Rhye is performing at Kambri Precinct, Australian National University, on Monday, March 4, at 8pm. Tickets via Moshtix. $60.
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Echoey, soulful, and seductive: Rhye creates the kind of music that has the power to instantly elevate an evening walk, a morning stretch, or a rainy commute.
Rhye have been lending their mundane-to-mystic quality to listeners since 2013 when they launched their mysterious debut album Woman.
Fans demanded to know who was behind it. Many assumed the vocalist responsible for the ethereal, mystic tones was a woman.
Canadian singer and producer Mike Milosh was eventually revealed to be the artist behind the project. So why all the mystery?
He just wanted listeners to judge Rhye on the music alone.
After stops in Brisbane and Sydney, Rhye is en route to Canberra. Milosh previously brought Rhye to Australia in 2015, performing in Sydney and Melbourne, and it just wasn’t enough.
For Milosh, touring is more so an exercise in travel than sales, and he’s certainly picked the right part of the world.
“Last time we were here we only got to see two Australian cities,” said Milosh.
“Part of what drives me is that I actually like travelling, I like to explore new places. So this time around we thought it might be cool to add more cities to the tour and have downtime in each city."
He’s keen on our food scene, noting that “Australians do breakfast particularly well”. I tell him I hope he likes avocado.
“I love avocado. If I could do two brunches a day, I could.”
After his stint in Australia, he’s off to the land of the long white cloud to perform as part of the Auckland Arts Festival. Then he’s doing as many of us do: getting a car and road tripping around the country for a few weeks.
The Los Angeles-based singer is a classically trained musician, having learned to play cello from the age of three.
He lists classical music as deeply influential to the Rhye sound, Beethoven, Pergolesi, and Max Richter in particular.
“Sonically, we’re gentle, and we bring together hints from a variety of genres, from Gregorian to classical, Motown to soul, it’s a wide umbrella of sound that somehow comes out.”
And he’s right. The sounds of Rhye are gentle, bedroom gentle. He hopes that at their gigs, punters will feel “connected” and “present”.
“As a project, it’s me. I create songs about things that have happened to me in my life. And I bring on a bunch of other musicians to tour with me. Or we’ll do it in the studio.”
