My Favorite Robot with Mano Le Tough, Gera at Footwork (425 Adelaide West), Saturday (September 21), 10 pm. footworkbar.com.
Toronto electronic trio My Favorite Robot’s new album, Atomic Age (No. 19), is technically their second, but in some ways it’s their debut, seeing as it’s the first to feature James Teej alongside founders Jared Simms and Voytek Korab.
“We were still in the infancy of figuring out what we wanted to do in our production style on our original debut in 2009, not to mention Teej not being in the mix at that point,” explains Simms over pints of beer.
“When I look back, I’m proud of it, but this one feels much more like a cohesive album than a collection of tracks, and more representative of what we’re about.”
Fans of the trio’s DJ sets and club singles may be surprised at how pop-
oriented Atomic Age is, especially since it’s being released by their friends at
No. 19, the Toronto house label co-owned by Art Department’s Jonny White.
Many of the songs have more in common with Radiohead than with club music, although the low-end thump and frequency-tweaking serve as reminders that this is still a trio of DJs who also run their own electronic label under the same name.
“We wanted to make it more song-based, and not necessarily as tracky. When you’re doing singles and EPs, those are more DJ-centric, but we all grew up with albums being important to us, and we wanted this to be more representative of all the music we’re into.”
Considering how song-focused Atomic Age is, it follows that they’d promote it with live gigs. For now, it doesn’t make sense to construct a band, as the music wasn’t written or recorded in a conventional format. But that could change in the near future.
“We’re DJs, and Atomic Age was produced as a studio album, but our next big project is to develop a live show.
“We don’t just want to do a boring laptop show. We want to make the next album with performing in mind.”
benjaminb@nowtoronto.com | @benjaminboles
