Much excitement this week as the robots released the first of three download singles. It is called Guild of Defiants and is available from Bandcamp, Amazon, iTunes and Spotify

It has also been packed lovingly onto CD backed with We Got It Wrong available at our live shows.

 

 

 

Click me to buy from Amazon

Click me to listen on spotify if you are too cheap to pay

 

 

Ah. The final day. The final song. The one we have put off till last. Zut Alorz, a song to strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest of recording engineers. Four part harmonies, rhythm section played on an ice cube and a cornucopia of samples from a nintendo DS.

Mysteriously it all came together as if the recording goblins had woven it themselves like a magical sonic bedspread. With special powers.

The day was not without incident. Dylan finally lost the plot and attempted to clean the entire building with a dustpan and brush, Ryan blamed an hours delay on a particularly difficult bowl of porridge and the day was overshadowed by the accidental theft of a flapjack.

So we leave the studio exhausted but happy. Three tracks of singular wonderment clutched, sweatily, to our collective bosom. Our hearts aglow with the expectation that we will soon be allowing our musical offspring its first tentative steps into the world at large.

Lastly, some final words from Mr Watkins:

(upon spying an isolated tower from the window of the car while on a rare outdoor escapade)

SW “I was gonnae build a studio in there”

MTR “Are you sure Stevie? it’s only about eight feet wide.”

SW ” Aye, but thats just the chimney for some kinda fuckin mega-castle undergroond likes”

MTR “Ah.”

 

IF ROBOTS WERE BEETROOT.

 

 

Second day of recording was much less stressful and consequently presented a lot more opportunity for dicking about, being fannies and generally amusing ourselves in the least mature way possible. Much of this centred around the inability of boys to sit quietly in an office chair without spinning round, wheeling themselves about and tampering with each other’s height adjusters to cause the incumbent to plummet to the ground. A casual observer would have witnessed two grown men frantically burling round in an attempt to complete a full circle on the spinny chair without touching the floor or walls. At one point later in the evening Stevie was naive enough to suggest that we would get a better sense of the mix if we positioned ourselves equidistant to the speakers on each side. A few moments later, unnerved by the silence, Stevie turned round to discover the entire band lined up behind him on matching office chairs, pretending to row an imaginary viking longboat towards the mixing desk.

Stevie continues to knock out gems of wisdom throughout the course of the day and is fast becoming a sage for modern youth. Finest quote so far: “Yaaass! This elderflower juice is fuckin incredible. It makes yer mooth taste like you’ve been getting off wi someone better off than you!”

One imagines that Oscar Wilde is pure shitin it!

In amongst this we did actually manage to make Guild of Defiants sound incredible, so not an entirely wasted day.

A Victorian orphan at work in the My Tiny Robots workhouse. This poor waif has lived off nothing but coffee and string for the last three months. He hasn’t seen daylight since 2004 and has been forced to sleep under the mixing desk since he sold his bedding to buy shoes.

Robots have made their way to the new Tape Studios HQ in deepest Leith, having unearthed the recordings from earlier in the year, blown the dust off them and handed them over to Mr Stephen Watkins (part Dickens character/part evil studio genius)

After a 4am finish at the end of day one, by which time we had all taken leave of our senses and were hallucinating naked goblins dancing the macarena across the mixing desk, we have learnt some new things;

 

1. The optimum vehicle of choice for travelling to the studio through hurricane Get Tae, is not a seventies racing bicycle.

2. Slipping your hand quietly into your shirt and twirling your own chest hair is perfectly normal and in no way distracting for other people in the room with you.

3. Stevie is indestructible. In the small wee hours when everyone else is going peculiar and noone ever wants to hear any music ever again, he will be keepin the heid and discreetly routing all the drums through a thatcher era fridge-freezer to achieve the essence of the miners strike or something.

4. Jokes about dairy products are infinitely funnier after a 16 hour mixing session.

5. “Cheerz”  was a sitcom set in Bozton Mazzachuzzetts.

 

Sunday 11th Sepember. An inauspicious date sees robots play an exceptionally sweaty gig at electric circus. Current estimates of weight loss due to perspiration range from 3 -8kg per capita. Or half of overall bodyweight for Dylan.

Thanks once again to Cancel the Astronauts for their kind hospitality and exemplary table manners.

Photograph courtesy of Finnish literary Photogapher Meghan Giboin.

Everyone likes something for free, which is why we are giving this track away gratis, no special codes needed, no email address to enter… you just have to want to have the track.

If you like our music, then please spread the word about this free track of ours. Facebook it, blog it or twat it, anyway you like… even myspace if you still use it.

First post for a while largely due to generally being a bit rubbish. We got to play a pretty incredible festival over the weekend. The folks from Kelburn Garden Party had very kindly asked us to play the pyramid stage on sunday night. Improbable as it sounds, we got to play our set as the sun set over the sea behind our stage. we were of course magnificent, but our job was made infinitely easier as a consequence of 3 external factors; firstly we got to play in the middle of a beautiful forest, secondly after an onstage request for an insect repellent roadie, a mystery man strode impressively  onto the stage and sprayed each of us with some sort of  posh insect repellent/moisturiser before disappearing into the night, and lastly an enormously drunk trustafarian walked confidently face first into a sidestage fence halfway through the set. Much hilarity all round.

Pretty magical weekend all in all. Waterfall, castle, all the gid shit.

A few very long days later and we are home, spent but happy.

Things we have learned from the few days in isolation:

Ryan became a man last week (the exact origins of this are murky, but improbably, relate to his singing skills rather than anything more unsavoury)

Gareth should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery while under the influence of energy drinks. Unless you need to get somewhere dead quick, in which case its a distinct advantage.

Dylan is uncomfortable with physical displays of affection, however manly they may be.

Russell can knock out vocal harmonies first take even if he’s making them up as he goes along. The Woodthief, however, is an unpredictable beast and should not be left unattended at any point.

Our friends Mr and Mrs Dime and Lady Stevie Watkins have the ability to squeeze the best out of the most unlikely collection of idiots ever to sully their threshhold.

Thankyou to all of them. x

We are all very excited

Once again we find ourselves in the warm embrace of the hospitality of Nakiska. At once mother, haven and muse to us all. Or a nice hoose wi a studio in it, depending on your perspective.

Gareth mistakenly consumed his own weight in relentless on the upward journey and has been twitching for 14 hours. It seems highly probably that we will be recording all the songs at 3 times their normal speed as a consequence.

Ryan’s tiger print romper suit was an inspiration to us all. If a 6′ 5″ tall man can fulfil his dream of dressing like Tigger, then there is no limit to what can be achieved.

The hot tub had to be evacuated last night when the testosterone levels became dangerously high, resulting in Mrs Dime spontaneously growing back hair.

Currently at everyone’s favourite stage of recording – the drum soundcheck. Essentially one loon hitting shit, while everyone else wears two sets of earplugs and tries to find some where to hide. As I write, I am crouched in the shed with the handle of a hoe prodding me in the groin (please supply your own joke here).

for the now

Adieu.