Hermitude have secured a spot at the top of their game with new LP Tales Of The Drift. The unanimous accolades bestowed on the disc fare well for the boys‚ upcoming national tour. Danny Corvini chats to Luke Dubs, one half of the idiosyncratic outfit.

As I start to do my research for this article, Hermitude's current single "Fallen Giants" comes onto the radio. "This is who I'm writing about!" I tell a friend excitedly, like I'm so-on-the-mark. She smiles, possibly thinking "you wanker ", and I go about tearing through my CDs for an old Elefant Trax compilation called "Food To Eat Music By". The reason I'm going back into Turn-of-the-Millenium-Sydney-hip-hop-history is that "Food.." had a track by Explanetary on it, and of course that was Luke Dubs and Elgusto's band before splitting from Urthboy and Elgusto's sister and starting Hermitude on their own.

Their newly released Hermitude album "Tales of the Drift" is one of the smoothest albums of the season. Samples and programming is meshed with the warmth of live instruments in a sonic powerpoint presentation that makes this writer think "Portishead Vs Avalanches Vs Nightmares on Wax chillout frenzy!". Yes I know, comparisons are lazy, but then this album makes you feel as lazy as a lizard on a rock.

"Explanatary just kind of folded because we all got busy with our respective things. We're all still mates," says Luke. In fact, Urthboy is the guest MC on the new single playing on Triple J in the background, so things couldn't have ended that badly.

Hermitude came to life four years ago, with a stylistic nod to fellow instrumental hip hop performers RJD2, Shadow and Krush. They released their first vinyl 12" in 2002, "Imaginary Friends", a 500 copy short-run which Luke says "was underground styles and didn't really get a lot of coverage". In 2003 they dropped an album "Alleys to Valleys", which kept them gigging until April this year, and then they decided back to take time out to record the new album. "We had to pull the pin," says Luke. "We thought, now's a good time to chill on the gigs".

They started recording the album in Redfern. "We were living in a pretty dodgy part of the 'Fern for a year and we had junkies hassling us on our doorstep, so I guess we had a bit of ghetto vibe material going on," says Luke not seriously. "We put half of it on the sampler down there, and then we only had a couple of months to get our shit together to get the album done, so we thought fuck it, and moved up to the Blue Mountains because we were jack of the city. We just hammered it for a few months full time, every day, which was awesome because we got a chance to just just sit in the studio and make beats, no day jobs, it's the dream."

Did anything strange happen, I ask him, because I'm still quaking in my boots from the new film "Skeleton Key" when we do the interview. "Nothing really strange, but we had a few freaky weather occurences like it started snowing and I nearly slipped on the stairs walking out of the studio because they had frozen over. But nothing overly weird, besides computers crashing. But man it's awesome. We're basically perched on the edge of this valley, you walk out to soak up some of the lovely mountain air or smoke a joint or whatever you need to do, and it's nice. Can't complain!"

He's equally enthused and explanetary about the new production: "I guess this time we went for more of a live feel on the album, because we're both players and we don't come from a programming background, so we got the live drums in there. There's still a lot of sample-heavy tracks, and it still sounds sampled because that was the sound we were going for, but the live element came through. Playing live gives it a groove, it's not just a thing coming off a computer, it has a human feel," he says. "But it was a learning curve for us, you know, recording drums and getting right into how to mike (ed - mic?) them and get a phat sound."

Now they're starting to get in the touring headspace once again, with a national tour locked in for September. Luke's looking forward to coming face-to-face with their crowd. "There's a lot of rumours that Sydney's a pretty tough crowd," he says. "It can be, there's a lot of head nodders who are too scared to get out on the dancefloor. But we haven't seemed to have that problem at our shows, everyone seems to shake their booty which is a good thing." He was particularly impressed with the Cockatoo Island festival gig and getting to be a punter there: "That was one of the last gigs we did. It was just great. It was a beautiful venue with great acts. I saw everything from amazing jazz musicians to reggae to great Aussie hip hop." After the Aussie summer, he says, Hermitude are off to try to take Europe.

One of the best stories in the interview is Luke's anecdote about meeting DJ Krush earlier this year. "We were lucky enough to do a show with Krush and he was really diggin' the album, which was cool," Luke says. "We had a good chat to him through his manager, because he can't speak a word of English. I think the only English he can say is 'Respect!'

Does he say "boom-sha-ka-la-ka" too, I ask him?" "No, he doesn't. but he's a really nice dude. He comes up to everyone and shakes your hand and says 'Respect!'"

Tales of the Drift is out now on Elefant Traks / Inertia