We weren’t quite planning a Future Music Festival 2012 announcement so soon, but it appears that Luke Jenner, The Rapture’s enigmatic front man had other ideas! He clearly couldn’t contain his excitement about The Rapture’s inclusion on the festival and wanted to share the news with J Mag telling them: “It hasn’t been announced yet, but I think in March hopefully we’ll be back for Future. I don’t think I’m technically supposed to tell you that so let’s just keep that between you, me and the rest of Australia.” [Note from Future Entertainment: Ummmm…no you weren’t Luke, we even pinky-sweared on keeping it a secret…sheesh!], but we’re gonna forgive you because we too couldn’t wait to shout it from the roof tops and all is forgiven when you go on to gush to J Mag about your love for playing to your Australian fans, “Yeah, I can’t wait to get back. I mean Australia has kept me alive for the last 5 years and kept food on the table for me and my family. So I have a deep respect for Australia and the people and it’s just so much fun to play there.”
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These guys have been hailed as the heroes of the so-called punk-funk revival. Hailing from the Big Apple can’t hurt either, because there is no pressure there – you do what you want. Fashion trends are as easily created as they are banished – and with the precision of big beats fused with electro, punk and rock they are on many a fans’ radar. Album after album and live show after live show they reinforce why they sell millions of records. It is because they are as incredible as you’d expect. This is the future.
Speaking of albums, Vito Roccoforte is first up representing the posse this time around – and he has plenty to talk about: “well, we are putting the album out finally! We just played our first shows and we played a lot of the new stuff off the album. And they all went really well - we’re pretty much wrapped up to go touring again as a result of the new album and that will probably go for months and months! So we will definitely be keeping quite busy!”
The album is of course In The Grace of Your Love, a slight departure if not evolution from what the crew had delivered previously. Vito continues: “I think this time around with the album, we didn’t have any expectations. We purposely didn’t set a goal around what the album should sound like. We really went with it and took it step by step. But in a pretty quick period of time, we wrote all the demos - and what kind of came out, came out. We were sort of cool with that. It is a little different sure, but it is a new album so we thought it should be. And we are different people too, yet overall we think its pretty representative of who we are now and where we are in our lives.”
That said, the lads are especially psyched on the new album this time around - as Vito explains: “we spent a year with it before it came out so we were sitting around with it for quite a while. We also put a fair bit of effort into the mixing and sequencing of it. For us, we were just really excited to get it out and then just tour it. It always feels great to get new music out. It’s one of those things.” Indeed, that reconnection with the floor and with fans must be a wonderful feeling of excitement and relief. “You don’t know how you feel about something until it’s out and then you don’t know how the rest of the world will feel about it! We’re just really happy that the initial reaction has been overwhelmingly positive; it’s one of those things that’s hard to pinpoint until afterwards.”
Musically as before, the lads were influenced by what they enjoy listening to. And that includes – more lately anyway - a lot of Byrds for their vocal harmonies; as well as plenty of modern and not so modern house and techno for their DJ gigs. Luke also chimes in with this: “I would also say PIL; and we used to cover Damaged Goods for a while ten years ago, so many things. Our MySpace page has some listed that Gabe put up a couple years ago!” But Luke concedes music is always changing. “In fact, music has changed so much for the better lately,” he says. “Bands can blow up so much faster and things that would have been marginal and not even heard are pushed to the front really fast on the Internet. And I think it motivates people from our DIY culture to just go out there and do what they want more than get into their local scene too much, which can limit the most creative of us musician types.”
Finally – and perhaps most importantly – the guys are heading back to Australia for the forthcoming Future Music Festival. “We’re also really psyched on FMF,” says Vito. “We’ve only heard good things about it and we remember seeing the line up for the festival last year and it was really impressive. So when we got the offer to play this year, we were pretty excited; so we sort of just jumped on it and we’re looking forward to getting down there to play! Of course it will also be great to get down there as well – March is a really nice time of the year to be in Australia. It really is one of our favourite places to tour and it’s always a great country and the people are really nice and playing live shows there is always fantastic. The festivals are always great and it feels like a good family vibe!”
And in between, the lads have plenty of frequent flyer miles to be earning – Vito suggests that during the next 12-18 months, they’re going to be doing a fair bit of touring, with thoughts of the next album on the back seat for now. “We don’t generally get the chance to write when we travel. We might come up with some new ideas individually and then put them together later on, or something like that. But while we’re on the road, we don’t have a lot of breaks. We don’t have a lot of time off so the focus is on making the shows as good as we can!”
“The tour will feature a fair bit of our older stuff and also some of our new material. You know, when I was growing up and going to gigs and stuff; when you see a band you always wanted to see their original and early stuff. Even if I like a new album or even if it’s a favourite, I always want to hear the old stuff. So I get disappointed when new bands come through and play their entire new album and perhaps play two or three new songs of their older material. Especially at festivals I think it’s great when you can hear the new stuff mixed up with the old.”
The Rapture - In The Grace of Your Love by modularpeople
