Hermitude: beyond the Blue Mountains to new hip-hop heights

“I remember coming out of the studio and hearing a rumbling sound. Luke slid past sideways in his car, doing a massive handbrake turn, looking me right in the eye.”

Drummer-producer Angus Stuart (El Gusto) is talking about keyboardist-producer Luke Dubber (Dubs), the other half of production duo Hermitude whose Dark Night Sweet Light album reached No 1 in the Australian charts in May.

Dubs’ penchant for recreational tyre scorching might explain the drag racing in the pair’s music video for Through the Roof. What’s less obvious is how two classically trained jazz nerds from the Blue Mountains, already four records deep in their career, have managed to set the gold standard for commercial hip-hop crossover in 2015.

I mean, their first band was called Funk Injection, for god’s sake.

I first met Luke and Angus in 2003, playing around Sydney with my then band Bluejuice. At that point both were part of a supergroup of sorts called Explanetary, featuring their manager and label boss, Tim Levinson (Urthboy), and other figures from the local hip-hop scene. Luke and Bluejuice keyboard player Jeremy Craib had studied jazz together.

Alleys to Valleys, their debut album as Hermitude, blew me away. It was streets ahead of anything happening in Sydney at the time.

“We were always trying to match the stuff we were listening to from overseas,” says Luke, 13 years on. “We sat at a lookout in Katoomba and talked about music we liked. We felt that we could do something as good as that stuff … We’ve always wanted to write the best music that we can and compete on an international level.”

Even Funk Injection was focused on getting people moving, he says, laughing at the memory.

“We were the house band at Trisellis pub, a dancefloor thing. Basically the party rockers of Katoomba!”

After Angus returned from the US with a sampler, the two started producing music at his father’s Blue Mountains studio. Family ties also influenced Luke. “I got into music through my dad’s friend, a jazz composer who worked with Miles Davis. He was living in Hartley. I learned jazz and funk until I found my own voice.”

Hermitude were initially inspired by British artists like Bonobo and “that wonky thing”, which I assume refers to the vocal pitch manipulation that surfaces on tracks such as Get in My Life. Angus’s childhood travelling the US and Spain also brought the Latin flavours of early album Tales From the Drift, which remain a component of their music today.

“With the first two albums, we just rinsed our dad’s record collections for samples,” Luke says. “With the third album, Threads, we started to concentrate on writing and recording everything ourselves.”

Performance was an afterthought. “We didn’t even realise you had to gig to get known,” Luke says. “It wasn’t until our label Elefant Traks explained we’d have to tour it that we got our live show together.”

Live shows are now their calling card. Hermitude’s freakish ability as players breathed life into the traditionally stale tropes of live electronic performance. GoPro cameras attached to every instrument, combined with the bludgeoning fidelity of their live take on dance music, made them a festival certainty – reliably tying up new year on the main stage at Falls, or rocking a 10,000-capacity tent at Woodford.

At some point, though, the Australian touring circuit started to lose its appeal and difficult personal circumstances waylaid the pair at the crossroads of success. “We put out Threads in 2008, and it was a tough couple of years. We both lost some close family members and maybe a bit of that fire we had initially,” says Luke.

“I lost confidence, felt I wasn’t contributing enough, and I started backing away a bit.” Perhaps it was time for Hermitude to call it a day. “We always thought we would take it as far as it would go, but end it as naturally as possible.”

But a beat Angus worked up in absentia brought them together again. A beat that became a live staple in Get in My Life, and inspired Hermitude back to the studio: “We’d had some time off, and we played Woodford. When we dropped Get in My Life, it was the first time we got that consistent response from the crowd.”

The boys appeared side of stage many times during Bluejuice’s Groovin’ the Moo tour in 2012, just to support Jeremy. Later, at a Perth festival over New Year’s Eve, I sat with Luke and the actor Abby Cornish while she smoked an e-cigarette in their backstage area. Despite Dubs’ total lack of ego there was a sense Hermitude were about to blow up.

Capitalising on a sweet, Triple J-friendly single Speak of the Devil, Hermitude’s underground reputation exploded courtesy of an attention-grabbing remix of 2013 single Hyperparadise by Flume. “It was crazy to see. Normally a record has a three- to six-month build and drop off,” says Luke. “The Hyperparadise LP had a two-year, near constant rise. I was suspicious as to whether it would continue.”

Still, predicated on the success of a remix, Hyperparadise was a light-sounding release. It couldn’t prepare listeners for the bangers of Dark Night Sweet Light, an album that draws on the dark energy of trap hip-hop but combines it with classic club and pop on tracks like The Buzz and upcoming single Searchlight.

For the uninitiated, trap refers to the gritty and minimal club hip-hop pioneered by American artists such as Gucci Mane in Atlanta and other urban neighbourhoods across the US. Typified by stripped-down instrumentation and raw bass, trap is heavy on swag and generally light on melody. The label is a reference to the inescapable nature of the ghetto – so not quite a Blue Mountains vibe then.

Hermitude don’t deny it’s their mainstream pop hooks which lend the new record crossover appeal: “Hyperparadise was us doing our underground thing. At the same time, mainstream music was becoming more experimental. It was like both things were on separate elevators that met in the middle for Dark Night.”

Gusto’s heavy drum grooves and atmospheric drops also meet Dubs’ insistent melodies at the perfect sweet spot, so much so that the US is taking notice. The pair supported fellow Aussies Rüfüs in October, then returned for their own headline tour in March, playing Lightning in a Bottle in California and Governor’s Ball in New York, holding their own among the likes of Drake, Björk and Tame Impala. “This last US trip really felt like people were starting to know who we were.”

After four critically popular but commercially marginal records, the Blue Mountains duo find themselves at the peak of the local charts and looking towards the US with real optimism. “The record got featured album on Triple J, and I would’ve been happy with that,” says Luke, with trademark modesty. “But it seems like commercial radio suddenly started liking good music, too.”

He laughs. “Oh, I am going to regret saying that.”