ICONIC AUSTRALIAN BAND MOTOR ACE ANNOUNCE NATIONAL ‘FIVE STAR LAUNDRY 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR’ FOR 2022 FIVE STAR LAUNDRY 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION VINYL
After selling out the national tour that saw their return to the stage in 2018, beloved Aussie band Motor Ace are back to celebrate twenty years of Five Star Laundry – the landmark album that catapulted them on to the global music scene, today announcing a 20th Anniversary re-issue set for release November 5, alongside a Five Star Laundry 20th Anniversary tour for 2022. The tour will kick off at Freo Social on June 10, before hitting Badlands (Perth), The Triffid (Brisbane), The Factory Theatre (Sydney), The Cambridge Hotel (Newcastle) and The Gov (Adelaide), before finishing up with a hometown show at 170 Russell in Melbourne on June 24.
Tickets go on sale at www.livenation.com.au at 1pm local time Friday October 8, with a Live Nation 48 hour presale live at 12pm local time Wednesday October 6.
The Five Star Laundry 20th Anniversary Edition will be available as a limited edition red 2LP vinyl and a 22-track expanded digital edition which includes bonus tracks from their Live At The Chapel performance in 2003. PRE-ORDER HERE.
“Five Star Laundry, when it’s said and done, is Motor Ace,” explains the band’s frontman Patrick Robertson. “As you’d expect from a bunch of twenty year olds, perhaps it lacks a little sophistication here and there. But for me, Five Star Laundry truly captures on record, the ‘all-in’ energy and the desperation of four guys trying to make a mark. It was our first record and we didn’t take it for granted, we knew it may be our one and only opportunity. The first record has an advantage over the others – songs are written over a longer period of time and can be fine tuned at live shows. But also, the songs are free from the burden of expectation. And this is true of the excitement and naive energy of this record. We poured everything into it without distraction or second guessing ourselves. I think this is the main reason it has stood the test of time and resonates strongest with fans of the band.”
Thrilled to be honouring the milestone, Robertson says, “For us, it’s a privilege to be able to play these songs to a willing audience after twenty long years since the release of the album, and we can’t wait to finally reunite with you all after a hard couple of years.”
With a rich musical history spanning over twenty years, Motor Ace’s debut album Five Star Laundry went gold within the first month of going on sale in Australia. After that massive feat, the band spent many months on the road touring and making music, with massive supports slots alongside Foo Fighters, Oasis and Blink-182. You couldn’t turn on the radio without coming across Motor Ace; and as sold out shows became the norm, their tracks became a mainstay on the ARIA charts. Their timely sophomore album Shoot This was released in 2002 to abundant critical acclaim. It spawned lead single Carry On that held the coveted #1 most played song on Australian airwaves for 8 weeks in a row, and Shoot This, debuting at #1 on the charts and achieving gold sales on release.
Motor Ace is Patrick Robertson (vocals, guitar), Dave Ong (guitar), Damo Costin (drums) and Matt Balfe (bass).
Five Star Laundry 20th Anniversary edition is set for release November 5 and available to preorder now.
Tickets to the Five Star Laundry 20th Anniversary tour go on sale from www.livenation.com.au on Friday October 8 at 1pm local time.
MOTOR ACE – FIVE STAR LAUNDRY 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR
Tickets available from www.livenation.com.au
FRI 10 JUN | FREO SOCIAL | FREMANTLE, WA | 18+
SAT 11 JUN | BADLANDS | PERTH, WA | 18+
THU 16 JUN | THE TRIFFID | BRISBANE, QLD | 18+
FRI 17 JUN | THE FACTORY THEATRE | SYDNEY, NSW | 18+
SAT 18 JUN | THE CAMBRIDGE HOTEL | NEWCASTLE, NSW | 18+
THU 23 JUN | THE GOV | ADELAIDE, SA | 18+
FRI 24 JUN | 170 RUSSELL | MELBOURNE, VIC | 18+
RÜFÜS DU SOL ANNOUNCE FOURTH STUDIO ALBUM ‘SURRENDER’ SET FOR OCTOBER 22 RELEASE + SHARE NEW SINGLE ‘ON MY KNEES’ OUT NOW ON ROSE AVENUE AND REPRISE/WARNER RECORDS
Grammy-nominated live-electronic trio RÜFÜS DU SOL have today announced their fourth full length album, Surrender set to land on October 22, and shared a third taste of the album with new single On My Knees, out today on Rose Avenue and Reprise / Warner Records.
Surrender sees RÜFÜS DU SOL stridently building their own world; an album written on their own terms. The band’s electronic roots offer a proud point of separation from other stadium-selling live artists, even as they write songs and play to crowds that break the traditional glass ceiling for dance acts.
On My Knees is a brooding insight into RÜFÜS DU SOL’s darker tendencies, toying with honest emotions and aching lyricism, demonstrating what makes them so unique in the electronic space. While previous single Alive gave a glimmer of hope, and Next To Me a yearning for love and romance, On My Knees has an anguished sense about it, playing into the powerful title of Surrender. The band reference the industrial sounds and sonics of Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, coupled with the lyrical intensity on which their career has been built.
Tyrone Linqvist hauntingly sings “If you could see me now, I’d probably let you down… Looks like I’m on my knees again, feels like the walls are closing in.”
