What’s in your bag, RÜFÜS DU SOL?

What’s in your bag? is a recurring feature where we ask people to tell us a bit more about their everyday gadgets by opening their bags and hearts to us. This week, we’re featuring alternative dance group RÜFÜS DU SOL.

Australian trio RÜFÜS DU SOL makes the kind of music that slowly picks away at your heart. Comprised of Tyrone Lindqvist, Jon George, and James Hunt, the group’s songs build in layers, with each otherworldly, wistful element creeping in and guiding you, transforming the three from a band into temporary shamans.

Although RÜFÜS DU SOL as a group has been around since 2010, they’ve only carried this moniker for about a year. Previously, they were known simply as RÜFÜS, but had to change the group’s name stateside because of an existing US trademark — Chaka Khan’s funk band laid claim to the Rufus title in America decades ago. As the trio said in a Facebook post at the time: “Trademark is a serious bitch.”

The change was needed, as their music’s knack for invoking intimacy has endeared them to international audiences. They now have multiple albums, EPs, and award nominations that see them currently on tour, hitting everywhere from Chicago’s Lollapalooza to Colorado’s famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre. They’ll also be at Coachella, debuting a special short film to accompany their single “Underwater” — projecting it in HP’s 360-degree, 11,000-square-foot Antarctic Dome.

Stopping by The Verge ahead of Coachella, RÜFÜS DU SOL emptied out their bags, giving a peek at how to stay centered when they’re constantly performing, and a life of planes, trains, and automobiles shakes up any sense of stability. For all, self-care is key and is a trait that presents itself with each band member in both expected and completely surprising ways.

Hey, it’s Jon here with the brown bag.

I’ve got my MacBook Pro laptop, which I take everywhere. We make edits on it for DJ sets and mock together little things for our live show. And I’ve got this Jackery power pack — it lasts so long and charges things like headphones several times over.

Do you feel like you can do most of your work on the road?

Yeah. We write everything on just a laptop, and then the possibilities are endless from there, whether we have a full studio with synths all connected up, or are just in headphones, editing on the road and messing around with different sounds. We use Ableton to work on our laptops.

Speaking of headphones, I see you’ve got some Bose.

Yeah, the QC35s. They’re so good. I just flew from LA and I had them on the whole time with no music. And also I’ve got this silk eye mask, which is key.

You have to get your beauty rest where you can!

This is a good combo — the Bluetooth headphones, silk eye mask, and then this humidifier for planes. When you’re flying, they don’t push out all the oxygen that you should be getting. They just recirculate the air and it insanely dries you out. So, this helps keep the air moist with a filter. It’s supposed to be very good for singers and for jet lag.

Do you notice a difference when you use it?

Oh, yeah. Particularly on long-haul flights. If we’re going to sleep for eight hours, I just chuck that on and definitely feel a lot better. You’re not crusty.

Do you all have one of these humidifier things?

Tyrone: Yes, I didn’t bring mine, though!

Does anybody look over when you’re flying and think “Oh my god, my oxygen mask didn’t drop down”?

Jon: Exactly! And that I look like a monster with everything on. Very Darth Vader. Very scary.

There are more headphones here.

I actually carry two pairs of headphones. The Sennheiser HD 25s are for mixing and playing around with music, and the other’s for leisure. The Sennheisers are top-of-the-range DJ headphones I guess you would say. And they’re good as all-around audio engineering headphones. I’ve gone through several pairs of these. They’re so good in the club and we’re just used to the way that they represent bass. I know exactly how that music’s going to sound on different systems.

No earbuds?

Yes, I also have Bose SoundSport earbuds. And then there are in-ears. Oh my gosh, there are so many headphones. These in-ears are molded specifically to my ears by Jerry Harvey Audio.

James: They’re for shows, but we always forget them.

And they attenuate a lot — that’s the amount of volume they reduce. I think we picked a pretty extreme version.

