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Front row: Alex Ebert, Oligee, Timmy The Terror Back row: Justin Meldal-Johnson, Gary "Seuss" Susalis (Music Choice), Joey Waronker Ima Robot Interview By Seuss -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where did the name Ima Robot come from? Tim: You tell this one better I think. Alex: I try to tell it better. We thought it was really funny, it's not funny but it was just one of those nights where you hit that delirium mark and we thought it was really funny that you'd discover something about yourself that you didn't know that had been happening to you the whole time like that you actually have blood inside of you and that you're bleeding for the first time and you're very shocked like "I'm bleeding?". It all had to do with question marks. One of them, we were on the floor and one of the things we came up with was "I'm a Robot?" and it had a question mark at the end of it and I thought it should be the band name. We were on the floor laughing about it, no one was really taking it seriously so we went through a bunch of different names and then 2 years later finally I suggested it again and suddenly everyone was down with it. That was it; it took kind of a different form, more of a statement at that point. Tim: So for all the kids at home, write down all those silly ideas because later it will all of a sudden click. Now you guys started the band a while ago. What year was this? Alex: If it's 2003 now then I guess we started in 97. Late 97. Tim: It was summer of 97. Alex: Yeah, it was a cool summer. What was the sound and vibe like when you started the band? Alex: It was a really renegade version of what we got going on now. There was no drummer so it was all electronic beats. A little more hip-hop oriented beat-wise and musically. And during our live shows we'd be playing to a dat and had a DJ up there. The vibe was like it wasn't concocted, it wasn't formulated it was really just this really ballsy maneuver that we did, we really didn't think about it at all. But I think that was part of the charm of it and what made it last for as long as it did. What made you transition into getting an actual drummer, bass player and guitarist? Tim: It's a natural progression obviously but part of it was that the beginnings of us were just kind of us performing what we heard and writing what we heard in our heads. I was on a total hiatus from music and neither of us were listening to a ton of music that we were trying to emulate. We weren't emulating anything but we weren't really in a phase or a categorical learning period of different music. We were just doing it and eventually it became clear that you can fill in those spaces and round things out and it's a plus and not a minus. Alex: For me, I had friends around me that weren't used to hearing a beat machine and were like, "you can't do this," and they'd tell us, "you need a drummer, you're gonna hit a ceiling here." I'd tell them it was bullshit but it would affect me but the thing was we never found a drummer that fit. Every drummer we found turned us into what to my mind was a jam band, just a band, it didn't excite me at all to do that. We were kind of looking around and tried to get drummers that knew how to work with electronics or play as fresh and cool and original as we thought our beats were. We never really found that guy until we ran into Joey. Justin: That's a pretty tall order. Oligee: I don't think any band has auditioned as many drummers as we have. Alex: Or kicked out as many drummers as we have. I'm the guy that always sits them down actually. How'd you get that task? Alex: I kind of just… Tim:…Like it. You have the constitution for it. Alex: We never really had a real bass player either. All the bass players we had were just funky groovy guys or whatever. It was pulling us away from what we wanted to do. And finally we met Justin (formally Beck's bassist) and he immediately raised our capabilities to an area where we were able to suddenly play together live. They (Tim and Justin) would just bounce off each other and kinda create this amazing organic version of what we had set out to do from the beginning. And then finally we got Joey who entirely filled that gap, that essential gap that we were missing the entire time and then it was like, ok we're done. Is there a main songwriter in the band, like the person who ends up having the final say or is it one complete unit? Alex: It's turning more and more into one complete unit. We didn't all start off six years ago together cause if we had I'm sure it would have been one complete unit from the get go, but because it wasn't like that some of the songs went to certain people and it was like one person would bring a song in and then we'd all work on it. Lately we're just writing songs, it's really great for me too cause I had written a lot of songs on the last album alone but they weren't Ima Robot songs, they were just songs and that I would bring to these guys and they turned them into Ima Robot tunes. It's definitely one of the most unique sounding records that I've heard as of late Most of the music these days is very generic which