Every lyric in Wellness comes from a UK newspaper article about the daily routines of influencers, repeated word for word because truth seems stranger than fiction at the moment.


Living Isn't Easy is the new album from Irish improvising post-punk/jazz group Robocobra Quartet.

“This album is all about aspiration - the things we aspire to and the things we are told to aspire to: work, success, family, health and wealth"

Loosely based around one central character negotiating the absurdity of modern life, the record glimpses into childhood trauma; the mundanity of office work; the mania of corporate culture; sexual identity and the cult of wellness.

Produced by drummer/vocalist and bandleader Chris W Ryan (whose production credits include Just Mustard, NewDad, Junk Drawer and many other up-and-coming artists out of Ireland), the recording sessions were laid out with specific intentions: All of the vocals on the album were recorded in one sitting in order to give a sense of the same perspective and tone from the narrator across the album, with his voice becoming increasingly worn and exhausted by the time the album closer "Night" comes around.

On lead single Wellness, a chaotic ear-worm about how the process of healing sometimes leads us to something even more toxic: "Every lyric in this track comes from a newspaper article I read about the daily routines of influencers. There’s a song by The Fall called Dr Buck’s Letter where Mark E Smith reads out an interview by Pete Tong and there's a beautiful absurdity to it so I thought I should just repeat this article verbatim as it didn't need any fictionalising at all". The opening riff was put together from the idea of trying to merge a classic swing/jazz drum part with the kind of bass-line you’d hear in a song by Black Flag or Minor Threat."

The band's hometown of Belfast has seen glimpses of the spotlight in the past year, with the local art group Array Collective winning the Turner Prize and Kenneth Branagh Oscar-nominated film Belfast (2021) in the headlines. The city's historically low rent (due to its assumed danger by outsiders) has allowed artists like Robocobra Quartet to flourish and hone their craft for years without worrying about broad appeal or commercial interest, instead designing a singular style that is unique and borne of interests across punk rock, jazz, avant-garde and modern pop.

The unique placement of Northern Ireland as a kind of quasi-European post-brexit loophole means that Irish and British pop culture both influence the band's work, with various band members growing up with Irish, British and European backgrounds:

"There’s a great 70s Irish pop song written by Gilbert O Sullivan called “Alone Again (Naturally)” that hints at sorrow with a uniquely Irish sense of dark humour. It made me think about how we deal as individuals with the epidemic of suicide in Northern Ireland, with so many us having had people close to us take their lives. The track Plant (The Succulent Blues) reflects on death but tries to linger & rest on the beauty of life and its capacity for happiness."

The centrepiece of the album is the sprawling 9 minute epic Chromo Sud, a song about housing: "The trials of renting, the aspiration of ownership and the spectre of a full-flung housing crisis in Ireland. We originally wrote the instrumental as part of an improvised performance at the Belfast Film Festival live scoring the 1968 experimental film called Chromo Sud. The name stuck and it became a Robocobra song proper. This is the one where we let the jazz hang out"

Living Isn't Easy releases 17 June 2022 on First Taste Records on LP/CD/DL

Wellness

www.openlab.fm | 106.4FM in Ibiza & Formentera
Check the full tracklist on our website:
https://openlab.fm/news/ask-the-artist-robocobra-quartet

Belfast based Jazz & Post-Punk band https://soundcloud.com/robocobraquartet are our next guests on Ask The Artist! Join band members Nathan and Chris as they showcase some of the tracks off of their brand new album 'Living Isn't Easy', alongside music that inspired them and some all-time favourites!

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Ask The Artist: Robocobra Quartet

White Dove Dream is out now on LP and digi via Weeding.

Art by Mel Keane
Master by Shy

helpwithweeding.bandcamp.com/album/iceb…dove-dream

https://helpwithweeding.bandcamp.com/

White Dove Dream

Icebear - More Heaven (WEEDINGDOVE)

Chipmunks and the Chipettes play The Bangles on a 16 speed turntable

Walk Like An Egyptian

Teeming with the energy and grit of pre-Giuliani Manhattan, Blonde Redhead’s long out-of-print early recordings have finally crawled their way out of the ‘90s basement. Weighing in at 37 tracks, Masculin Féminin compiles the band’s first two albums for Steve Shelley’s Smells Like Records, their period singles, extant demos, and radio performances onto four albums. Dozens of previously unpublished photographs illustrate two lengthy essays on this essential New York band’s formative years. 

http://numerogroup.com/products/blonde-redhead-masculin-fminin

Blonde Redhead - This Is The Number Of Times I Said I Will But Didn't (4 Track Demo)

From 'Chengdu', out on Abbreviated Records in June 2017.