I also have another little tech bag inside of my bag. It’s got a headphone splitter, a jack to jack cable, and USBs for DJing. That five-way splitter is especially good for when we’re editing tracks together on planes. Then my girlfriend packed me this other little bag before I left. It’s got a bunch of little knickknacks in it.

Okay, and we’ve got sunglasses and a sweatshirt.

Yeah, you need a nice, cozy jumper.

Why did you change the band name from RÜFÜS to RÜFÜS DU SOL?

Once we started touring internationally we realized we had to change the name in America for a number of reasons, some of which are boring. Once we realized that, we added DU SOL on, which means of the sun — and different variations of that — in many languages. DU SOL is like its own little planet.

Tell me about your bag.

James: Well, I’ve had a few Burton bags for most of my touring life, and they’re awesome. It’s a shame I don’t have one with me now. I think on the last tour I spilled some shit in my bag and ended up having to jettison that Burton bag. I maybe grabbed this one from Ross on the way to the airport or something. Ross has got the goods. Nice and simple. But Burton bags are the way to go.

This backpack’s really good for compartmentalizing things, which helps. It’s a North Face Access Pack. I’ve had this for two years now. It’s been toured pretty hard and it still is in really good shape.

Let’s start with the hard drives.

They’re Seagate and LaCie drives. Some of these are my personal hard drives and some are RÜFÜS backup hard drives. Our entire album is backed up on these as well as all of our sample packs that we’ve amassed. While we were writing the album, we generated a lot of data just from sound effects. We would run found sounds through all the plug-ins that we acquired. All these recordings chewed up a lot of space, so we had to keep offloading.

Do you make all your own samples?

We download some samples from the internet, but we record a lot in the studio. We basically built this little playground with a bunch of synthesizers we had wanted to get for a while. There’s a lot of amazing-sounding analog synths as well as a bunch of different microphones set up. We would record different sounds, like ripping a prawn cracker apart, then slow it down and put it through a bunch of delays. We’d sit there for an hour and just tweak the different parameters on the plug-ins to make crazy effects. We’d only use maybe two seconds of that in a song, but it might be a really interesting moment. We definitely did a lot more of that on this record — letting things run and seeing where it took us. So the excess of all that is on these drives.

Jon: It took up so much storage.

James: Yeah, because we were recording at 96kHz. Really high fidelity. Probably unnecessarily so. I also think that on one of these hard drives I have all my files from since I was 15. For some reason I’ve hoarded all my computers.

Anything special about your wallet?

It’s a passport wallet, which is very essential. I’ve recently lost a passport mid-tour. It was the biggest nightmare of my life. So now I’m keeping the passport compartmentalized at all times.

Where did you lose it?

On some flight. I think it was after a Las Vegas show, which makes a lot of sense. Never recovered it.

What phone do you use?

This phone is an iPhone 7 or 8. That’s my spare phone.

Tyrone: Spare phone?

James: Yeah, I’ve got a spare phone just in case! The Wi-Fi receiver stopped working on it and then I decided to get a new phone. So, I have an iPhone X as well. I have some dongles, USBs, and then the AirPods — they’re really good for picking up audio if we’re doing interviews via FaceTime.

And your computer?

I have a 15-inch MacBook, which is good because I’ve been doing some Photoshop — poster design, graphic design — so I like the bigger screen.

I see the same headphones here.

I also have the Sennheiser HD 25s and the Bose QC35s. All three of us have them. The Bose headphones are so comfortable and the noise canceling is key. I sleep with them on most nights, actually. They cancel out all the ambient noise in my apartment or noise from the air conditioning and whatever.

What’s the Body High sticker?

It’s a dance label. I really like the design of it and their music.

And these bottles?

This is a very relaxing essential oil. You rub a bit of it on your palms and you take it in. I find it very calming. Helps me feel grounded. The Noir is a little travel-sized cologne, and Kiehl’s face moisturizer keeps you soft.

