R.M.F.C’s long awaited (and fbi Album of the Week) album Club Hits is at once new yet familiar. It’s definitely a departure from the crunchy, blocky, overdriven sounds of their first EP Hive, with more space and jangle to the guitars this time. But if you’ve ever seen R.M.F.C. live, you’ll recognise the loose riffs and detached rock vocals – these are familiar classics heard on stage time and time again, only now tracklisted with titles.
Off the back of the release, Buz Clatworthy sat down with Jasper Craig-Adams on Real to Reel and gave an interview drenched in humour so dry that climate change deniers will probably try to convince you he is single-handedly responsible for Sydney’s impending water shortage.
The 22 year old wryly refers to himself as a child prodigy, and there is some truth to the rumour. A multi-instrumentalist and self-taught DIY engineer, Buz has been writing and recording in his childhood home in Ulladulla from a… let’s say very young age.
“[At] age 2, I listened to my first song, did my first live performance, first radio interview. I’ve been doing this a long time.”
Although DIY is often associated with taking a laissez-faire attitude to music making, there’s a certain type of perfectionism underpinning the approach Buz took to recording Club Hits. Almost every instrument is double tracked – including guitars, vocals, and even drums – resulting in hundreds of abandoned takes left behind in Buz’s determination to nail close-to-identical performances across every song on the record.
“It’s doing the same thing but the notes go out of phase a little bit here and there and it gives it this chorus-y effect and gives it some space. I don’t know how to put reverb or anything on the tracks on my recording desk, so I just do it like that.”
In his live set-up, Buz rather unorthodoxly fronts the band from behind the kit. He is joined on stage by Emma (sax), Alan (bass), Vas (guitar) and Mikey (guitar, of 1800 Mikey fame), who are all accomplished musicians in their own right with unimaginably busy schedules.
“I might have to kick Mikey out. I had a date lined up for a Melbourne show, and Emma had a wedding, so I might kick Emma out as well.”
There’s something deeply inspiring about DIY music, and Club Hits is no exception. One listen and you’ll be reaching for whatever instrument you have lying around. Who knows, maybe there’ll be a vacancy in R.M.F.C at their next gig.
Words by Bre Jones