Monday, October 15, 2012

Pitstop: DT ROTBOT

There's a certain weight of expectation that comes when one of your favorite bands/artists shares one of their favorite band with you. Especially if they don't have already established and understood greatness. You're at once expected them to be similar enough to create a sort of connect the dots of musical influence while also expecting them to exponentially greater than your wildest dreams. That's more or less how I felt when Matt of Friend Roulette labelled Brooklyn trio DT ROTBOT as his favorite band.

Luckily the Brooklyn psychedelic rockers live up to the oppressive weight. There's a wide multitude of bands  doing the psychedelic/experimental thing, that's certainly true. But DT ROTBOT do so in a remarkably stylistic manner. Not overly conceptualized but there's a certain artiness to their quirky brand of experimental rock. The brainchild of Akiva Zamcheck with assistance from Patrick Monte and the later inclusion of Allan Mednard on drums, DT ROTBOT create a type of rock that's beguiling not just in its ability to groove but in its use of intensely memorable and as result highly enjoyable melodic-writing.

In a way DT ROTBOT is Brooklyn's answer to Detroit's Prussia as Zamcheck waves intricate, exciting narratives in which he seems to serves as both storyteller as well as a character of his own design (much like Prussia's Ryan Spencer does on Poor English). All the while, the music around him takes unpredictable twists and turns even as they become familiar through extended listening. DT ROTBOT is also a band that uses its talents effectively.  Where you might normally associate their psychedelic influence with that of the jam band variety, the trio make extensive of silence, space, and breath. Even at its most frenetic, it never manages to fill in all the cracks and that's what makes them all the more intriguing. What's more is that it seems almost totally at odds with the bands ability to progress through such a wide variety of ideas and musical moments while still somehow coming off cohesive and highly sensible.

Get a taste of DT ROTBOT with their incredible new self-titled EP:







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