makes Ima Robot definitely stand out. It's all made up of so many different genres of music. Who are your influences, individually? Justin: For me, I just started playing bass because of The Beatles and stuff like that. But then I got into punk rock and I got into English art rock and post punk and dance music and new wave, the 80's, experimental music throughout the 80's and 90's. I can sit here and tell you things about my influences, but the thing is that everyone in this band is similar in that you can't really identify our influences… it's pretty hard for any of us to put that down because we're all kind of musicologists, we really delve into a whole bunch of areas. This band is made up of essentially of 5 producers and 5 people who just love the history of music and generally appreciate things that are innovative and interesting. Alex: That last sentence I think really sums it up too. It really has nothing to do with the exact influences as much as it does with exploring. When we'd be in rehearsal writing songs, the sounds of the songs are just… we push it to a place where we're comfortable which is a place that is almost uncomfortable. Like a place that is kind of exploring areas that people had explored before but then just left alone and didn't go any further. For me, it seems like the majority of us are uncomfortable not being original. Justin: When we're writing songs in the rehearsal room the thing that usually turns the other band member on to create something along with it is someone playing something far out like a far out beat or guitar sound or some weird keyboard thing that gets another person hyped up. So is everything written pretty much, I don't want to say on the fly, but if you walk in with just a bass line and they haven't heard it before you'll just start playing it and then you'll pick up drums and start playing that and drop the keyboards and just… Tim: Basically it's a filter you know? We filter the ideas we come up with through us as a whole and then it comes out as something else. And I'm assuming you do all the lyrics? Alex: Yeah. Where do they stem from with you? Alex: music inspires me a lot, by the music itself. Sometimes I'll just be going through something or aware of my own evolution or my own changes and write about that. What's your live performance like? You said earlier on it was just you guys and a dat. Now that you have a full band, what's the experience like? Tim: Intense. We keep each other honest on the live tip because especially Alex vocally keeps us extremely honest in the sense that if you can't rock it then we can't take it to the next level. That is something in a lyricist that I crave and rarely see in rock or whatever we are, someone rocking the beat, ya know, coming from that kind of aggressive mentality. That puts us all into that kind of stream of consciousness. It's aggressive and it's as beautiful as it can be. Justin: Yeah there's kind of a contrast, our performances you can say are simultaneously confrontational and welcoming at the same time. Me as a musician I come from that live background. I get off when you are confronting the audience in a way that maybe makes them uncomfortable but you eventually win them over. That's a real pleasure, that's something to attain, like a goal during a show. Everybody in the band is interested in that contrast, the game of performing. It was great for me to join this band cause it fit with what my aesthetic was. We play Ima Robot on our alternative channel, which stems anywhere from the modern pop punk to Radiohead, and you're also on the electronic channel so you can be played next to Moby and next to The Cure. There's no set "home" for your sound… Where do you feel more comfortable? Joey: That's good. Justin: Well that's the area we live in…. We have no set home. Tim: The first reaction you were talking about before the interview like "what is this?" that's the reaction I'm really starting to trust because anyone I know who's really listening and has good taste is telling me "I didn't like it" or "I didn't know what to think" and then after a few listens is like "oh ok, I get it." What's in your CD players? Alex: I just picked up some really rad experimental moog shit. Psychotic music, 20 minute long songs. I can't stand listening to anything using the regular format at the moment, even if that's us, right now I don't want to listen to songs at all, that's just my mind today. Justin: I'm a phase-oriented person. Right now I'm going through a serious 70's singer/songwriter phase. I'm listening to the Carpenters like a madman and ABBA. Oligee: I like the Granddaddy record. That's what I'm listening to all the time right now. I collect records so I have a lot of obscure stuff that nobody will ever know, library records and weird instrumental stuff and different landscapes of sound. Since your style of music is not pigeonholed to one specific sound, do you guys experiment when you're on stage? Tim: Improvisation has its place but yeah it has to be in that formulated thing or it can be categorically mistaken by the crowd and by us. Like what's the message of this "jam"? We know what our songs say. I think we're