DR ROBERT

Cosmic Mayhem

Recent musings from Rob at banbantonton.com

The Cosmic Mayhem E.P. finds ex-Blow Monkey Dr Robert penning songs around the rhythm presets of a Carboot-found Casiotone 501. The sessions holding four just over three-minute shorts of pre-digital leanings. 

Birdseye View is a cute Dubwise skank (check Emerson Kitamura`s The Countryside Is Great for a reference point). Sung in the baritone of Wonderful Sound label mate, Nev Cottee. Pans farts and squelches above low-end hum. Its plastic glissando set to rat-a-tat-tat. Each & Everyone is not a cover of Everything But The Girl, but aching Blue-eyed, outsider Soul. Accompanied by clipped guitar, and spinning synthesized sequences. Looking for a witness in Memphis, Muscle Shoals, Stax Records, and Fame Studios. It wouldn’t be out of place on Chocolate Industries seminal, Personal Space, comp. Drenched as it is in the same reverb as The Makers Don’t Challenge Me. The track Cosmic Mayhem itself is a “joyride” of racing rhumba. Backing track uptempo clicking. The Doc reduced to a fragile, echoed, ghost. Imagine if Dennis Wilson was The Silver Apples.