RB Exclusive Interview: From Good ‘Vibrations’ to Frothy Crowds, Hermitude Lays It All Out

Following the massive success of their track “The Buzz,” Hermitude has been inching their way closer and closer to the mainstream light of electronic music in the states and around the world. Hailing from Sydney, Australia, this duo consisting of Angus Stuart and Luke Dubber have blended elements of hip-hop and electronic into many of their songs, and have quickly crafted a sound uniquely their own.

In addition, Stuart and Dubber have melded together an incredible live show in which they play instruments over the beats produced by their decks. To Hermitude, it is important to “make it a more real-life interactive experience.” I had the opportunity to witness this amazing live act first-hand at Electric Forest this year, and might I just say it was an incredible experience.

Prior to their big E. Forest debut, I sat down with Angus and Luke to discuss everything from their new track “Vibrations” and the decision process to hold off on the release, to their love of the sparkling beverage, La Croix. Check out the chat below:

Here with Hermitude at Electric Forest. You guys just got in, are you looking forward to anything while you’re here outside of your set?

Yeah, I mean, I’m pretty keen to check out the Forest. I’ve heard so much about it just through a lot of people on social media. I was always like I wanna come here, I wanna play this festival, and now we’ve finally got the chance. It’s pretty nice to be here.

So what will we be hearing from your guys’ set tonight? Any new music?

Yeah, maybe we’ll throw in a couple of ones that we’ve been working on. We just dropped some new ones actually that we’re going to play in the set tonight called “Vibration” and “Gimme”, and some tunes off of our older records and also off of ‘Dark Night Sweet Light’ are last record.

And you guys have a live element to your set. What does that entail, what does that consist of?

So basically we have a couple of synths, and a sampler, and a drum machine, and some decks, and we mix the tracks like a DJ set, but we play all of the other parts over the top. We just really enjoy playing live and we both grew up playing in bands. I’m a drummer, Luke’s a keyboard player. We just want to perform and make it a more real-life interactive experience

Give the crowd something different everytime.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Following EDC Vegas you dropped your song, “Vibration” as you said. This is a track you’ve had in your sets for a while now, but it hasn’t had an official release until now. What factors contribute to that decision in keeping a song secret as to what the track is exactly?

I guess it just didn’t stick with the style of the record we were writing at the time. That track’s been sitting around for a couple of years now, we wrote it around the time we wrote “Searchlight”. It just didn’t quite fit, we are quite particular about how we piece together a record and the listening experience from beginning to end, so it didn;t have a place.

It isn’t that it wasn’t a good track that we weren’t happy with, it just didn’t have the right vibe for the record so we thought, yeah now is a good time to drop it. Now that the record is out and people have heard it because they have been to our shows, some people have been requesting that we put it out, so we really wanted to share it with everyone.

So it’s been received pretty well from the crowd and the fans then?

Yeah, we’ve been using it in the live show rather than on the record and it turned out that it goes down rather well live. It is time to give the people what they want.

So being from Australia, you have a really big following there, even getting mainstream radio play. What is it like playing in Australia as opposed to the United States or other markets where maybe you aren’t as recognized as you are in Australia?

It’s different everywhere really.I mean, it’s different and it’s the same, you know? Everyone is really enthusiastic at our shows, we’re really lucky that we attract such a great crowd which we’re forever grateful for. Everyone is really open-minded and just loves to sweat it out on the dance floor, which is cool.

Obviously, we’ve been working a lot harder at it back home and we have a bit of a bigger foundation and following, but that’s quickly growing here and catching up to Australia. Sometimes when we play in like some far away cities at the back end of Europe or something, we might be playing a lot smaller clubs, but we still are lucky enough to have the same kind of enthusiastic crowd in the room. They give us the same energy whether its a big festival or a small club show.

So it’s always changing. It’s always a surprise, and Electric Forest will be another awesome experience for us and we’re really excited to get onto the stage.

A couple of more fun questions now. Who is your favorite act to be billed alongside? Do you have any good buddies in the industry that you just love being on a show together with?

We did some shows with Keys N Krates and those dudes are really fun to play with so hopefully we get to connect with those guys again.

So, myself and our team are really close with J. Paul [Keys N Krates tour manager] and Joe [KnK sound tech] and Joe actually gave me a bit of insider info on you guys for some questions.

*Laughs* Oh, awesome!

With that said, in your own words can you define the term: “frothy crowd”?

*Laughs* That’s awesome. So frothing is when you’re like super into something, so much so that your like frothing at the mouth basically. We sort of have like this kind of thing where when we turn up to festivals or gigs and we see people who are ready to go, we say that we see frothers. Yeah, so the definition of a frothy crowd is one that’s almost climbing over itself. People who are just jumping and having the best time. That’s a frothy crowd right there!

And the other question that pertains to tour life with Keys would be, what are your opinions on the beverage, La Croix?

*Laughs* La Croix boys forever! Yeah, La Croix is easily the best sparkling water in the business. Whenever you’re on that sober tip and you just want some nice refreshing sparkling drinks, La Croix all the way. But… funnily enough, it also goes great with Vodka and many other alcoholic beverages.

Hopefully we get endorsed and get some more La Croix. *Laughs*

And finally my last question: do you guys have any advice for aspiring producers?

Just be yourself. I mean, learn your craft as much as you can, learn all your instruments or your laptop or whatever it is and create your own sound, because that’s whats going to separate you from the rest in the end. That’s the most important thing is to just have your own vibe and sound. Have fun.

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