Irish house talent Rebūke has been strongly reppin’ his hometown of Letterkenny with releases on Mother Recordings, Toolroom Records, Soup NYC and Saved Records among others, and his latest ‘Dear Stalker’ just arrive via the almighty Defected / DFTD.
As he becomes an ever-important artist for Irish music, Rebūke tells us about the recent outing with the UK’s biggest house label, and how he continues to bring top DJs to a town with just 20,000 people.
Rebūke, it’s great to get a moment to chat, how are things for you at the moment?
Things going good man! Currently sat here in rainy Letterkenny chillin’ after spending the day in the studio working on a new tune.
You just debuted on Defected’s DFTD label with your track ‘Dear Stalker’, tell us about the record, and how it landed on DFTD?
The track came about from me messing around with an old 90’s vocal. I really like the old Green Velvet stuff so thought i’d try make something with a bit of a “story” to listen along to. Anyways my manager Paolo sent the track to Andy at Defected and he really liked it but wanted a more original vocal on it, so thats where Born I Music came in and absolutely smashed it. Fast forward a couple of months and here we are!
And Sam Divine gave the track some serious attention on her radio show, must be a nice feeling?
Yeah, even though she keeps saying my name wrong (its ree-buke, like ree-puke). Just joking, its a great feeling as I have had the defected podcasts on in the gym for years so its nice to have a track land on there. The Defected family have been really welcoming and I’m excited to see what happens next.
We noticed it also entered the Beatport top 100?
It’s great to hit the Beatport charts so quickly and hopefully it keeps rising throughout the week. I appreciate everyone thats gone out of their way to buy the track for me and feel very grateful to have a community of people into my music to help push things to the next level, because without them i’d be nothing.
Your music has been seen on Saved, Toolroom and SOUP, what other labels have you been in touch with?
Oh all sorts, I’m trying to put out loads of new music this year and really get people talking about Rebūke. I’ve also done some remixes for Nic Fanciulli, Atlantic Records and Ki Creighton’s Under No Illusions label which im excited to put out. I’m also ready to launch the second Rebuke/rave EP which is a collection of reconstructed rave classics. The first EP did really well and ended up getting played by Alan Fitzpatrick, Skream, Catz n Dogz and loads others.
Next year i’m going to launch my own label. I’ve always had this fantasy of having my own outlet to just put out what I want, when I want. The one downside about releasing on other peoples labels is you’re always working around their schedules which makes it really hard to create your own.
It seems you also wear the hat of promoter, running parties at Outhouse in Letterkenny, can you tell us any guests you might be bringing over?
This year so far we’ve brought over CamelPhat, Solardo, Ejeca, Mella Dee, Huxley, Darius Syrossian, Latmun and Kettama. It’s been going really well so far and I tie it in with a weekly radio show on iRadio that goes live from the club every weekend to over 30,000 people on FM and online weekly around Ireland.
I think people are quick to write off Letterkenny as it hasn’t been up to much for years. The clubs here went all weird and commercial for the last while and the best they could come up with was meet and greets with B List celeb types, but there’s definitely a resurgence happening now. People are starting to realise we’re not a bunch of culchies and we’ve something to offer the Irish dance scene. I remember Mella Dee telling me after his gig here that it was one of his favourite shows that month as it reminded him of Doncaster – not much going on when you look at it from the outside, but when the freaks come out on the weekend it turns into a scene from Human Traffic.
On the subject of Letterkenny, have you found any struggles with being located in a rural town rather than a bigger city like Belfast or Dublin?
Not really, well – I dunno. I’ve always just done my own thing since as long as I can remember. Maybe that’s slowed me down as i’ve seen other DJs ride off the back of whats hot or get in with the right click at the right time. There is definitely a lot of that going on in Ireland at the moment but to be honest my fuck levels just aren’t there for it. If a promoter or club doesn’t think im cool enough to play a their gig in Dublin or Belfast or wherever, that doesn’t really bother me.
I’ve always just loved music and put it first before any trends, and i’ve given up on trying to impress people that don’t really care about you anyway. By no means does that mean that I am sat up in an Ivory Tower secluded from the rest of the world, some of my closest friends are in music.
Excellent to take some time to catch up, we hope the run of form continues and good luck with Dear Stalker!
Thank you too, and just want to say what a great platform Inflyte is. It’s really helped me excel and Paul and the lads should be proud. I’ve no issues with you sticking some extra credits to my account for the big up Paul.