In the first of two features, Matt Anniss surveys the current climate of record digging, speaking with Zaf Chowdhry, Brian Shimkovitz and Ruf Dug among others.
Despite his penchant for cheerful genre hopping, there’s no denying that Ruf Dug has a sound that he can call his own. While it’s taken him some time to really flesh it out – it’s six years since his debut release on Popular People’s Front, fact fans – you can now spot one of his colourful, analogue-heavy jams a mile off. While he’s still a fan of stylistic shifts and audible nods to a multitude of genres – be it Latin freestyle, melancholic synth pop, Larry Heard style deep house, electronic dub or breezy Balearica – the Mancunian’s tracks ripple with melodious positivity, whilst retaining a raw dustiness that reflects his love of battered cassettes and cheap recording equipment.
The Mancunian selector and producer will deliver his debut album to Music For Dreams in June.
At the start of the year, we would probably have described RüF Dug as “fast-rising”. These days, though, he’s more of an established name – a maker of unusual, off-kilter electronic music that generally defies easy categorization. Since releasing the brilliant The Head Cleaner on Süd Electronic last autumn, he’s pushed on impressively, with the Lectric Sands-released Magnetic Atmosphere being complimented by a sprinkling of superb remixes, most notably for Tusk Wax, Rhythm Section International and ISM.
The Mancunian pair have teamed up for a 12″ on UTTU replete with Hashman Deejay and Zanzibar Chanel remixes – stream in full and read our interview with RüF Dug.
For those of us who review music for a living, the laziness of both artists and labels can be a constant source of frustration. This is particularly true when it comes to the humble remix. So often an afterthought or a simple marketing exercise, the power of the remix has waned in recent years thanks to a combination of sound-alike versions, limp revisions and needless, big name tweaks. That’s not to say that inspired, next-level remixes aren’t being released – see Maxmillion Dunbar’s schizophrenic, juke-goes-jack revision of Adjowa’s synth-laden “Science of Soul”, or Cloudface’s inspired, pitched-down new age house take on Bantam Lions’ “Recollections” for recent examples – it’s just that they seem increasingly few and far between.
Ruf Dug is very much a producer on the rise. Like a fine wine, the eccentric Mancunian DJ/producer seems to be getting better with age. He’s hardly a newcomer, having dropped his first 12” on Popular People’s Front back in 2009, a delightfully fuzzy and off-kilter chunk of warm analogue house that defied easy categorization. Yet it’s taken him some four years, and a stop-start schedule of in-demand edits and oddities (the excellent Ruf Kutz series), bizarre mixtapes based on charity shop finds, and amusing social media rants, to really fulfill his potential.
As has probably happened for quite a few artists in the past year or two, when Ruf Dug appeared on Boiler Room back in October last year most viewers were probably scratching their heads as to where the be-capped chap rocking out in a South London living room had come from. His selections were impeccable, his cuts sure of themselves, running the gamut between modern beats and vintage boogie without losing a sense of cohesion and feel-good flair.