Last week saw the highly anticipated release of Rue’s Parallel Introspection on Yamatai Records. 9 tracks of varying BPMs, exciting collaborations and stunning sound design, have ensured that Rue’s first album has already reached some hypnotising heights.
Those heights were inspired by a school bromance which lead to Rupert honing and crafting his skills on DAWs for the next 11 years. A passion for the minimal and techy side of drum & bass, combined with an introduction to the Yamatai family has proved to be the perfect match.
The album features collaborations with the likes of Dub Ten, Acris, Pseuro and M2K, and his collab with the latter, To Be Better, delves into the 140s and has just reached number 1 in the Beatport Top 100 140 / Deep Dubstep / Grime chart.
The LP is a deep diving journey into every nook and cranny of the minimal universe where Rue has provided production wizardry to scratch every part of your bass loving brain. From the heavier side, by partnering up with Acris and Pseuro for Against The Wall and Do You Even Know, to the more melodic, soothing synths in Possession and Falling. There is literally something for everybody in this album.
In the introspective conversation below, we breakdown Rue’s creative process in the studio, his inspirations and introductions into bass music, his utter love and respect for the Yamatai family and much more.
So brace yourselves, read on below, and be prepared for journey into Parallel Introspection, Rue is well and truly in the building…
Congratulations, Parallel Introspection is magnificent! What got you into creating music?
11 years ago, my brother met a mate at school who was producing dubstep by speaking into a microphone and making growls out of it which I thought was sick, so he introduced us to FL Studio. We were really into Netsky and Camo & Krooked at the time and this inspired us to start making drum & bass. I had a little break for two years, then hopped back on it. I’ve always been in love with it and have been going to raves since I was like 16. Minimal drum & bass is my go to, it’s hitting every spot, it’s tickling all the right places and I love all the material that comes from that side of the spectrum.
Was there a particular style or sound that got you into making music?
A lot of future bass. One label that springs to mind that really inspired me, was Soda Island. Real lo-fi, electronic, incredible beats. A lot of the material I share now, they’ve just got little hints and shout outs to Soda Island, they’re really cute and emotional. You can walk through a a park listening to it and you can have lovely thoughts, I just love the sound design, it was so clean and nice on the ears, I feel like that’s inspired me quite a lot to make like nice synth sounds.
Having listened to the album numerous times, my favourite tune changes each time I listen! How long was this in the making?
About six months, straight after my last EP got dropped, I was right on it, but the tune with M2K, To Be Better, that was made a couple of years ago. We made that in Bristol when I was living there for uni, the rest about six months and Reflection was 3 weeks to a month before sending it out to promo. I wrote so quickly, it was actually following a bad argument, I came back home fuming and I just wrote the whole track pretty much instantly.
Wow! So would you say your mood and how you’re feeling at the time resonates with your music?
1 million percent, if I have a bad day I just sit down and write some music. If I have a mediocre day and I’m on Ableton, most likely what’s going to be pumped out is going to be mid. It’s until I find a vocal sample or something that resonates with some kind of emotion, that’s when the tune gets kicking and I’ve got these visual cues just to bounce back to. The heavy ones are different though, I feel like you’ve just got to work and make these V2s, V10s, V20s, and then finally you’ll get something that slaps.
Well there’s some absolute tunes that slap on the album! Can you talk us through your creative process with Parallel Introspection?
Most of the sound design I had done already. I’ve got a nice folder where I plucked out a sound that I’ve made and then variate it, expand it, and add macros to develop it further. I love collaborating because every D&B producer is pretty sick at drums, and that’s my kryptonite. I use this plugin called Soundgrain, I’m pretty sure I’ve told it to so many people, they look at the interface and they’re like, “I’m not fucking touching this one.” It’s a granulator and it gets me all my nice techy fills and stuff and cool artifacts, that’s all from Soundgrain. It’s running bass, vocals, synths and just running it through this plugin and getting these cool sounds.
You mentioned collabs, there’s some sick collabs in this album, can you tell us about them?
