dr Meaker collab Beefy which samples a cult viral video from the mid 2000s (big up the Basildon Boys) and their Halloween hurter Brains which meticulously layers zombie bone and gut crunches over ever single snare. These are just two of many weird and wonderful examples of Rua Tui’s uncompromised blue-sky-bootlegging. Many other animals, vegetables and minerals have been diced in their DAWs during the three years they’ve been working together, as we learn in this interview.
Read on and find out more about their southern hemisphere roots, their philosophy on unauthorized remixes and why we should always remember that this rave malarky should always be treated as fun, first and foremost. Press play and get to know…
In defence of bootlegs, discuss…
Angus: In all my years of DJing, the biggest reactions off crowds you get is when you play something people already know. If they can sing along to something it only ever ramps up the vibe. I’ve done a lot of mid-tempo, breaksy garage and house stuff and it’s the bootlegs that always go off. They’re the way forward to get the crowd going.
Aidan: I’ll be the first to agree there are some elements of cheese in the bootlegs we select, but we try to flip things and double up vocals and be creative with them so it’s presented with a sense of fun. Sometimes drum & bass can be quite serious, or maybe quite dark and appeal to a more male-dominated crowd but the energy we’re trying to bring with Rua Tui is more inclusive and something you just have fun and dance to.
Angus: We started the Rua Tui project as a reaction to the quite serious, chin strokey-wanky D&B coming out at the time a few years ago. I love fun music. I’ve always called my music silly party music. I think that encompasses what it’s all about for me. It’s not for everyone but that’s the beauty of it.
Agreed. Balance is beautiful too and you keep it in check with your own original music as well as the crowd pleasers.
Aidan: Totally. I was counting up the tracks we’re working on at the moment, it’s 11. Only two are bootlegs, two are covers re-written from the ground up and the rest are originals. Hopefully they’ll all see the light of day in 2024. But yeah, sometimes you just want to make something fun and silly. Here’s a sample. Let’s make a bootleg.
Or here’s a sample, let’s make a tune! Like the Harry Potter one…
Angus: Haha. You’re not far off the truth there… The way it usually works is that Aidan will come to me with a really stupid sample exactly like the ‘Harry you’re a wizard’ one you’ve just referred to. And he’ll say, ‘Let’s make a tune!’
Brilliant
Angus: I’ve got more of a production background than him so he would come with the ideas that trigger the tracks. He still does that but in the three years Rua Tui have been a thing his production has come on massively.
What was the first sample he did that with?
Angus: It actually all started with a sample we had. A recording back stage at the Church Of Love at Shindig Festival of Aidan saying, ‘It’s not Father Funk’s church of love, it’s Aidan’s!’ He wanted to take that sample and put it in a tune for the next Shindig. That’s how it all started.
Haha. Amazing. What’s your background, Angus?
Angus: I’ve been producing for 15 years. I’m full time music production at the moment, ghost writing and making music for sync. Whoever will pay me to make weird noises! Musically I’m Bear Twists, me and Father Funk have been doing Tuxedo Junction for the last five years and I’ve had a number of other aliases that haven’t stuck. I just keep making more, I can’t help myself.
Tell me about the name of this alias. A tui is a bird, I know this…
Aidan: In Maori rua means two or double. After we made the first track we played at the church of love I went to New Zealand for five weeks. My grandma was born there and I’d always wanted to go. She taught me a lot about Maori culture growing up and I knew the Maori version of the 12 days of Christmas – A Pukeko In A Ponga Tree – before I knew the English one.
So I went out there, had an amazing time of course, and while I was out there I sampled a tui bird because they sound really mad. Naturally I came back and called Angus telling him we should make more tunes together and we used those samples in the first track – Attack Of The Tui. I suggested we think of a name because we didn’t want to be Bare Twists & Mr Aidan. I said, ‘Tuis make mad noises, rua is two in Maori so why not Rua Tui?’ Angus is half Australian, too, so it’s nice to keep that connection to the southern hemisphere even though we’re living in Bristol.
The tui is often described as ‘a boisterous bird’ when I looked it up. I like that.
Angus: It’s a D&B bird for sure.
Ha! Tell me about Beefy. That’s a D&B tune!
Angus: Thanks. I’ve worked with Clive Meaker before, he’s an absolute wizard. We really wanted to collab with him as Rua Tui and Aidan pestered him. He’s like a Jack Russel dog, nipping at your heels!
Aidan: I think you were busy that day. I rocked up to Clive’s studio and said I’ve got a really cool sample, do you want to do a tune? He said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said ‘remember Beefy?’ And he said, ‘Let’s do it.’
Negotiations!
Aidan: Mate we smashed most of it in a day! We wondered about what to do with it and I suggested he come over to ours and do a tune as we’d done Beefy it his. So he came over and we did Can’t Keep Me Down at ours and it came together really quickly too. That was Clive’s suggestion with the sample, which comes from the same old video, so it all worked. We actually finished them a few years ago but no labels were really into them or felt they were the right sound for the time but Clive gave Twisted a call and it happened.
Nice. Grid is a good fit for the tunes too. So what’s the weirdest thing you’ve sampled?
Angus: We used the Wilhelm scream as a rise in one tune. Wasn’t it a Halloween tune we made?