experimenting constantly within the framework, but we don't just go off into space live. Justin: I change up my parts all the time but I leave it at that, that's just for my own personal amusement. Tim: We have this aesthetic right now where it's like 1,2,3,4, do the song, do the song, do the song, stop, next song. Punk rock style. It's funny growing up and playing records and DJing and knowing to always look at tempo sheets and then I look at our tempo sheet and its like 135 or 168. Joey: That's really slow, everything is like 184, 199. Power love ballads huh? Justin: Heck no. We have some epic stuff on the album that we've really grown to love and it's probably something we'll introduce into our set when we start touring and playing our own shows on a larger scale. Alex, I heard that Milli Vanili and Young MC was your first concert ever…is this a fact? Alex: That was my first show. See I did my homework. Alex: Universal Amphitheater. You did do your work. It was amazing. Oligee: Mine was Metallica like 91, they played for like 3 hours, and no one opened up for them. Justin: Mine was Talking Heads. Tim: Mine was Suicidal Tendencies, Exodus, and Body Count. Joey: The first show I saw was Queen. What is your goal, your sort of mission statement as a band as of 2003? Justin: Great albums, great live shows, turning people on, making them really inspired; that's big for us. Tim: Just continuing to get the reaction that we've been getting in multitude. The confusion at first and then people kind of end up owning and adopting it the way we did when we were younger and we heard these types of things. So is it safe to say that in 5 years or even your next album that it won't sound anything like this one right now? Alex: Probably not. Who knows man. Justin: Probably not. That's not a conscious thing though. It would have to be a natural evolution. We don't really have a grand plan about how the next record will actually sound. I'm sure we get like little thoughts that come into our minds like oh yeah this kind of thing we need to explore and taking all kinds of mental notes. Alex: [Laughing] I can see people just not being down with our next album at all, like "damn what are they doing" and not understanding it at all. Joey: Good planning ahead. Alex: But we do have a record label so I'm sure we'll be writing "a" song that will be played on "the radio." Justin: But that's not our goal. We're not out to subvert ourselves; we just do what's natural. I'm sure you gave them an interesting task of trying to find out where to put you. Alex: They've been amazing actually. They seem to totally get it, which is great. So to wrap it up, what's one thing that you would want people to know about your band that they might not know or they wouldn't know unless you told them? Justin: Organic foods. We're really big on it. Oligee: We're gonna start a restaurant. Would it be Ima Restaurant? Justin: That's it! That's what we've been waiting for! Tim: No more need for a second album (Laughs). Alex: The concept is to grab celebrities, kill them and serve them. They're one-time dishes. Then we have vagabonds that we can grab. We have one special dish called pickled degenerates, that's an ongoing appetizer cause there are plenty of degenerates out there. So one of us can fall into that category ourselves and be out of the band haha. Tim: Like a cannibalism meats retro-shiek kind of thing. Justin: You can only serve 4 people at a time; you'd have to call a year in advance. It's a family environment. Alex: Up in the mountains is a good place. Tim: This is what we wanted to tell you about our band. This is the stuff we talk about. Our excesses lie in conversations about really odd things. And it shows in the music. Thank you guys very much. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ©2003 Music Choice MUSIC CHOICE® is a registered trademark of Music Choice, Horsham, PA

[Edited on 11-10-2003 by Phobiac]

Tim: The first reaction you were talking about before the interview like "what is this?" that's the reaction I'm really starting to trust because anyone I know who's really listening and has good taste is telling me "I didn't like it" or "I didn't know what to think" and then after a few listens is like "oh ok, I get it."

This quote reminds me of something I read in The Big Takeover mag, the writer was discussing how radio play is based upon these phone surveys where people get played a short sample of a song, and then rank it on a one to five scale.

His point was, the songs that the programmers want are the ones that get "three" ratings, because those are the most safe and inoffensive to the listeners...

However, the really original stuff, the stuff that is so creative and sounds so different from what's being played, gets either ones or fives. People love it or they hate it, but they have a strong reaction to it either way.

Ima Robot's music seems to get that response from people, except a lot of the people who initially rate it a one eventually come around once they've given it a chance. Which is a step above being original enough to incite a strong emotion, in that it has the power to actually alter its effect on you. Anyway.