Rik Rue

Born in Sydney in 1950 [4] to Polish refugee parents, Rue began constructing sound collages on tape from the age of 15,[4] later encouraged by Australian painter and collage artist Carl Plate.[4] He studied part-time at the Slade School, Camden Art Centre and Royal College of Art in London.[4]

He first performed on saxophone with a number of prominent Sydney improvisers including Serge Ermoll, Jon Rose and Louis Burdett[5][4] before switching to live mixing of sampled and pre-recorded sound on audio cassette recorders including the TASCAM Portastudio, describing the relationship between the two instruments, 'The tape is improvised in a sense, by equalisation, adding timbres, adding pitch controls, the various combinations of mixing. All those areas give you a sort of phrasing not unlike saxophonists altering their embouchure, and I approach the tapes in this manner.'[6]

After releasing material on the Fringe Benefit label, in 1983 he created his own label Pedestrian Tapes,[7] releasing his own and works by Michael Sheridan, Jim Denley, Jo Truman, Ian Hartley, Ernie Althoff and others.[4][8] In the 1980s he was a member of the group Mind/Body/Split with Jim Denley, Sherre de Lyse, Jamie Fielding, Graham Leake and Kimo Venonen,[4] and in 1989 he co-founded the performance ensemble Machine for Making Sense with Chris Mann, Amanda Stewart, Jim Denley and Stevie Wishart, first performing at Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria.[9][10] Later he worked with performance group Gravity Feed[11] on over 20 projects between 1994 and 2007 in Australia and Germany,[1][12] Urban Theatre Projects,[13] dancer Tess de Quincey, the group Social Interiors (with Shane Fahey and Julian Knowles),[14] musicians David Moss, Eugene Chadbourne,[15] Ikue Mori[16] and released recordings on Extreme Records.[17]

In 1995 his recordings were included in the exhibition Sound In Space: Adventures In Australian Sound Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney.[18] The major sound work Things Change, Things Remain The Same commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, was exhibited as part of the major contemporary art exhibition Australian Perspecta 1997: Between Art and Nature. It has been described as an 'outback road-trip of the mind'.[19] His video and sound work Fire and Water was shown at SNO Gallery Sydney in 2014.[20] A number of Rue's early cassette recordings were re-released by Shame File Music from 2014.[21]

Rik Rue suffers from multiple sclerosis and is now no longer active in performing or recording.

• Louis Burdett, Jon Rose, Rik Rue, Towards a Relative Music, LP (Fringe Benefit Records, 1979)
• Dave Ellis, Serge Ermoll, Peter Kelly, Jon Rose, Rik Rue, Improvisations, LP (Fringe Benefit Records, 1979)
• Rik Rue, A Raise of an Eyebrow, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1983)
• Fifi L' Amour & Rik Rue, Rue L'Amour, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1984)
• Rik Rue, Dub for St.Rita, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1984; Shame File Music, 2019)[21]
• Rik Rue, Other Voices, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes/ Calypso Now, 1984)
• Eugene Chadbourne, David Moss, Jon Rose, Rik Rue, Country Music of Southeastern Australia, LP (RRRecords, 1984)
• Rik Rue, Multisonous Mottos, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1985)
• Rik Rue, Water Works, cassette (NMA Publications, 1985)
• Shane Fahey & Rik Rue, Murmurs, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1986, as download Shame File Music, 2014)
• Rik Rue, Two Short Adventures in Water, cassette (no label, 1986)
• Rik Rue, Bend An Ear, cassette (STI/Les Ballets Mécaniques, 1987)
• Rik Rue, Eur, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1987)
• Rik Rue (as EUR), Heavy Handed, CDR (Cosmic Conspiracy Productions, 1990)
• Clay Caplice & Rik Rue, A Shift in Magnetic North, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1990)
• Rik Rue, Onomatopoeia, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1991)
• Rik Rue, The Pre Glasnost Tapes, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1991, as download Shame File Music, 2014)
• Rik Rue, Sound Escapes, LP (RRRecords, 1991)
• Rik Rue, Songs for the End of Time, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1993)
• Rik Rue, Voice Capades, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1993 - reissued on CDR and online by Alias Frequencies, 2004)
• Rik Rue, Ocean Flows, CD (Tall Poppies Records, 1993)
• Jim Denley, Ikue Mori, Rik Rue, Amanda Stewart, David Watson, Bit-Part Actor, CD (Braille Records, 1996)
• Tony Buck & Rik Rue, Come Let's Build Ourselves A City, mini CD (Algen, 1996)
• Rik Rue, Sample/Shuffle/Interplay, CD (Extreme Records, 1999)
• Rik Rue, Environmentally Yours, Limited Edition CDR, signed by the artist (no label, 2004)
• Rik Rue, Recent and Not So Recent Collage Works, CD (no label, 2004)

Radiophonic Works

• Machine for Making Sense (Rik Rue, Amanda Stewart, Jim Denley, Chris Mann, Stevie Wishart), Silence is therefore the only possible means of communication - Karl Marx 1843, (Kunstradio 1995)[22]
• Machine for Making Sense (Rik Rue, Amanda Stewart, Jim Denley, Stevie Wishart), The Twentieth Century Never Happened, (Kunstradio 2001)
• Rik Rue, Things Change, Things Remain The Same, (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1999)[23]

Compilations

• Mauro Cavallaro, John Gillies, Stephen Harrop, Ian Hartley, Rik Rue, Genuine Tape Stories, cassette (Fringe Benefit Records, 1983)
• Bleak, Browning Mummery, Rik Rue, Severed Heads, Studio Testing, Lunokhod, double cassette (Cntmprr-ydtns, 1984)
• Frog Peak Collaboration Project, double CD (Frog Peak, 1997)
• Atherton, Franklin, Hewitt, Knowles, Payne, Rue, Social Interiors, Westerkamp, space, time & the roaring silence, CD (School of Contemporary Arts, UWS, 1999)
• Lloyd Barrett, Lucas Darklord, Buttress O'Kneel, Shannon O'Neill, Rik Rue, Radio Metamix, download (Alias Frequencies, 2009)

with Social Interiors

• Social Interiors (Shane Fahey & Rik Rue), Social Interiors, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1985)
• Social Interiors (Shane Fahey & Rik Rue ), Intrusions into the Environment, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1987)
• Social Interiors (Shane Fahey, Julian Knowles & Rik Rue), The World Behind You, CD (Extreme Records, 1995)
• Social Interiors (Shane Fahey, Julian Knowles & Rik Rue), Traces of Mercury, CD (Extreme Records, 1995)
• Social Interiors (Shane Fahey, Julian Knowles & Rik Rue) Spatial Circumference, CD (Endgame, 2006)

with Mind/Body/Split

• Mind/Body/Split, Mind/Body/Split, cassette (Pedestrian Tapes, 1986)
• Mind/Body/Split, If Its Not On Its Not On, LP (Splitrec, 1989)

with Machine for Making Sense

• Machine for Making Sense, On Second Thoughts, CD (Tall Poppies Records, 1994)
• Machine for Making Sense, Talk Is Cheap, CD (Splitrec, 1997)
• Machine for Making Sense, Dissect The Body, CD (Splitrec, 1998)
• Machine for Making Sense, Consciousness, CD (Splitrec, 1999)
• Machine for Making Sense, The Act Of Observation Becomes The Object Itself, CD (Rossbin, 2006)[24][25][4]

• Rik Rue: Sound Collagist, Realtime, 2017
• John Jenkins, 22 Australian Composers
• Australian Music Centre
• Official Gravity Feed Website