I see crystals here! And it’s a Burton bag.

Tyrone: Yes. All of our big bags and our small travel bags that we travel with are Burton. This one’s been around for ages. I think I’ve had this one for four years. I’ve had other backpacks, but I came back to this one.

Tell me about the stones.

I keep the stones in a side pocket. There’s a purple amethyst, a shell my girlfriend found, and a heart rock. My girlfriend’s a therapist and she gives heart rocks to her patients. She works with patients for eight weeks and then she chooses a rock. For me, it’s a grounding thing if I’m stressed out or we’re bouncing around on tour. I usually take this onstage and play with it in my back pocket. During “Innerbloom” I usually grab it, because I get a chance to stand back and take it all in. So, it’s pretty special.

What about the amethyst?

I’ve been sober for several months. A close friend of ours has been sober for a few years and she gave the purple amethyst to me as a sobriety stone.

What are Yogapaws?

Those were a gift from my girlfriend as well. They’re for your feet and hands and makes it so you can stick on any surface, like carpet or concrete. This way you don’t have to take an entire mat with you. I’ve been doing yoga for a little more than a year. It’s hard to have any form of structural stability because we’re on the road so much. Having these makes it easier to do yoga anywhere. I’ve used them in green rooms before a show. I find it’s really helpful in terms of singing and performing. When we’re going from city to city, yoga is the one thing that can center me a little bit.

And here are the headphones! What do you like about them?

When we were mixing the new record, we’d switch between the Sennheisers and the Bose, just as points of reference when we were giving feedback. I find the Bose have a woofier low end so it’s really present, but it isn’t as punchy as the Sennheisers. The Sennheisers have a boost in the frequency range that’s good for DJs so things like snares poke through. They’re great-sounding headphones, but it’s more that we know them really well.

And if all of you use them then you’re hearing the same thing.

Exactly. Sometimes if we’re on tour and we’re giving feedback, we don’t have the luxury of being in the same room and knowing that room and knowing the speakers. So, these are our points of reference.

What do you use the journal for?

This is a lyric book. I doodle and write whatever I want. Here’s the lyrics for “Underwater.”

And an actual, physical book!

The book was another gift from my girlfriend! She gives good gifts. It’s a really nice read, but I haven’t finished it yet. Moving to LA was a bit of a strange process with finding my feet. You say bye to your family and friends and then it’s like a washing machine of ego. Music was definitely one of the only things keeping me somewhat upright. So, this has been a really helpful book. I can be hard on myself sometimes.

You have a spare outfit with you?

I always travel with two pairs of undies because after a show, or if we have a DJ set, I don’t really know specifically what’s going to happen every day. And there was a time on a tour when my full suitcase, which is basically my home when you’re on the road for two, three months, with my rings, my hard drives, everything, disappeared. I had one pair of undies. My bag never came back. It sucked. There was a camera in there and two GoPros. Usually I have a spare shirt as well. This is a Royal Blood shirt. Sick band. They’re probably my favorite rock band around. Them or Foals.

The cologne is Santal 33. We first smelled that in New York playing a show here. It’s pretty delicious. My face gets dry when we fly, so I have this Aesop cream.

And your laptop?

My computer is the same as the guys’. We do all our production on there and edits. I’ve been getting vocal lessons recently so I record them all on there. The coach’s name is Ron Anderson. He’s a legend. He’s worked with a lot of people. It’s been really cool to learn about my voice.

What’s improving?

I think I developed some bad habits on tour, being unwell and pushing through a lot of shows. It’s kind of like going back to school learning your ABCs. It’s a slow process.

I try to take better care of myself. I have two pairs of earplugs. I’m really worried about my hearing. It’s just hard to hear a lot because they’re so good. They block out I think 30 to 50db. That’s quite a lot. We use them when we play live so we can listen to what we want without hearing the whole room and audience and sound. We have a bit more control.

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Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge