The Mechanical Walking Robotboy

Formed in 1997 to bring some sex, swagger and swank back to an increasingly money obsessed lame-ass rock world.
Here's what the music critics say...
"kinda electro swank...music you can fuck a hot drunk girl to"
"coherent energy moving towards incoherence"
"avant-garde and dissonant yet melodic"
"rock n roll from outside the lines"
"baroque, space age nihilists"
"quirky art rock"
"kick-ass"
The new Robotboy CD "Slow" is now available on our website along with our first CD "Baby,Baby,Baby, We're All Doomed" plus t-shirts, stickers, buttons and lots more photos and stuff so please check it out.
Click HERE to go directly to the Robotboy website.
Click HERE to download Slow from iTunes.
Mick Mercer U.K.
June 22, 2006
THE MECHANICAL WALKING ROBOTBOY
SLOW
Compulsive Records
Make way, make way, for fun! A band who must confuse, while thrilling, people due to the 70s pop references, post-punk slipperiness and modern electronic mastery of mood and brusque atmospheric brevity, this album will certainly impress. Its quick, its slick, pinched and punching. Its melodic, deviously derivative, and frothy as fuck. In fact medics could taker it to crash sites; play this and if theres no reaction you move on to the next victim.
Christopher Smart (vocals/guitar) goes by the name of Smarty and has a past delving back to eventful 80s action, including Platform Of Youth, Lung Overcoat and then onto Thirteen, while the rest are equally varied, with drummer Mikey Smith going pop to blues with Where The Action Is and Boxcar Satan (nice!), James Traugott punkily bassing out The Defectives, Chris Branca guitaring with the garage White Heat and Shawn Terry, whose Goth past includes Berlin Black, The Dispicables and Veronicas Veil. (I confess hes the only one I had heard of.) Put them together and you have weird levels of experience and versatility which makes these songs work.
Black Light is ridiculously urgent, yet underweight. Its got wiry synth lines and a muscular bass moving like a confident badger in new shoes. It reminds me of a modern male Blondie the way its squeezed decades together, with a superb chorus and seedily infectious lyrics ransacking movie ideas. The automatic clapping beat helps, but youd do that anyway. No rubbish riffing here either, just concise nudges. Weirdly theres some very coy, early Adam Ant simpering during the wild and loopy Red Spider Killer with disturbingly catchy whistling and more eerie 60s ghosts, and the way Double starts you half expect them to lapse into Cleopatra but they have cooler pop antics to employ, the subtle weepiness harshly turned around by tenser vocals when the guitar wrangles its way in.
As they smoulder gently in the smoky Four Leaf Clover you also notice theres no great cohesive sound that represents them, its just youre hooking into their world temporarily. Great steady songwriting arcs of the past are the obvious presence here, and you can catch traces of everything good from the 50s to the 70s in the background, creating a dense atmosphere, and theyre unusual. The disturbing Beautiful is totally modern with its economical modern blippity backing, and horrendous lyrics about a hired killer skipping over jaunty drums and morose organ, uncoiling like early Psy Furs in a vengeful setting and offering a brilliantly bristling ending.
She Turns Me On is cheap and cheerful, Oxycon 80 doomier, and possibly gloomy but its so weird who can say, seemingly involving a futuristic head? I dont know whats going on, but its got a translucent rhythm base, and a circling wooziness thats weirdly mesmerising. Flipped also mooches magnificently, with some scalding guitar frumpery but engaging electronic fizziness. Tracers! rampages with similar Fall-like tendencies to A Spectre Is Haunting Europe, only here its also turned upside down by some early Beasties-style loopiness, and then the unintentionally grandiose Slow make for a stunning ending, with a pensive vocal working in cahoots with vigorous, stylish guitar bursts but overall a solemn flow invigorated with restless drums.
So much crammed into such a little thing: just ten songs, but it feels like the world. Take a holiday people, in a furtive world of delight.
MICKMERCER.COM
In San Antonio you can pickup a copy of the Slow CD at 180 Grams on San Pedro at Magnolia or Hogwild Records on Main at Dewey.
Also available at www.cdbaby.com.
photo by Mark Greenburg
Photo by TK Kate
photo by Ramin Samandari
ROBOTS ON THE RADIO!!!!!!!! Click HERE and give a listen at the KRTU Live From Studio A web page.
robotize a friend