It’s his first North American tour, so we’re in for a treat. The music is overwhelmingly moving, especially in the settings he curates for the live show. The landscapes are fluid and his voice is unparalleled. Something like if Sufjan Stevens and James Blake did a project. 

Ry X was born into the wild. Marooned in Angourie, a tiny island community off Australia’s east coast.  “It’s been a real journey…” says Ry, whose path to his current home in Los Angeles’ downtown warehouse district has taken him to Costa Rica, Indonesia, Stockholm, London and Berlin.

He reckons he’d be “a super renegade gypsy surfing the world” if it weren’t for music, and he applied that mindset to his art. Ry has been striving to find that same purity ever since he left home as a grunge-obsessed kid with a surfboard aged 17. ‘Dawn’, his debut album as Ry X, is a sign that search is over.

Recorded live with only Ry and his guitar, every song on ‘Dawn’ has a threadbare power – the arrangements are stripped back so there’s nothing separating the listener from the songs’ content. “These are live takes, sitting there like Neil Young or Nick Drake used to. It’s about holding tension. You’re really get the feeling of someone sitting in a room playing the song.”

“Only”, for example, is beautiful and devotional – think ‘Pink Moon’-level delicate with the weightiness of a Bon Iver or The xx deep cut.  A seamless extension of its predecessor (Berlin), it once again showcases RY’s boundless ability to create thought-provoking atmospheric pop music, engulfed with his distinctively ethereal vocal lines.

Speaking of Berlin, Ry also has deep ties to the electronic/house music scene there through another project he’s involved with called Howling, a collab with Frank Wiedemann (of German electronic duo Ame).  He also contributes to another electronic project called The Acid, with DJ Adam Freeland (UK) and fellow Californian producer Steve Nalepa.