"Well, I've been to many shitholes from Boston to Chengdu but nothing quite compares to the hell where I found you", is the couplet that frames Via: Barvikha's four track slice of life on shaky grounds, 'Chengdu'. This is an EP written around a period of significant life change, namely Via: Barvikha's Chris Leckey uprooting to live precisely 5329 miles away and then coming back five months later.

With each track named after friends and accomplices, this EP feels half-tribute, half-damning. It's dark but also humorous; it's meaningful but also blasé. It leaves you with questions about each of the titular characters, which include the artwork sleeve's designer 'Willie Woods' and the EP's producer 'Chris Ryan'.

Despite no longer performing with his hardcore outfit PigsAsPeople, Leckey doesn't leave aggression by the wayside but rather he matches it with equally bare and tender moments. This dynamic chasm lets the heaviness hit you harder. It hits you like moving to another part of the world and not finding what you were looking for.

Chengdu

Via: Barvikha - Chris Ryan

SORBET is a new project from producer, drummer & vocalist Chris W Ryan (Robocobra Quartet). The first release via Bureau B "Life Variations" is a suite of three tracks borne from the same musical seed. "Every time I sat at the piano I played that same chord progression and it felt never-ending. It felt like I could play the same two chords for a lifetime".

Life itself is the subject of this EP, which precedes a full-length album in 2021. A presumptuous thing to tackle across 20 minutes, Life Variations negotiates Birth, Death and that part in between. "Not just human life, but the life of planets or our environment -- and the death and birth of personal identity; of sexuality or gender".

Life Variations ends with a type of coda in the form of Living/Dying. One last presentation of that same chord progression, this time paired with a kind of Voice-of-God in the form of Mark McCambridge of Arborist - with the words 
"If this is to be the last time I bathe in soft silver light then I'm satisfied".

More info:
http://www.bureau-b.com/sorbet.php

Buy 12" EP

SORBET - Living/Dying (feat. Arborist)

All songs written and sung by - Jacob Dannett
Production/Recording by - Milo Schreier

I can feel them crawling within
Beneath the hairs on my skin
Please set them free with your teeth
Don’t be scared to really dig in

Oh holy hell
I guess this means I am not well
For having fervor for another man’s bones
I guess this means I am not well

I can feel them crawling around
Everywhere they can be found
Living amongst us like most creatures do
Emitting such glorious sound

Oh holy hell
I guess this means I am not well
For having fervor for another man’s bones
I guess this means I am not well

Oh holy hell
I guess this means I am not well
For having fervor for another man’s bones
I guess I am under lust’s spell

Fervor

Song preview:
1. Only For The Young (feat. Arborist)
2. The Candle
3. Born Purple (feat. Mickykiiatein)
4. I Heard His Scythe (feat. Maija Sofia)
5. The End Of Time
6. Hell

SORBET's debut album will be out on 4 June 2021 on Bureau B

More info: http://www.bureau-b.com/sorbet.php

This Was Paradise

Buy CD/LP/DL

SORBET - This Was Paradise (album preview)

'I Heard His Scythe' is the lead single from the upcoming SORBET album 'This Was Paradise (out 4 June). A song which slices through the despair with an Optimistic Nihilism that is central to the record. Featuring a musical backing that nods to Kate Bush's 'Watching You Without Me' alongside Maija Sofia's airy refrain rebutting the grim reaper - "I heard his scythe whoosh past my ear / it gets a little louder every year".

I Heard His Scythe

SORBET - I Heard His Scythe (feat. Maija Sofia)

Band: robocobraquartet@gmail.com
Booking: ​will@primarytalent.com
Management:​ ​joeyedwardsfoh@gmail.com ​

Wellness

Robocobra Quartet

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