SongVault Artist Profile

The phrase “Britain’s best-kept secret” gets used to described a lot of new bands – usually wildly inaccurately, for bands who have yet to play outside their rehearsal rooms in Hoxton. Yet how else are Rubylux to be labeled?

Here, after all, is a remarkable band who have already released their own live DVD; who have a thriving official fanclub with an ever-growing number of disciples paying a £10 annual subscription; who are one of the few Western bands to have toured Vietnam; whose songs have been played on Heroes and Neighbours; and whose spontaneous Street Gigs earned them enough money to fund recording their debut album with James Sanger, producer of Madonna, U2 and Manic Street Preachers.

Those feats may be impressive, but they’re not as impressive as Rubylux’s soaring music. Distilled perfectly into the 45 minutes of debut album Fake Control, it’s a sound that swerves passionately from the universal anthemics of The Boy Could Fly and Gold Rush via the political fire of They Sold You and Westminster to the thunderous, harsh rock on I Want You and Heart Made By Machines.

“Lyrically, the songs are from discussing the way the world is run, philosophy, spirituality... and there are romantic songs too. I don’t think we can be easily pigeonholed for what we write about.” Indeed not, with the pounding I Want You being about “going back to ex-girlfriends for ‘bonus time’” And it’s a sound that has already won over thousands of people around Britain since the quartet first had their idea for the Street Gigs in their native Brighton three years ago. Now, Rubylux try to play Street Gigs in the afternoon at whatever town they’re touring in.