Weekly > Interviews
Ima Robot
Our Californian correspondent (no, really), Maria, met up with Tim and Oliver, guitarists for Ima Robot last month.
The boys took a pause from their North American summer tour to discuss the pitfalls of living up to hype, the process of music making, and their influences (which you may be surprised to find out are of the dairy variety).
You are guys really off center, that’s great, it’s quite different from what a lot of you’re peers do. Do you find that most people get your excentricity? Do you find that most people latch onto to it the way you meant it to be?
Tim: Well, I gage it with what I call ‘the stragglers’ at our shows here. You’ve got this crowd of people who know what’s going on in the front, who know it, sing every word. You’ve got people who are kinda just like, ‘What the fuck?’ You’ve got people who just walked by. You’ve got stragglers, which make up this perimeter. These dudes, kinda just chillin’. They don’t really want to commit and they can’t walk away. I look at them a lot…
Oliver: And that would be me!
Tim: ...I look at them a lot, while we’re playing. And I think that that is some kind of tell tale sign of an interesting show.
Is that important to you?
Tim: Yeah!
Is that important to you that people react to what you do? Because, a lot of bands that get the kind of reviews that you guys do tend to not really care what people think. There’s a certain ignorance for industry hype that seems to come along when you have being a great musician to fall back on no matter what. So, are you on the level where you’ve really worked hard and you want to see a certain reaction, or are you on the level where you see the kids in the front, but you don’t really care who’s out there as long as they’re listening.
Oliver: It’s a little bit of both. (to Tim) Isn’t it kind of?
Tim: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we want everyone to hear it and love it. We’re not trying to be critical darlings or just piss people off. We want to make a good impression. We want people to be happy. But, you know? It is a little bit of both.
Oliver: It is a little bit of both. I mean, we never set out to be a ‘left-field band’, like an art band or anything. We’re just individuals in a couple of different places musically. We have all of these different influences and whatever happens is what happens. It wasn’t like a concious thing of like “fuck everybody, we’re just gonna do want we want to do”.
So, are you the kind of band that says, “OK, these are our influences, but, we put that aside.”? Or are those influences in your heads when you’re jamming, playing, creating, whatever is it?
Oliver: It’s deffinitley in our subconsious somewhere. It’s not like at the forefront or anything.
Tim: We’re all kind of obsessed with different things.
Like?
Tim: Different early punk stuff, early rock stuff, 70’s rock, hip-hop stuff, early 90’s hip-hop. We’ll come together over certain fine things that would be considered elitist, or musical like this. Things like ABC or Gang of Four.
Oliver: We’ve all refined our taste to a certain level. Because, I’ve been listening to music all my life. I’ve been playing it all my life. Anybody who’s dedicated to something and loves it and enjoys it, should have some kind of intellectual approach to it.
Is there one for you guys? Because, a lot of musicians tend to draw generally intellectually from books, from movies.
Tim: Oh yeah! We take a lot from books and movies. More so than from music, I think. We’re not referencing anything and we’re not trying to do anything similar to an influence or whatever. We’re just doing what happens to five people.
Oliver: But, we also don’t want to…we try not to do things that are similar to anything else that’s happening right now too. I mean that is a concious kind of move. Because we could. It’s easy to slip into that. It’s easy to slip into the easy thing, into the comfortable thing. You know?
Tim: If I loved what was going on the radio right now that decision wouldn’t be such a weird thing.
Oliver: But we like to make things difficult on our selves sometimes. We like to challenge ourselves, make things interesting. I can deffinitley say that about this band, in particular. It’s that we kind of want to make things a lot uncomfortable on ourselves, push ourselves into a corner. Then when we break out of it it’s even more rewarding.
That’s also something that I find interesting about you guys, is that what your saying is very wholehearted. Because, a lot of the people that you’ve played with, I’m not naming any names, tend to not have that kind of approach. You see them tend to have a very corporate element to what they’re doing…
Tim: You mean like the Grateful Dead?
(Oliver chuckles)
Tim: Or “The Dead”, I mean, as they are now called?
- Yeah, because they are totally corporate.*
(more chuckles)
Tim: I know what you’re saying.
Totally corporate. They’ve sold out to Ben and Jerry’s now.
Tim: Well actually…Ben not Jerry.
Oliver: They can do that, “Ben-not-Jerry’s”
Yeah, I heard one of them had a heart attack, ‘cos they ate too much Cherry Garcia, or something like that.
Oliver: We want a flavour really bad. We want our own ice cream flavour.
Tim: We love ice cream. We also drawn our influences from ice cream.
Oliver: And food!
Tim: Food is a big influence on rock, on our specialty brand of rock.
You’re swirls, right?
Tim: Yeah! Because, you know what? Music is a….
Oliver: It’s a very culinary kind of art, in a way.
Tim: It is.
Oliver: You’re putting together all of these ingridients in way and making you’re own little concotion. I love to cook. I’m serious. We all love to make food and eat food. We’re all big eaters. (more chuckles)
Tim: Yeah, definitely.
It’s true though.
Oliver: It really is true.
