Tru Thoughts Blog

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Tru Thoughts, we held a night at Brick Lane’s famous Vibe Bar. Playing, were some of the best artists to emerge from the label over the last 10 years. It was an incredibly successful night, with fantastic performances from Alice Russell, Stonephace, Kinny and the Bamboos to name only a few! To coincide with this, we decided to catch up with a few of the artists on the night and have a chat with them. Natural self, Belleruche, Flevans, Kylie Auldist and Lance Ferguson all took a little time out of performing and partying to give us a few thoughts on life with the label. If you missed out on this event, not to worry, we are hosting a second night in the Tru Thoughts hometown, Brighton, at Coalition on October 16th…

BELLERUCHE

So what first attracted you to Tru Thoughts?
All: Bagels and a smile…and a cup of tea!
Ricky: I didn’t get offered a cup of tea!
Ricky: When we released our first single, we released it on the Monday, and as I went round record shops on the Saturday, I met Rob Luis in one. He asked how we were getting on, running our own label, Hippoflex.  I thought; for the past 5 days, yeah pretty easy! However, we got chatting and he offered us the opportunity to sign to Tru Thoughts.
Tim: As Ricky said, to start with, we released records on our own, and distributed them ourselves on Hippoflex. After meeting Rob, he got in touch with us and asked if we wanted to put out an album, so we thought alright! You don’t really think about it that much!

Have you collaborated with any other artists on the label, or are they any others that you would like to collaborate with?
Kathrin: We’ve been so busy; we haven’t had the chance to do everything that we’ve wanted to do yet! We’ve had video ideas and other stuff, but we haven’t started anything like that yet…but we intend to!
Ricky: We’ve just had a remix done by Hint, which I think is a really good remix, but we haven’t really had a chance to do that much. Because we live in London and the majority of the Tru Thoughts artists live in Brighton, it’s been harder to discuss working together…we could get the Mega Bus though!

Out of all that you’ve released on Tru Thoughts what has been your favourite album or track?
Tim: The double 7″ that we did with the last album. As we’ve said we run our own label and we used to do all our releases by hand. Hand screen-printing them, cutting and gluing, literally by hand! I design all the album artwork, so for me, seeing our first release, made properly the way that we want to do it, was pretty good.
Ricky: I think mine would have to be the CD of Turntable Soul Music, because the day it came out, myself and Kathrin went to HMV on Oxford Street, and it was really cool to see it on the front racks at a major music store!!
Kathrin: I don’t really have a favourite, I’m just really happy that we’ve put things out. Firstly Turntable Soul Music as a collection of songs it was pretty eclectic. And then The Express was something that we did in a very short amount of time, which for us, was a very different way of working. As a body of work, I’m really proud of it.

NATURAL SELF

What first attracted you to Tru Thoughts?
It was only shortly after I started making music that I DJ’ed at Phonic Hoop (Rob Luis’s night) when I moved down to Brighton 10 years ago. I completed my first track, however I had no intention of sending demos out, I just played it to people to see what they thought! I sent a copy to Rob as I knew he was in the business, he got back to me and said that he wanted to put it out. It took me completely by surprise! He asked me what else I had to go with it, so I spent a couple of months working on and completing some more tracks.

Out of all that you have released on Tru Thoughts, what is your favourite piece?
I like different things for different reasons. For example, the first record I ever did for Tru Thoughts was a 7″ called Shake Down. It’s one of my favourite because it was the first. I still play it out now and it gets a good reaction in clubs. Razorblade on the Broken Keys album is special because it’s the first track that I sang on, so that has a certain individual significance. I’m really pleased with the tune I released recently with vocalist Elodie Rama called Midnight Sun. It really came together as a whole. It’s not a club track; it’s just a great piece which gave me the chance to get stuck into the production side of the song, working out the horns, guitars and such.

FLEVANS

What attracted you to Tru Thoughts as a label?
So much really, their music (of course), being located in Brighton & all the people that work there past & present –it’s like a big family (Pauls kind of like my dad!).

You’re playing tonight at the Tru Thoughts 10th anniversary, and you’re touring with the Cookin’ on 3 Burners band over the next month. With so many dates and countries, is there a particular one that you’re looking forward to?
Probably the Spanish dates – Barcelona, Madrid & Granada – nice. Lance (who plays in Cookin & The Bamboos) has been talking about getting me over to Australia for some gigs in the new year too – that’d be amazing….

Out of all that you have released on Tru Thoughts, can you name your favourite track/album/collaboration?
Hmmm – Can I just say my last album 27 Devils? It’s definitely the work I’m proudest of so far!

LANCE FERGUSON AND KYLIE AULDIST OF THE BAMBOOS

So tonight it’s the Tru Thoughts 10th anniversary, have you been up to much this week?
Lance: We’ve been touring around the UK and Europe with the Cookin’ on Three Burners (CO3B) tour [Lance’s other band] we’ve just played the Roundhouse gig with Quantic and his Combo Barbaro, which was amazing. Weve also been playing quite alot of Kylie’s tunes in with that too But we’re really looking forward to tonight, as we’re playing an acoustic set together and then a full band performance.

What first attracted you to the label?
Lance: It was initially a case of them coming to me, didn’t actually go to them, which was nice. Back in the day, I was doing a tour, playing in Brighton at the Jazz Rooms and I ran into Rob Luis, A&R man of the label, gave him a CDR of my demos, and we took it from there.
Kylie: Well lance was with the label first and that’s how i got to know them, and sign with them and so far I’ve released two albums.

You’ve collaborated with each other on a number of projects; are they any other label artists you’d like to work with?
Lance: I’m maybe looking at doing something with Lizzy Parks on her third studio album, and i love working with great vocalists, so I’m always keeping an eye out in that area.

Do you have a favourite track to perform live?
Lance: Kylie and I obviously do stuff together, like The Bamboos, and now CO3B, as well as solo stuff (Lanu/Kylie Auldist), but for me, whatever the new stuff is, is generally the most enjoyable to perform. It tends to be the case that the music you play live has been recorded 6 months ago, and already has been released, so they’re not you’re most recent pieces, and you can be a bit over it in your mind. But at the same time, you have to play songs that you know people want to hear at a show, but there’s always ways to breathe life into new stuff that you may be bored of, either through arrangement or another way.
Kylie: We played a new song the other night which is going to be on the new Bamboos album called On the Sly, and got a great response from that is great song, as well as Step It Up, which we love performing.

Thanks to Theresa Adebiyi for sorting and doing all these interviews.

Tags: 2 Comments