Let’s start with Pseuro, he’s my one of my best mates from Bristol and now we live pretty close in London. We’d spend a lot of time together in the pub and come back and we’ve made some really good tunes, but Do You Even Know, that was the only one so far that’s been completed. But it’s so fun when that happens and in-person collabs are really good! For the other collabs, Yamatai James foreshadowed them. The Dub Ten collab, SOL, he wanted it about a year ago. He literally said “you two need to get on it.” We finally got around to doing it and with SOL, I found this cool vocal sample from WILLOW – symptom of life, where she says “yeah and no.” We used that and we found that cool idea and Dub Ten killed it! He worked day and night for the next two days smash an hour he killed it. With Acris, I sent him a project and within a day or so, it was done and dusted, he was amazing to work with. Sometimes with collabs you just know when it’s going to work out and with this one, it was exactly that.
Amazing! Are there ever times where you get a vision for solo projects and you stay down that avenue?
This is quite an interesting one because I only started really getting back into minimal like a year ago but since then, it really depends on motivation. I think right now, collabs are what I want to do. I have some more material forthcoming with Acris and Dub Ten so it’s good that those connections have been made from it. Collaborations are definitely what I’m focused on for the near future.
Would you say this album is experimental? You’ve released other genres previously and this delves into those territories.
I think this would be getting less experimental than what I’ve done. I think I’m trying to push towards a certain sound at the minute and I feel like the sound’s getting more coalesced, it’s coming together now. I’m inspired a lot by Halogenix and pretty much all the Overview artists. There’s a lot of freedom with what I make, the sound design itself is a little bit more experimental. I tried to make a lot of sounds like referencing Azotix, I got a sound really similar to it. Then I thought, what’s the point now? It just sounds like him. I carried on working and developing it, that one sound turned into loads of unique sounds that I can claim as my own.
Yamatai, a label on the tip of many a tongue at the moment. You have connections with the extended family, did it only feel natural to release this with them?
There is a family connection there yes, James aka Gaijin Graphics is my brother and he does all their graphics, he got me in contact originally. I love them all, they’re all so funny and it’s literally like a family. I would of course love to see what the future holds with more releases with them.
Love this! What’s your relationship like with the Yamatai team?
It’s absolutely jokes, I take the piss out of them all the time, I like to do it publicly as well. James is honestly on a different level, he’s so on it. He’s the most organized guy, he’s got years mapped out and he’s always on your case with ideas. It’s like he has these little dreams and visions at night, and then he makes them come alive during the day. I wasn’t originally going to do an album with Yamatai but he just kept picking up tunes, then we were at five and he was like “I reckon you could squeeze out a couple more and then make an intro and outro.” Without James, I doubt I’d still be making minimal, I’d probably back on my melodic kind of techy vibe so I’m very grateful for him. My relationship is super good and I cannot forget to big up Kalane too, he’s also a legend, super helpful and collectively it’s an amazing label to be a part of.
They really are hitting some heights in the scene! Speaking of which, what are your thoughts on the scene at the moment and where it’s heading?
It’s interesting and controversial isn’t it? I feel like there’s a lot of debate, angst and a bit of a head-to-head with the producers who put in a lot of graft versus the new like TikTok and Instagram reel DJs, I think some people can get quite envious about it. For the D&B scene, I guess almost anything can be healthy and good. I think Wingz mentioned this on his story once, and I’m speaking about minimal here, if someone was to get introduced to that popular mainstream D&B through TikTok, Instagram reels, then the people who get into it, a fraction of those will split off down these subgenres over time. I don’t think there’s too much point in worrying about people putting less effort in than you and thinking they don’t deserve the success and recognition. That’s not positive and it’s never going to help you but as a producer, you’ve just got to get to that level where people are loving your music. Venues at the moment are a tough subject, everything in Bristol is just shutting down which breaks my heart. The Crown are helping underground promoters and events by halving their price for weekdays and doing free events. I do feel like when one goes, one will probably come back up, there are always more venues coming and i’m glad Motion got Document now and that seems pretty cool. I used to work in Motion and now to see it like fall off is horrible, one of my favourite venues with a special place in my heart.
This has been incredible! What’s on the near horizon for Rue?
Hopefully more sets, definitely more collabs and plenty more minimal. I want to get more melody and I want to put more time into my drums. I have a collab EP with an extremely talented producer called Regrowth that’s unsigned at the minute. We’ve recently had the Yamatai Production Boot Camp and there’s also something really exciting on the horizon which I can’t announce yet.
Rue: Instagram > Soundcloud