The Rapture

Mon 10th Oct, 2011 in Features

New York dance-punk icons The Rapture have returned with their first album in five years, In The Grace Of Your Love. FL chats to drummer Vito Roccoforte about their latest recording, the inner turmoil that’s plagued the band for the past five years, and their frequent trips to Australia, including their upcoming appears at Future Music Festival 2012.

Hey Vito, how’s it going? Where are you at the moment?
Good man, how are you doing? I’m at home in Brooklyn, New York. I love being home, we’re going to be gone a lot, so I’m enjoying being in my neighbourhood, being with my family and hanging out.

So you guys have taken quite a bit of time between albums, what else have you been up to? How does it feel to be back?
It feels great to be back, we answered quite a lot of ups and downs; it was quite a journey making this album. We had different members leaving and coming back, and then one quitting. We had personal things too like having babies and family members passing away, just a lot of stuff like that, and almost the band falling apart a few times and coming back together. It was like we made it through and then finally recorded this album in a really good spot after we came through all that, and then having a spot on the label that we really worked hard on, and making sure it came out. Now we’re just excited to tour.

How are you feeling about In The Grace of Your Love? It sounds like great range of diverse sounds.
I’m really happy with it man, we’d be sitting with it for over a year before it came out, and I feel we made the album that was us at the time, and I think it’s a safe album, I feel I can completely stand behind it and I really love it, I don’t have any insecurities about it, which is really nice. It feels good to be sharing it with people.

How Deep Is Your Love

What was it like working with Philippe Zdar?
Oh it’s awesome, he’s the best, he really is. He’s an amazing, talented producer and musician, but more so he’s just an amazing human being. Just a fantastic, funny, loving dude. He was a really positive guy in the studio, you know he’d build things up and tear them down in the creative process, which is a really nice way to work, he rules.

Why did the band choose to go back to DFA?
You know for me, what I always say is, and I don’t know why I use this phrase, its kind of like a TV phrase, it’s just how I felt and it flashed in my head for a moment and we thought about going back to them, it just felt like unfinished business. We weren’t done working with them, you know when we left we weren’t finished with that, and for me that was the most basic thing. But more than that we just wanted to work with a label that’s respected, and understood us musically, and creatively, and we were really enthusiastic about working with them.

We also tie directing into Modular in Australia, which we done purposely because we felt the same way about Modular, we’ve known them for a long time and they were one of the first labels to approach us while we still making this album. They were really excited about trying to work with us, and that made a huge difference to us. Even before really hearing any music, just hearing the demo they were like really, really on board, and that’s what we were looking for.

What were your musical inspirations for this album? I heard Luke joined a church choir…
We all have really diverse music inspirations, we never really talked about them, we just made music, and it just came out in an organic way, which was nice. For Luke, yeah he got really, really into gospel music and when he gets into something, he gets fully into it. He was like on eBay spending hundreds of thousands of dollars buying really, really rare gospel records, so yeah he got really, really into it and loved it. It was great, he shared some of that with us, and got me into it to, to a point.

For me I was still really into dance music, I was DJing a lot, and bringing in a lot of those influences myself. I don’t know what Gabe was into, we didn’t really talk about it as much, that was what was cool, we had all these musical influences, but we didn’t let them like consciously try to steer anything, we just came in and played music together. We’ve been playing together for so long that it’s easy to do that now.

During the passed 5 years you lost members and got them back, and then lost Matt permanently, when both Luke and Matt left what was the feeling like within the rest of the band? Did you ever feel like oh this is it; this is the end of The Rapture?
For me I had never before questioned the band not being around, like it won’t be around forever, I know that but at the time it’s not something I thought about, but when we do its like the mortality of The Rapture [laughs].

There were definitely moments where I didn’t know if it was going to work out, or if it’s even worth it. Gabe and me are both really stubborn people, so I think that helped, I think the other thing was, musically, we were still excited about what was going on, to see us through. We were kind of in the whole time, well Luke left and then came back, and then Matt quit. In the end when Matt left, me and Gabe had gotten a lot closer over the time, and then me, Gabe, and Luke had gotten a lot closer over the time, we’re in a really good spot personally, so it was pretty easy after that to make the album.