Good-bye Summer…Hi Fall, How are you?
Now that Summer is officially over and done with (and to clarify we mean the season, not Eric) and Fall is upon us we have decided to take a look back at our summer (the good, the bad, and the ugly) and have asked some friends to do the same. We will see September off with some End of Summer interviews over the course of the next couple of weeks.
Kicking that series of interviews off is our Q&A with local band Robotanists. We first came across Robotanists in early 2008 and quickly became fans of their music and asked them to participate in our Childhood Observed: Toys for Tots Benefit (alongside Automatique, Automatic Music Explosion, Beatmo, Maggie Malyn, Voices Voices, The White and the Writing, and You Me and Iowa) that has yet to reach fruition but you can watch a teaser video of here. They spent a day with TRAffIK photographer Jessy Plume and video producer Byron Turk at the LA Zoo getting kicked off of Merry-go-Rounds and being embraced by the Pinwheel Palace. Check out their feature here.
Speaking of Jessy and Byron…
Our “Photographist” Jessy Plume managed to remain cooler than most of us will ever be, while managing to juggle a multitude of projects. We’ll soon be collaborating to bring you some more fun photos. Who knows what our Creative Pow-Wows will bring you. In the meantime please enjoy her photography of bands that participated in our Childhood Observed themed photo shoots that we’ll be bringing you in next couple of weeks. Also her photo of L.A. band Voices Voices for this same project is currently included in the latest issue of Filter Magazine.
Byron is currently in the swamp lands of Louisiana bonding with the ‘gators and all of the other inhabitants of these murky waters working on a top secret film project. The new season of his show Storm Chasers will air on Discovery Channel Oct.18. In the meantime you can read about their storm chasing adventures here.
I’ll bring you some of my Summer Adventures w/ Lady Di very soon. Maybe we can even convince Brandy (“BB” – pictured left with TRAffIK Stopper Heather Ellis) to share some of her own. We’ve got a lot of great fashion and style content as well as features lined up for you in coming weeks including one on Super-girl Espree Devora.
Last of all in the coming months you will see a few changes hit the TRAffIK site. We’ll be adding some fantastic new writers, new columns, and we have also been working on making the site a little easier to navigate. Stay tuned.
We hope you all had a great adventurous season of fun in the sun.
xoxo
Siria and the TRAffIK Team
Soundtracks to our Summer: Robotanists
all photos by Jessy Plume for TRAffIK
The darlings of our Summer Soundtrack, Silverlake based Robotanists enjoyed a whirlwind season full of sunshine, radio airplay (KCRW), and lots of new friends. Two of the band members Sarah Ellquist and Daniel de Blanke have taken a few moments to bring you firsthand some of the highlights of their summer, as well as how they feel they’ve grown as a band. They even let you us in on what songs they wish they had written.
Robotanists are:
Daniel de Blanke – guitars, keys, songwriting
Sarah Ellquist – vocals, keys, songwriting
Preston Scott Phillips – percussion, drums, iphone
Keith Boyarsky – bass
TRAffIK: Where can we learn more about your band?
DANIEL: Google “robotanists” or go to http://robotanists.com
TRAffIK: How did you come together?
DANIEL: We were all in other bands, and then left those bands and formed this one. The social lubricant was alcohol and a fondness for screaming at the television. That, and Dostoevsky.
TRAffIK: How would you describe your sound?
DANIEL: Up-tempo sad music for amoral intellectuals
SARAH: Make-up sex
TRAffIK: How does the songwriting process work for you? Where does the inspiration come from?
SARAH: Dan and I are a song writing team, but every song is born in a different way, from a different place. I write all of the lyrics, but sometimes, I write the melody and Dan builds harmony from there, or vice versa. If either of us ever thinks that we’ve written a complete song, the other is there to edit and refine. We take everything to the rhythm section for the final seal of approval… and the rest is history. Lyrics come from a very personal place, but I try to craft them in a way that the listener can interpret as they choose. Music is a personal thing, I want listeners to make our music theirs.
DANIEL: I have three thousand song ideas that are half crafted at any given time. I generally force Sarah to listen to them until she starts singing melodic material.
TRAffIK: Lately you’ve been performing acoustically a lot more than we’d seen previously. Do you have a preference for either performing unplugged or plugged in?
SARAH: I think we all prefer the energy of playing as a full band, but performing with just an acoustic guitar is a great way to really showcase our songwriting. It’s liberating to strip things down and just let the melody and harmony dance with each other.
TRAffIK: What started this trend for you?
SARAH: I suppose you could say that most of our music starts out “acoustic” during the demo phase, but we started performing them that way after some friends of ours (the band Vanaprasta) asked us to come to the Bond St. Lounge at the Thompson Hotel in Beverly Hills over the summer and play a few songs. The next thing we knew we were getting weekly invites to perform all over LA. (more…)