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Artist
Talk to Ruane Maurice about growing up in Birmingham, England, and you’ll get everyday teenage exploits about 5am car rides or falling into manholes. Talk to them about contemporary hip-hop and electronic music, and it quickly becomes clear that Chris Caedus (21, drums/sequencing), Matthew Forbes (21, production/vocals), and Sam Lewis (21, vocals) are something altogether unexpected. Mixing early-90s slow jam melodies with the sonic adventurism of musique concrète, and then infusing it with the sultry darkness of early industrial bands like This Heat and Throbbing Gristle, Ruane Maurice expertly package juxtaposition and abstraction. But when they take that sonic experimentation and overlay with rapid-fire rap lyricism, that’s when their particular brand of music becomes visionary. Caedus, Forbes, and Lewis grew up in cities nestled squarely in the shadow of former English industrial power. Growing up, musical influences trickled in: Afro-Caribbean gospel, American blues, alt rock, grime, and electronica. After a brief period releasing ambient dance music in Germany, Forbes moved back to London in 2012, DJing and crafting music that The Guardian described as “a frisky uptempo collision of synth squiggles and bouyant African-Caribbean percussion.” As a solo producer, however, Forbes soon came to feel that writing music alone was adversely affecting his creativity—a feeling dispelled by partnering with long-term friends, Lewis and Caedus. The band’s early embrace of experime