Marrying the iconic ambient soundscapes and fractured electronica of late 90’s garage with “warmly spellbinding melodic incantations and an air of post-millennial unease”, I’lls have seen their fan base expand rapidly in a very short period of time, taking in fellow musicians and tastemakers.
Since their formation back in 2011, the Melbourne three-piece of Dan Rutman, Hamish Mitchell, and Simon Lam have created a number of standout releases, each receiving acclaim for the trio’s knack for deftly crafting unique aural spaces, which beckon listeners to step in and stay a while.
To find out how this unique Australian three-piece does their thing, Tone Deaf caught up with keys man Dan Rutman, who took us through the band’s relationship with their gear from day one and where he sees it taking them in the future, as well as the gear they just couldn’t live without.
Back To Basics
My essentials would have to be the Juno-6, the modular synth, and the APC40. They’re all versatile enough to make an interesting set out of. Especially the modular, it’s that versatile that it never sounds the same at two gigs.
The Setup
My full set-up is just a pair of monitors, couple of preamps — one of them is an old broadcast microphone mixer that was racked up into four mic pres, pretty funky — an 1176-style compressor, synths (Juno-6, Ensoniq ESQ1, Six-Trak, Roland SH-2, Korg Poly 800 and Mono/Poly, Nord G2X), a Space Echo, and a few cassette players and tape machines.
Evolution
We used to be a lot more half/half with the electronic side and the rock band side. We used to have guitar, drums, bass, even trumpet. It was great for a while as we could all translate the electronic parts from the records onto real instruments, it was even more comfortable doing that at times.
But our sound’s changed now and the setup is focused on the electronics and vocals. It’s a shame we don’t have all the live instruments, but we didn’t see a point in having them if they didn’t fit the sound.
Hitting The Studio
The studio is just a messy version of our live setup. We have little bits and pieces to do one specific thing. It gets pretty uneconomical, but we have full control over everything.
Back In The Day
My first piece of gear must have been the microKORG. It seems like a pretty standard piece to buy for anyone who has no idea what electronic music is and wants to start making it. There’s this video of Dorian Concept where he messes around on a microKORG and I was obsessed with them after that, had to have one.
I bought one from the US, which took a month to get here, so I downloaded the manual and read the whole thing in the meantime. The manual starts from waveform and oscillator basics. I learnt a lot from it, but when the synth actually came, I learnt that none of that knowledge actually helps make a good patch.
Gear vs Song
The gear definitely sparks the song. I can’t remember the last time we wrote a song by writing the chords and melody first. The songs always start with messing around with sounds.
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‘Let Me Have Just One’ was written the day Dan brought the modular around for the first time. It made us write a track that we would never dared to do otherwise.
Obsession
It’s easy to get obsessed with the gear side and forget about what’s making the music good. We’re all guilty of that. Some of the best stuff we’ve made is all done on the computer, and it’s good to remember it.
I’ve started to sell gear now and it’s really liberating, it feels lighter and when you have less equipment you just push the pieces you have and your ideas to the limit. It probably sounds more interesting in the long run.
We’ve been using the same setup for two years now. It’s not big, but we don’t see the need to start adding more to it, we’ll just confuse ourselves.
Getting Weird
The weirdest piece of gear I’ve ever bought is probably this hardware pitch shifter. I can’t find anything on it from the internet. It’s by Ortho Spectrum, and just has a picture on the front of a man with a moustache and a lady with long hair (low and high pitch) and that’s it.
It has a telephone output on the back. Maybe it was just used for making death threat calls? There’s also my Sequential Six-Trak. It’s bloody old and you can hear it – so out of tune.
I’lls’ new EP, ‘Can I Go With You To Go Back To My Country’, is out now.
