It came as quite a shock to us here at ITM that New York City’s punk-funk greats, The Rapture, had lost a pivotal member with vocalist/bassist Mattie Safer’s split from the group. Having been billed as one of the highlights of the upcoming Parklife festival, we were a bit worried about how Safer’s departure would affect their Australian dates. Thankfully, The Rapture claimed that they’d still be making the trip over here for Parklife in a recent blog entry and disaster was averted.

But still, when ITM managed to score some time with the band’s keyboardist Gabriel Andruzzi, we quizzed him on their forthcoming tour, why Mattie Safer quit the group and how things have changed since the split.

“We had just written a bunch of music with Mattie and he’d been really into the whole process of it, but he was just unhappy,” Andruzzi said. “We just said to him “dude, you gotta leave because you aren’t happy”. We had to get on with writing our next album and that’s what we’ve done,” he said.

From Andruzzi’s report, it seems as though the split ended as well as it could have, with both parties amicably moving forward for the better. “It’s just made things so much healthier. There’s just this fun, goofy vibe that we’ve got now and things feel really good.”

As for Safer, the man himself took to Twitter to talk at length about what projects he’s working on since leaving The Rapture (which isn’t an easy thing to do when you’ve only got 140 characters per post). “To start, yes it’s true, I left the band at the beginning of April. I didn’t mean to leave you in the dark about it but it seemed most appropriate to let the band make the announcement before I did…I promise you that leaving was not a decision taken lightly,” he wrote. “I am working on new music. No I don’t know what it sounds like yet but I’ll let you know as soon as. No I’m not planning on giving up performing and just being a DJ. And finally, no I’m not gonna say “never” or “when hell freezes over”. But not anytime soon.”

Recent updates reveal that Safer has been busy working on remixes and writing new tracks in his studio so it won’t be long until we see what he comes up with post-Rapture.

In the meantime, stay tuned for ITM’s full interview with The Rapture and keep an eye on our festival page for more Parklife updates.