Because, you find that a lot of people who just do art love anything creative, they paint, they cook, it’s anything that’s self-expression.
Oliver: It’s a creative outlet. You know what’s so cool about music? It’s that its hard to do anything completley original. Right? It’s all been done, kind of. You know what I mean? Like it’s all kind of been done before.
Well…we can argue about that…
Oliver: Yeah, I can argue about that too forever. I mean unless your just making noise or something or ambient sound or whatever, then you can be a little bit more original. But, when you’re writing songs and things like that, then you can take all of these ingridients that have been previously done and done really well and be inspired by those things and put them together and make a whole new thing.
Exactly, completely agree with that. You take all of those influences and not let them play in your head so much.
Oliver: And it’s your take on it, it’s all you. Your hands, your soul, and you’re communicating those things the way that you would. So, it’s always gonna be different. It’s never going to be exactley the same.
Then there are some bands that are more derivative than others. That’s kind of what I’m trying to get at. What I want to ask is: Is it a huge difference for you guys playing shows like this where there are not a lot of bands like yourself. Are there a lot more stragglers and less of those core fans standng in the front?
Tim: Well with a venue that has this many people walking around with is just an isolated incident, unless you’re only playing Warped Tour or something. It’s a different scenario. So, yeah, there’s gonna be more people than have heard or us, or have just heard the CD, or just have been walking by than true die hard fans, probably. But, not in every city. Like L.A. and places that we’ve been to a bunch like Phoenix, L.A., maybe here, maybe San Francisco. We’ve got those kids who are hungry and have now been back and we’ve seen them all four or five times. We know them and they’re the kind of fans a band that kids when I was growing up like the Cure and Depeche Mode and stuff like that they were like those kids. That’s what those kids are. And I was like that with hip-hop.
There are a lot people who are put off by that, kind of like, “I’m a rock star, I’ll keep my distance.”
Tim: No, no, that’s awesome. We love to interact with those kids. Because, I think that’s an important thing that’s part of a legacy that we’re building. We have kids that have our lyrics tatooed on them. Every show we have ten kids that come up with home made shirts. It’s not just like you can turn on the radio and “Oh cool, I’m gonna go check that out.” It’s finding ways to get involved with us somehow.
Oliver: It’s kind of what’s nice about being unique. The fans really like you.
Going along on that theme of involvement. How involved are you guys. Are you just jamming together all the time?
Tim: I mean, inspirtation comes when it comes, we’re obsessed. We’re all producers in our own right, all tweakers, nob turners, listeners. So, there’s not even a chance that we could do something that we didn’t kind of come at from a pretty intense…
Oliver: We’ve barely scratched the surface anyway of what we really want to do. We also do that trial and error thing. What works what doesn’t work. Like the things that really gel, try to really capitalize on this things. That’s how bands get better and improve I think, with time.
Improvement over time and gradual evolution, that seem to be the theme for you guys. Because, the whole genisis of the band was in hip-hop. (To Tim) You’ve mentioned that as an influence a couple of times, then you’ve also mentioned dance. You’ve tried on different genre’s. You’ve parleyed into rock, but I have a feeling you’re not gonna stay there much longer. Do you see yourself going some place else?
Tim: Sure, we’re gonna go all over the place. I think most artistic movements are an attempt to get back to the stuff that was created when you were innocent and foolish enough to not give a fuck what anyone thought and I think that there’s a lot of pressure on bands. We felt a lot of pressure on our first record, it was a major label, it was all this hype. It was a lot of pressure to create this Ima Robot thing. We did it in a way…it happened in a natural way, I guess. And this next record is going to be completley different. Because now we’re more into doing things that work really well live and just having fun with it, as opposed to concentrating on this groundbreaking epic. We’re not down to let that pressure affect us anymore.
Oliver: There’s a new philosphy with us on that. Everything that you put down is not so precious. If it’s not working, it’s just not working. You throw it away, you leave it alone it alone for a while and come back. You don’t need to worry so much about everything so much.
There are a lot of artists that can’t let go of something they’ve created. You can? It’s kind of a gift, because a lot people can’t just walk away from something they’ve created.
Tim: You might write something more in the next hour. Who knows?
Oliver: That’s the way that it goes. You have to have faith in yourself and in some kind of mystical presence that helps you. You’re just a vessel for something beautiful. You’re just a human being.
It’s positivity. Because a lot of the negative bands are the ones that can’t seem to let go.
Oliver: Well, that’s what I am saying. If you’re positive and you’re positive and you think postively and you go, and this is the way that I think, I’m gonna leave that alone and let me just refocus and do something else. And then that next thing that becomes something like… God, if I didn’t stop doing that thing before I would have never stumbled upon this. It’s such a happy accident. And it’s nice to not be held in by constraints of “band” like the drummer, the bass player, the guitarist, the singer. We all kind of have an overview. We could have a song with a drum machine and a clapping hand. The tools are kind of… there’s a broad spectrum of tools.
Just keep the channels open, and if something is coming through…
Oliver: Right, whatever translates the idea right is the right thing to do. You can’t get more or any less than that.
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