Robot was an oddball indie rock band I fronted back in the mid nineties. The main lineup was me (Konrad) on vocals and guitar, Chris Edmond on drums (replaced later by Mike Flack) and Derek Kirkman on bass. We played a handful of shows at local venues such as Smile coffeehouse (opening for such bands as Home and The Multiple Cat), Gabes Oasis (with Tripmaster Monkey and The Adaptors) and a few of the Independent Truckers Alliance shows (Joan of Arc, A Minor Forest etc.) that Pete Toalson organized in the QC area.
Despite the fact that there were 5 thousand other bands named “Robot” throughout the nineties, we did manage to put a fairly unique spin on some typical indie rock stylistics. We only made one serious recording, the below affixed “Robot EP”. The songs were recorded by Patrick Stolley at Great Western studio in Davenport, Iowa. Recorded on 16 track Adat. The trio was tracked live in an open room, with vocals and incidentals overdubbed. Guest appearances on the EP were made by Seth Mulvihill (keyboard track 3) and Eric Honse (guitar track 1, under the moniker “Chuck Rice”), Will Stensrud (Cello track 4) as well as a vocal appearance on “Vulture” by Stephanie Byers, whose vocals were sampled by Pat on a Casio SK-1. The J-card design featured a photograph by Scott Williams. If I recall, the entire recording cost us less than $300.00; paid for with gig money we had saved up.
As that lineup of Robot disbanded, I eventually went on to evolve the band and name into “
Robot USA”…a (mostly) solo project that was based around experimental electronica.
-Konrad
ROBOT EP (1996):
Robot - Vulture
Robot - Borderline
Robot - The Bug
Robot - Digging to China
Robot - Super Future Boy
"What am I in the eyes of most people--a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person--somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then--even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum."
