ARTiST: The Ruby Suns
TiTLE: The Ruby Suns
LABEL: Wichita Recordings
GENRE: Indie
TiME: 37:19 min
SiZE: 56,2 MB
BiTRATE: VBRkbps
RiP DATE: Jan-09-2007
RELEASE DATE: Jan-29-2007
WEBSiTE: www.myspace.com/ryanmcphunandtherubysun
Track List:
01. Trees Like Kids 01:12
02. Sleep In The Garden 01:44
03. Maasai Mara 03:07
04. Look Out SOS! 04:06
05. Function Of The Sun 01:11
06. It's Hard To Let You Know 03:55
07. Criterion 04:43
08. Birthday On Mars 04:52
09. Trepidation Part One 01:21
10. Trepidation Part Two 03:31
11. My Ten Years On Auto-Pilot 04:36
12. There's Soup At The End Of The Tunnel 03:01
Release Notes:
Ryan McPhun (real name) was born in Ventura,
California, where he was raised on a diet of
sunshine and orchestrated pop music. Seismic
activity along the ôring of fireö on the US coast,
eventually shifted Ryan a further 88km South to Los
Angeles, along with his drum kit and guitar. Here
Ryan started his first band, though he eventually
grew tired of coaxing his friends away from their
metal band to perform backing music for his alt pop
meanderings. Fortunately, he drifted loose of the
continent that spawned him and found himself in the
set of islands which were some of the earliest to
split off from Gondwana land (New Zealand). He
discovered that much of the music he liked had
survived here in the same fashion as the large
flightless birds, in the absence of their natural
predators.
Shortly after his arrival, he continued to develop
his own music, whilst also playing as a member of
the Brunettes - who he travelled with on their US
tour supporting the Shins and Rilo Kiley. During
this time his track ôBirthday On Marsö was featured
on a Lil Chief Records compilation (ôNow We Are
Threeö), which was sold at live shows and
distributed to indie stores within the US through
Subpop Records. After returning to NZ, Ryan
completed work on an ambitious album of his own,
working in his new basement studio in order to
perfect his multi-layered popadelic sound. The Ruby
Suns were born.
His self-titled album takes equal levels of
inspiration from the modern indie DIY approach and
the grandiose productions of the 60s and 70s. The
songs focus on a peculiar range of subjects, which
stretches from RyanÆs prevarication about which
shipping company to use on, ôLook Out Sos!ö to the
empathetic story of a lone Kenyan zebra in ôMaasai
Maraö or the amalgamation of a skateboard wheel and
a non-electric vacuum cleaner on ôTrepidation Pt2.ö
The Washington City Paper listed the self-titled
album as one of their top twenty of 2005 and said:
ôThe best pop music from New Zealand has always
taken the familiar and made it sound alienùlike
something that could exist only on the other side of
the world. In the case of this Auckland sextet, itÆs
Pet Soundsûera Beach Boys, ever so slightly
electrofied, given an almost dubby spaciousness, and
hitched to lyrics about zebras.ö (Leonard Roberge).
With a five-piece (sometimes more, sometimes less)
live band complete and an impressive array of
synthesizers on hand, the Ruby Suns have now begun
playing shows outside of New Zealand, starting with
month-long tour of the US (in March/April 06). They
also played two shows at South-By-Southwest - one
alongside the Brunettes and Die Die Die in the
afternoon, and another at the Whisky bar in the
evening. It was a hurried event, though great fun,
and Micheal Bertin of the Austin Chronicle reviewed
the show as follows:
ôThere's inherit danger in one's LPs being the
function of studio luxuries, and Ryan McPhun's debut
is a lesson in utilizing all the tricks of the tape.
Compound that with the limitations of playing a
festival and you've got a recipe for, well,
something less than tasty. Still, McPhun's Brian
Wilson-esque sonic montages were particularly
vulnerable, and it showed. à It should have been a
mess. But no. Rather than bitch (æCan I get more x
in my monitor?Æ), New Zealand's McPhun and his
mini-Polyphonic Spree quintet just plowed through
the set like it was the most normal thing, and the
unmitigated euphoria of the songs somehow penetrated
the mix.ö
The Ruby Suns received further press and TV coverage
further along their US tour, though for all the
wrong reasons û in the Tri-cities, the motor home
they were traveling in caught fire and burnt to the
ground with all their belongings and equipment
inside. Nonetheless, the band managed to regroup and
complete the tour. Meanwhile, the bandÆs record
label back home arranged distribution of his albums
in Australia through Reverberation and Ryan went on
to play his first shows in Melbourne in Sept 2006.
The following month, the band were signed to Memphis
Industries in the UK, which put them alongside some
of their favourite groups, including: The Go! Team,
Field Music, El Perro Del Mar, and Dungen. The first
album will be released to indie stores in the UK in
December as well as on digital sites such as i-tunes
and Rough Trade (both of whom have digital singles
of Masaai Mara that included b-sides that are
unavailable elsewhere). The album will be stocked
more widely in the UK and Europe (through V2) during
January 2007.