Running, jumping, climbing trees…

Robots in Disguise by Samantha Hills

European Vibe Magazine, November 2007

Supersonic Madrid

Sue Denim is sitting cross-legged, in the back room of Supersonic, one of Madrid’s hip backstreet hangouts, in Argüelles. Her hair is bleached into a thousand different colours and she is wearing a glittering belt that sits on top of a black and gold dress. There is, as I am discovering, nothing subtle about the Robots’ fashion sense.

If the name Robots in Disguise conjures up nothing more in your mind than perhaps images of the glorious Optimus Prime, then you wouldn’t be alone. The Robots (in this incarnation) are a girl-girl band formed at Liverpool University, by Denim and her friend Dee Plume, seven years ago. Their music is an odd breed of glam-electronica; the kind that you would expect the love children of Ziggy Stardust and Blondie to come up with. And to put things as plainly as possible, it is fantastic.

It had taken me all of about 20 seconds to arrive at this conclusion, earlier in the day, as I was doing a spot of pre-interview research. The Robots have released two albums; their eponymous debut in 2001 and the follow up, a couple of years later, Get Rid. Despite the fact that both albums were received well by the critics, they never managed to create a lasting impression upon the public consciousness. It was as if these two albums, packed full of potential singles, lazily sauntered out into release with no particular intent or direction. Seven years in, and Robots in Disguise are more or less stuck on the first or second rung of the music industry’s slippery ladder. Meeting Sue Denim presented me with the perfect chance to find out why.

“It is strange; it just never happened for us really,” she mused. “For example, take (last year’s single) Turn It Up, everyone was convinced that it was going to be a hit. In the end it just ended up outside the top 100”. When I mention the Robots’ stumbling fortunes in comparison with those of the Klaxons, Denim shows a hint of frustration: “Well that is what happens when you are signed for £500,000 and have another half million spent on you”. “The first time that I saw the Klaxons, in Berlin, they weren’t that brilliant. Then they came back a few months later and they were absolutely fantastic. I suppose that has a lot to do with the confidence levels within a band”.

MySpace face

Still, the Robots are not without their fans. MySpace is the established music hangout on the internet; and their site shows that almost a million people have listened to Turn It Up. To put this in some kind of perspective, the Kaiser Chiefs’ number 1 single, Ruby, has been listened to by only 300,000 people. “We are hoping that the MySpace thing is really going to work for us this time,” Denim ponders. “We have never had that before, and that is perhaps why some of the earlier stuff didn’t quite work”.

Indeed, the Robots have a new album in the offing. Their new single, The Sex Has Made Me Stupid, is by this time reverberating around the walls of Supersonic, and the mood is generally quite positive.

Accompanying the new single is a tour around the United Kingdom and Europe. Is there anywhere she is particularly looking forward to playing? “It’ll be nice to go home and play in Colchester, because that is where I used to go and watch gigs when I was younger, so it will be a bit weird going back and playing there myself. Places I’m not looking forward to? Leicester. Last time we went there, we played to about four different people. It was horrible”.

Like being married without the sex

Denim now resides in Berlin. Playing a succession of DJ sets in Berlin and around Europe under the name $U€™ d£NiM. “I like Madrid,” she notes. “It is very much like Berlin in some ways. There are narrow streets and all the graffiti”. We point out to her that the Madrileño music scene is perhaps a little different to what she would find in Germany. “I can imagine, it is interesting how different countries tend to be disposed to different types of music. In Berlin it is great; but it is a very well established music scene. In Madrid it seems to just be getting going”.

As an all girl band, the Robots stand out from the crowd. Sue plays bass and Dee guitar, whilst they both sing the same sleek, sexy vocals which are more than a touch reminiscent of Nina Persson of the Cardigans. “We’re both getting better as musicians. When we started I could hardly play at all and Dee was ok on the guitar. Now we have actually got to the point where I am ok and Dee is quite good” she muses, summing up the do-it-yourself punk ethic perfectly.

But is it difficult being in the same band with one other person for so long? “It is a bit like being married, but worse, because you can’t have sex” she ponders. “We generally get on all right, Dee lives in London and I am in Berlin, which is difficult”. “We have had some fantastic fights though: once at a service station in France and then once in California. We had to be separated; all these big guys from nowhere appeared and dragged us apart”.

Sitting in Supersonic, listening to their music and talking with Sue, I am learning that there is something different about Robots in Disguise. Their songs have a raw edginess; their costumes, pseudonyms and eccentric fashion sense all have an unavoidable, in-built attraction. In short, the formula is too good not to work. And with a new album on the way, this time I sincerely hope that this time it does.