Robocobra Quartet
Irish experimental collective Robocobra Quartet announce new album Hundred Pieces, and share new single “Haha”.
Irish experimental collective Robocobra Quartet return with the announcement of Hundred Pieces, a new album made-up of 100 songs. To mark the announcement, the band have shared a new single plucked from the century titled “Haha”.
With a revolving cast of collaborators who tag in and out as required, Robocobra Quartet have been growing a cult following since the release of their debut album “Music For All Occasions” in 2016. Formed by drummer and vocalist Chris W Ryan - who is fast-becoming a producer-in-demand, having recently worked on records by the likes of Chalk, Just Mustard, and TTSSFU – the band includes members with no musical training alongside members with music conservatoire pedigree.
On stage, the band are protons and electrons circling Ryan; meticulous arrangements and on-the-spot improvisations hang on every word. These words and rhythms are what propel the music of Robocobra Quartet forward and concoct a sound that is groove-driven but cerebral too. Their touring has brought them from Montreux Jazz Festival to living rooms, pub basements, a number of boats and as far as the Arctic Circle. All while receiving acclaim from the likes of The Guardian, The London Standard, and BBC Radio 6 Music.
They say good ideas often start with a joke: the idea of a 100-track album was initially an off-hand remark but very soon the band started writing specifically for "the hundred" as they affectionately called it. Despite being serious about their work, Robocobra Quartet enjoy being playful with their art.
Inspired by the durational art of Marina Abramović, and specifically her memoir Walk Through Walls, Robocobra Quartet set about to create a one hundred track album as a composition in itself.
During the writing process, saxophonist Thibault Barillon began growing petri dishes of fungus at home with a view to create the artwork for the album; this soon became an improvised process in tandem with the music-making, furthering the band's obsession with the idea of chance.
Much like the organisms growing in the petri dishes, some of the songs grew into very complex studio productions laboured over for months, such as today’s single “Haha” and “Nothing”, whereas other songs, such as “Gilded” and “Ashes Again”, were simply moments captured during the writing process - their lives began and ended within just a few minutes.
Speaking on the artwork, Barillon says,
“The petri dishes were an exploration of beauty in the natural world, scientific drawings, experiments etc. that touch us emotionally without an artist's intent being behind it.
One day I just bought some agar plates and started experimenting, finding joy in inventing my own "techniques" of what type of mould would grow from different organic matter which I had put on the plate a few days earlier.
This started before we knew Hundred Pieces would become a thing, without grand plans or intent. As time went by and we worked on the album, the band became more aware of the parallels with the process of the hundred: chance-based moments and letting songs find themselves, melodies and riffs as spores spreading and growing, the cross pollination, the joy of the process and the beauty of art taking a life of its own that the artist hadn't intended."
Opening to rolling basslines, “Haha” is a densely layered three-minute encapsulation of everything that has brought Robocobra Quartet to this point, with increasingly intense jazz-tinted sax lines weaving around 90s Dischord-era distortion and Ryan’s signature combination of spoken, sung, and shouted vocals of would-be adages and sardonic yet insightfully vulnerable lyrics.
There also elements pointing to further sonic development to be uncovered in the album with moments of digital augmentation, warping, skewing, and supplementing the instrumentation.
"In a way this album could only exist by being self-produced, owing to the large number of engineer and production minds in the band,”
says Ryan.
“Often when I work with other artists, it can be that very first demo that has the magic in it, but other times a song only works once it has been heavily produced. With this album we were able to experiment with that and push songs only as far as they 'ask' for. I'm curious to see if listeners even care if a song was obsessed over for months on end with great expense, or if they gravitate more towards the looser and raw recordings”
Created with absolutely zero use of AI, it is also an ode to the idea that creating work is a form of joy, and that humans can also do gigantic tasks too - and enjoy the process while they're at it.
Across the tracklisting, the band morphs through genres - travelling from abrasive saxophone blasts to pensive post-hardcore tinged miniatures, then slowly disintegrating into dub mixes and austere ambience. Clocking in at 5 hours, Hundred Pieces flies in the face of the attention economy - and rightly so - for over a decade Robocobra Quartet have been breaking rules and asking questions: Will you actively listen through it all from start to finish? Will you skip to track titles that pique your interest? Will you jump to the final - hundreth - song to see how it ends? Will you pause after a while and come back to it like a book you love? All answers welcome.
Live Dates
Dublin - 24/10 - NCH (Haunted Dancehall)
London - 19/11 - ICA (London Jazz Festival)
