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.
Continue readingby Alison Eales
I have just released my first solo album. It is called Mox Nox, a sundial motto that means ‘night, shortly’, and the theme running through the record is the passing of time, particularly the transition from day to night. Rather than writing songs specifically for the album, I looked through my songbook for things I had already written that fit this theme, and one of them (now called The Broken Song) jumped out at me as being a bit of a curiosity.
I’ve always been a night owl. I can be absolutely exhausted at 10pm, but by 11 my head will be racing with ideas. The Broken Song began its life during a nocturnal writing session, and its original lyrics made direct reference to being up all night. The song was clearly relevant – but it was also an underdog, half-written and still wearing its working title. I hadn’t thought about it in years.
Looking over the lyrics, I remembered that I had always liked the verses but struggled to come up with a chorus. I’ve never been too worried about following a verse-chorus structure, but I knew this song needed more, and I knew that it was stuck. The breakthrough came when I deleted my crappy excuse for a chorus and looked at the lyrics that were left. Quite suddenly, I saw that the song I had thought was about a particular event in my life was about something else entirely.
Continue readingby jakson
I am jakson.
jakson is a musical project by me, jakson.
It first began in 2019 with the release of ‘guilt.’ There have been three releases since.
The latest release, ‘too artsy for the footy kids, too footy for the art ones,’ was released in February 2023.
It was written and recorded in my bedroom as I moved across Melbourne, Bendigo, and Canberra over the last three years. Its title comes from a line in its second song, ‘michael cera, serotonin.’ It references how I fit in socially, growing up in a country town with an interest in sports and art.
Continue readingby Alexander Jones aka THATS NOKAY
A few years ago I found myself banging away on a $12 Casio from goodwill in a basement in Edmonds making some weird experimental pop songs. Soon a pandemic was upon us and I decided to buckle down and learn how to make beats and use Logic to record. Some friends gave some pointers and drum kits to download, and soon I was off and running, making beat tapes and collaborating with vocalists over the instrumentals.
by Jake Harper
Music is more than chords and percussion and isolated tunes. If there’s one thing that music in films teaches us, it’s that any sound can inspire an emotion, and that’s what lies at the core of musicianship.
Raven and Phan, also known as Utku and Manuel (me), is a duo from Vienna, Austria. Utku is originally from Istanbul, Turkey, and has lived in various countries in Europe and America. Our music is influenced by cultural, musical, melodic, and rhythmic elements, which is why we like to refer to our music as “A sonic odyssey from the Bosporus to the Alps.”
We met in 2014 when I was searching for a guitar player for my project. A mutual friend, Ilkhan, introduced us, and we began playing together. At the time, they were founding a recording label, which I was also indirectly a part of. We spent our summer days chilling on Utku’s balcony, listening to inspiring music such as Caribou’s track “Sun,” Chet Faker, Nicolas Jaar, and Jamie XX. Our goal was to create music that reflected our unique perspectives and shared influences.
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Music has always been said to be a universal language, but I don’t agree. Music has as many meanings as people who listen to it. What for us can be a sad melody, for someone from the other side of the world, it can be the happiest of songs, that’s why I refuse to believe that music is universal. However, I don’t think this is a problem, but an advantage to be able to communicate with ourselves. Art shows us the reality that we need to see.
My short 4 track EP, “2020”, first took form before the year it’s named after before all of this insanity took over. I often think it’s best to leave a song’s meaning up to the interpretation of the listener. But, if there were an outlet to air out my thoughts of my songs, it would be here. So I’ll go through each track in the lineage of which they’re recorded and break them down.
I started Nocturnal Company when I got to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for my freshman year of college. I often stayed up all night in my dorm recording on my laptop with the only live instruments being guitar and keyboard. Luckily, my roommate stayed at his girlfriend’s dorm most of the time. That kid was a character, he smoked hella pot and took watermelons full of vodka to parties, where he feigned a french accent.