Aidan: Brains! That’s a good one for samples. Obviously we sample Sean Of The Dead and we were layering stuff over snares to make them sound cool. So we took loads of different crunches of the zombies being twatted in the garden. Every four bars the snares have a different snap or crunch or grunt. In another tune I’ve found a sample of someone crushing a pepper. That’s going in. It sounds gross. Danger as well, the track we released on 19K, that was a good one.
Angus: I played the didgeridoo on that one.
Aidan: And for the bass we sample an alligator’s mating call and layered that over the bass.
Ha!
Angus: It’s this kind of rippled sound that they do to send their message across the water to the lady alligators.
This is great. Getting an animal theme here now… Any animals you’ve yet to sample but would like to?
Angus: Funny you should say. Aidan came round while I was trying to finish a separate tune so I took a bit of a break and we made something. It’s called Whale Noises… You can see where we’re going on this.
Aidan: It’s ridiculous.
I can’t wait to hear that. Back to the mix and the last time I saw you play, which was at Dubtendo with Kathika hosting, you were dealing in some turbo energy!
Aidan: That gig was amazing. We love performing with Kathy. She’s got an incredible vocal range.
Angus: She can sing, she can rap and everything in between. She’s a weapon!
Aidan: She sings along with the bootlegs, she obviously sings along with her own tunes and we give her space for the double time rapping. We love working with her. She’s amazing. We try and get her on every set we can.
Yeah super talented! What’s next? You mentioned 11 tunes!
Angus: Yeah we’re getting our music ready for the summer really. Crossing things off our white board. Some really interesting projects are coming together which have been a long time in the making. We got a project with Kathika and Maria Laveau from Dutty Moonshine along with Maddy V and Abi Nyxx.
Aidan: More vocalists are joining who we can’t quite mention yet. It’s a huge project.
Angus: The idea of the project came from Kathika who was getting frustrated about being described as a ‘female MC’. She was like, ‘Why am I not just described as an MC?’ So she’s getting some amazing badass women on the track which is aimed to empower women and all proceeds will go to a an appropriate charity. Just keeping things positive as possible!
Love that!
Aidan: We’ve also got the Milkshake bootleg with Katalyst that’s coming on Wonky Goose. It’s a scatty tune for a scatty label. We’ve also had Hype Man Sage in the studio working on a few different projects. One track is for Thick Boy Records and the others will be for a release which we reckon are some of our best productions yet.
Angus: That was a cool session. Hype Man Sage was getting really into it as well, we all got nicely inspired by each other. So more on that very soon.
Any gigs coming up?
Aidan: We’ve just played Rumble In The Jungle and opened the Born On Road stage and we’re playing at Shindig and Balter in May with more to announce… So we’ll see you in a field somewhere very soon.
Yes. Anything else in your defence?
Angus: It’s silly party music and we’re coming for you!
Come for Rua Tui: Soundcloud > Instagram > Facebook > Bandcamp
Mix Tracklist:
Rua Tui – Shaggin’ Music ft Hypeman Sage [dub]
Zedd’s Dead – Undah Yuh Skirt
Rua Tui X Katalyst – Milkshake [dub]
Rua Tui – Good Vibrations [dub]
Teddy Killerz – Fight Me
Skrillex & Flowdan – Rumble (Volatile Cycle & Dropset Bootleg)
Rua Tui – Brains
Vibe Chemistry – Loca
Selecta J-Man – Run Dat
Esskay – Knuckleheads
Pola & Bryson – Tell You what You Did ft Zitah
Oppidan – Nasty (VIP 2)
The Fugees – Ready or Not (Huez Bootleg)
Culture Shock – Bunker
Basstripper – In the City
Sam Smith, Kim Petras – Unholy (Arlo dnb flip)
Document One – Holy Moly
Rua Tui – 1 2 Step [dub]
Rua Tui – Fairy Tales
Rua Tui – Cali Soul ft Kathika [dub]
Ed Solo – When I was A Yout (Father Funk remix)
Rua Tui – Festivals (Tek Tek Mr Happy Baddadan edit)
REAPER – I.M.Y (Rua Tui remix)
Burt Cope – Outta My Head
Rua Tui – Shaken East [dub]
Tesseracts – Make You Cry
Justin Timberlake – Rock Your Body (K Motions Bootleg)
Creeds – Push Up (Jappa Refix)
MERKäTA & M-DUB ft. IAM13E – SNOWDANCE (RUA TUI REMIX) [dub]
Rua Tui x Dread MC – State of Doom
Hedex – Move Your Body
Mozey – Party Muscle
Rua Tui x Dr Meaker x Twisted Individual – Can’t Keep Me Down
Wilkinson – Take You Higher
Mefjus & Camo & Krooked – Sientelo
T.A.T.U – All the Things She Said (Venjent remix)
Carrier – Locust
kanine – Get Down
Mandidextrous x Bish – Techno On My Mind
Dr Meaker x Rua Tui – Beefy
Dimension – DJ Turn it Up
Do it to it (AMC Squid edit)
Prodigy – Omen (Gray & Crossy bootleg)
Rusko – Hold On (REAPER bootleg)
50 Cent – Candy Shop (Father Funk remix)
Alanis Morissette – Ironic (Rua Tui remix) [dub]
Black Eyed Peas – Pump It (Tantron Bootleg)
Chase & Status & Hedex – Liquor & Cigarettes
Keys & Krates – Dum Dee Dum (Disrupta Edit)
High Contrast – Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Rua Tui Bootleg)
Hedex – MITR (Semi Automatic) ft Eksman
Tesseracts – Never gonna give you up (bootleg)