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Hailed as the most exciting export to come from Scunthorpe ever (by us at least), The Ruen Brothers are riding on the crest of some serious hype right now.
From appearances at pretty much every UK festival this summer, (including the holy land that is Glastonbury), and industry interest ranging from Zane Lowe to Edith Bowman, you’d be forgiven in thinking these guys have bigger egos that U2. But instead, they’re just two down-to-earth brothers who live in a bedsit in London and like making music with one another.
"The fact we’re brothers means we’re open and we can each other what we think without offending or hurting anyone, which is a bonus. And we both share the same outlook an aspirations which helps the process," Henry tells Gigwise.
"We’ve always had scraps, and now we’re living in a bedsit together I end up tidying up after Rupert a lot. But that’s what brothers do."
The brothers’ new single, ‘Walk Like a Man’ is an eclectic fusion of old Americana and more modern beats, leading to their sound being described as ‘stones-y R&B’. From growing up listening to their dad’s vinyl collection, artists like the Stones, Roy Orbision and Van Morrison are counted amongst the brothers’ influences and it’s not hard to see the undertones of this in their music.
Listen to ‘Walk Like a Man’ below
'Walk Like a Man' is available now to download and on 7" vinyl, but if the boys had their way, they'd rather fans bought the physical copy.
"We’d like to do more vinyl because it is such a better way to listen to music, the sound is warm and richer than CDs,” remarks Henry. As they grew up listening to vinyl it’s not unsurprising that they feel that way, “But you can’t ignore the download market”, adds Rupert. “Also we’re not sure if our audience would even have vinyl players to listen to our music!"
Henry and Rupert were born with music in their blood after their father had his '15 minutes of fame' as a guitarist on The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, the soundtrack to the iconic Sex Pistols biopic. This made life easier for the brothers as “He appreciates the struggle of being a musician”. It was this that influenced them to be musicians themselves.
"I picked up the classical guitar at the age of eight, mainly because my dad was always playing his electric guitar and I wanted to learn it too," says Rupert.
Henry adds: "For me, it was one of my birthdays and my dad was fixing up this ¾ sized black electric guitar. I remember really clearly sitting there and thinking ‘wow that looks amazing, I want to play that guitar’."
Listen to 'Aces' below
Being in Ruen Brothers has allowed the duo opportunities they wouldn’t have had otherwise. They played at SXSW this year, was not only their first US visit, but also the first time they had been to a festival, ever.
"We’ve never been to festivals before because we were always playing loads of gigs in the summer so these will be our first festivals,” says Rupert before adding: “we’re really looking forward to playing Glastonbury because it is the type of place that you dream about playing."
The Ruen Brothers will perform at Glastonbury, Latitude, T In The Park, Wilderness and many more festivals across the summer. Their new single, Walk Like A Man, is released 1 July 2013.
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