Def Robot was formed in 2019 when David Hancox and I, Paul Taylor, reconnected after 20 years.
I was the singer and David was the bassist in 90’s Manchester U.K. grunge/rock/indie band Kerosene, who were signed to Dead Dead Good and then Sire records. We released an album “Arrythmia” along with various singles and toured the U.K., Europe and the USA supporting such bands as Green Day, The Flaming Lips, and Terrorvision amongst others.
When I read the advertisement for the contest, I had to chuckle. The Nassau cultural prize for contemporary composition 2003 sounded great to me. Yet I hardly believed in myself enough to think the effort to apply would be more than futile. So that’s what I called my non-existent band project: The Futile Project.
I had left all my former bands when I returned from six months abroad in Glasgow. There, for the first time, I had an opportunity to present my music to an audience of musicians I hardly knew. Therefore, the feedback I got was honest and not tainted by friendship or sympathy. I performed almost every Monday at Gerry Lyon’s open stage night in the Nice’n’Sleazy, a club on Sauchiehall Street.
A departure from the last 15 years of my music, “Wolffsburgh” takes a new direction. Many of the guitars are gone and loops and drum machines take their place.
In 1986 it all began near Cologne (Germany) in a little town called Kerpen Sindorf. For me, it was clear that it would be a long journey, and it still is. Now 33 years later and after 33 released albums, it is still something special and every day something new to create music.
Right now, we just released the album “Laughter filled with pain” – eight acoustic songs with some electronic elements here and there. It is a very personal album reduced to the essentials.
Originality is what makes you different. Stop copying others instead of bringing uniqueness into your work. Let the world know who you are and what stuff you are made of.
So it’s basically an album all about the struggles
that I have experienced in my life so far,
represented as an audio-stageplay.
It’s divided into six acts and various actors,
that show the story from different perspectives,
with an original and an alternate timeline.
Sometimes I wonder if I like making people cringe or maybe it’s just an inevitable effect that comes with my need to overexpress my emotions and thoughts. I always thought oh well maybe I’m one of those who are seeking desperately for attention, but I figured that actually, it is more than just that. I just can’t control it, saying the things the way they are, if I hate my self, I’m gonna write about it if I’m ego tripping I’m gonna write about that as well. A bit of a drama queen mixed with a trouble maker with an honest desire to be better and be happy. And make the people around me happy, mostly with me.
To take my thoughts and put them into words helps me reach into conclusions, let my mind process, and move on faster. And I’m guessing doing it out loud for other people to hear is part of it. I’ve always appreciated artists that are being totally authentic, that are not afraid to write about themselves and their quirkiness and be honest. Let me, the listener, to get to know them better.
“Life goes on” has come out with quite a psychedelic buzz – it has had a big CD release party in the Hangar49 in Berlin on May 24th. For me, “just a girl with guitar from Eastern Europe,” the album turned out to be a momentum of all the things unsaid, a story of moving abroad, a cry-your-heart-out type of collection for self-therapy.
We’re all born incomplete and aspire for wholeness.
Thrown into this world at breakneck speeds, immediately socialized by our parents and guardians, who we trust as gods with our childish, wonder-filled minds. Once, we all believed our guardians and teachers and elders knew everything and could be trusted completely.
Alas, they were all once chucked into this world too, raised up by previous generations that may have often convinced themselves that they knew what life was all about. But they didn’t. No one did.