“For this song we had a lot of fun writing something that was darker, driving and a little more edgy,” explains James Hunt. “It’s definitely one of the most banging tracks on the record – we referenced some of our favourite club music for the drum programming and had fun envisioning the time when we could finally play this live. It had an amazing reaction at our Red Rocks shows last month which was really special for us.”
RÜFÜS DU SOL is a band synonymous with tension, they came together through the push and pull of the dancefloor, have a live act whose passion lies on the dancefloor, and lyricists who spill their personal pain for thousands to dance to. From the opening keys of Next To Me, through the propulsive chug of On My Knees, the record inhabits a world that is deep, lush, organic, yet electronic.
This world building has been RÜFÜS DU SOL’s focus since its inception, its name meant to evoke an otherworldly destination, a future point the band dreamed of arriving at from their bedrooms in Sydney, and, later, recording studios in Berlin and LA. This vision was vital to Surrender, as the band wrote songs to transcend the intimacy of the world they built together, exiled from their families, in a DIY ground floor Hollywood apartment studio. The result is a record that is bolder, braver and more far-reaching than anything they have done before.
The accompanying music video was filmed in August during a unique Red Rocks Amphitheatre show rehearsal. The band’s creative director, Alex ‘Katzki’ George, collaborated with Ruff Mercy, an animation director and artist based out in the UK to create visuals/animations on top of the video, giving the project a darker 90’s rave vibe. Ruff Mercy has worked with artists such as Thom Yorke, Disclosure, Run The Jewels and big brands such as Nike, Apple, Adidas and more.
As the band returns to the stage for their North American tour and array of festival performances, they experience once again the immense demand for their live return. Two sold out nights at Red Rocks Amphitheatre; 70,000 fans waiting to see them play across three nights at the Los Angeles Banc of California Stadium; festival appearances slated at Governors Ball, Austin City Limits, III Points; and a host of shows dotted around the south west United States act as a stark reminder to their influence on the global music scene.
On My Knees is out today on Rose Avene and Reprise/Warner Records
Surrender is set for release on October 22
RÜFÜS DU SOL SHARE NEW SINGLE NEXT TO ME ALONGSIDE ARTIFICIALLY INTELLIGENT OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTED BY OSK
Today, Grammy-nominated live-electronic trio RÜFÜS DU SOL have released their latest single on Rose Avenue and Reprise / Warner Records, Next To Me. The track adds a new chapter to the band’s career-long straddling of the dualities of light and dark, loss and love.
Next To Me portrays a sense of maturity and adoration on a level not felt before from the band. At its core it is a song of devotion, of caring compassion, an affair of the heart not undercut by the pressures of stardom or toils of young love. It’s a point of departure from the haunting emotive rollercoaster of recent single Alive, and a more positive lyrical take on the foundation set by the similarly anthemic Treat You Better off the 2018 Grammy-nominated SOLACE LP.
Tyrone sings in the chorus, “…and when time runs out, I want to feel you standing next to me”.
In Jon George’s words, “There were a lot more yearning lyrics being put down when we were writing the track, but we felt it didn’t need any of the darkness that you hear on a lot of our other records. We wanted to create something more positive and happy, a kind of homage to the feel-good soul of classic house music. I am sure there is part of this that reflects a feeling in our lives and relationships. We wanted to share that with this track.”
Tyrone echos, “We decided we wanted this to be a simple love song, which is rare of us to do, to create something purely sweet without juxtaposing that with the raw, dark emotions on the other side”
Next To Me was spawned from a pandemic recording trip in Joshua Tree and refined six months later in RÜFÜS DU SOL’s Los Angeles studio. A true tale of the songwriting process and the value of simplicity, the vocal melody and piano lead originally captured in the desert remain the beating heart of the record. The track offers a clear hook fused with progressive electronic sonics, a furthering of the band’s ability to produce with one foot in mass appeal and the other in the dance music underground.
James Hunt adds, “We tried adding things to make it ‘better’ and kept returning to the feeling we experienced when we first wrote the song that day in the desert. It’s a good example of the thing that came out on the day we wrote it being the most pure and authentic version of what we were trying to create.”
The band has tapped futuristic directors Osk to create a self-initiated, artificially intelligent visual work to accompany Next To Me. Known for collaborations with Kanye West, NASA, John Coltrane (estate), and Google, Osk has combined the power of A.I. with RÜFÜS DU SOL’s obsession with audio-visual world-building to immerse viewers into new complex landscapes. The official video sees A.I.-generated topographies unfurl and unfold into morphing images that defy reality, seamlessly flowing from mountain tops and valleys to city scapes and highways. This technological connection between the natural and manmade worlds reflects the sonic palette this band has spent the last decade refining.
Osk comments, “We don’t see A.I. as a tool but as a collaborator – one we are in a constant conversation with as we develop new possibilities for its expression and our own. New perspectives are always valuable, and although much of the way A.I. operates is modeled on or inspired by us, it has a fundamentally different way of understanding that can reveal new approaches or perspectives we may not have seen. Merging artificial intelligence with the existing languages of film, art, music and human expression expands our notions of them all.”
RÜFÜS DU SOL have already experienced an immense demand for their live return, selling 70,000 tickets in three days for their largest headlining shows to date at Los Angeles Banc of California Stadium. The onsale was a true barometer for just how deeply fans crave the sonic escapism RÜFÜS DU SOL work to deliver at every show. This banner moment joins two sold out nights at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in August, and a bevy of headlining festival appearances already announced including Governors Ball, Austin City Limits, III Points and more.
Next To Me is released today.