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Rhye duo head to the capital
Into the blues: Elusive RnB duo Rhey will make their first appearance in Indonesia with a concert at Potato Head Garage in Jakarta
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Into the blues: Elusive RnB duo Rhey will make their first appearance in Indonesia with a concert at Potato Head Garage in Jakarta.(Courtesy of Rhye) (Courtesy of Rhye)
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span class="caption">Into the blues: Elusive RnB duo Rhey will make their first appearance in Indonesia with a concert at Potato Head Garage in Jakarta.(Courtesy of Rhye)
American RnB duo Rhye will perform their first ever concert in Indonesia with a show at Jakarta's Potato Head Garage on Dec. 18.
The duo was officially formed by Danish producer/multi-instrumentalist Robin Hannibal and musician-vocalist Mike Milosh in 2010 but first made waves in 2012 when their mysterious music videos started popping up online without any information attached.
The sexy soothing nature of the music ' which recalled everything from 1950s soul to modern electro RnB-added to the enigma.
The viral-marketing-like videos worked in the duo's favor, as did Milosh's eclectic vocals ' which many had guessed originated from a particularly sultry RnB songstress rather than a Canadian man.
Soon enough, music fans were captivated, intrigued as both Hannibal and Milosh insisted that their enigmatic nature had more to do with their love of old school musical mysteries in lieu of the in-your-face branding of many modern artists.
The early videos were meticulously and clearly professionally produced, but featured models instead of the musician duo.
In a similar fashion, the publicity photos that accompanied the singles surfacing online showed semi-erotic artsy photos of a woman's torso and bareback and again, nothing of the musicians.
Internet and music journalists lapped it up. Many praised the production and sense of mystery, particularly praising the quality of the vocals, mostly comparing them the to majestically sultry voice of Nigerian-English singer-songwriter Sade.
The female comparison was rampant, with publications such as The Guardian referring to the singer as 'she' and writing that throughout the album 'the girl ' female, really, she's a woman, she's lived a life, she's been hurt ' sings in that hesitant, barely-emoting way that suggests she's exhausted after all that arguing and fighting'.
Speaking to NPR in 2013, as the hype surrounding them was at a high, Milosh said that there was a 'conscious' decision between the duo to let their music be the main focus, instead of the people behind it.
'But it wasn't a PR scheme. It's not something that we created out of gimmickry, or whatever. We just didn't want to be in the imagery of it because we wanted people to have their own experience with the songs,' Milosh says.
'Robin and I talked about it at great length. That's how we both love exploring music, especially when we were younger. You hear something, you're intrigued by it ' but because of the song, not because of the image around the song.'
As for his particularly distinguishable vocals, Milosh doesn't necessarily see it as being female-like. In the aformentioned NPR interview, Milosh said he did not view his own voice as 'sounding like a woman, ['¦] I think I just have a soft quality to my voice and then people immediately associate that with something extremely feminine'.
The duo's debut album Woman fared well with critics and fans and was nominated for the 2013 Polaris music prize in Canada. Spin magazine wrote that the album's ballads were 'exquisitely poised, expertly arranged ['¦] so dialed into their feminine inspirations that Milosh and Hannibal virtually merge with the objects of their affection'.
Indonesian fans will have chance to see this poised musicality in person while they are here.
