Words by Andrew Ryan Fetter
For decades, J Robbins has been an important voice in the music world. For me it started as early as high school. Aside from producing many of my all time favorite records, his songwriting style has always resonated with me on a level different. His latest solo record, Basilisk is no different and will tickle the back of your brain in a confusing but also fun way.
Off Shelf: Were there any big changes that happened to the songs on Basilisk between when you first started writing them and then once contributions from other musicians came into the mix?
J Robbins: Not too much really because we did two sessions of band tracking and then there was a lot of other recording that I did on my own. The first batch of songs, I had a pretty clear idea about how they should be. I had demoed those songs pretty thoroughly so it was just a matter of getting together with Brooks [Harlan] and Darren [Zentek] and giving them the demos. Just figuring out when and how we were even going to get together was a challenge, cause it was in the middle of the pandemic. So as far as where the songs come from they were not, you know, “jammed” into existence. They were put together by me, and in some sense of the whole arc of the song, a lot of the details were conceived before anybody else got their hands on them. Then in the second set of band recordings, there were some songs I intentionally left a lot of room for Darren to compose drum parts, because I think he’s really phenomenally creative. So there was some finishing of arrangements together on the spot and then hitting “record”.
OS: Did that make the writing process of the record easier or harder for you? I could see it having both effects.
JR: Yeah, my problem is if an idea is coming to me while I’m playing, then I immediately want to know where this journey is gonna take me, where does this idea want to go? And I want to go on that journey and see at least some version of the big picture. In some cases that makes for really great collaboration, and then sometimes, that makes it really hard for me in a purely collaborative setting. Collaboration can be like a fishing trip, right? Like sometimes you go fishing and you don’t catch anything. Or you’re sort of standing there and everybody’s playing and the air is kind of full of notes, but where’s the direction? I love being in bands, I love collaboration. But it also makes more sense to me right now to be thinking like a songwriter. I’m just really lucky that I have good friends who are so talented and so much on the same wavelength as me and that they want to be involved with this thing.
OS: Well I’m sure you have built a level of trust with certain musicians that you’ve worked with lately too. It’s been interesting to see how those collaborations shape the way the songs progress. It’s still very much you, but you see those other people in those songs, just seeing how it’s evolved over the years.
JR: Well, that’s what you want, right? [laughs] The goal is to play with people that you really connect with. And I mean, I feel that way about Pete Moffett too. I’ve known him since I was 19 and we can kind of complete each other’s sentences musically. Even though he’s not on this record, he has been playing drums on the majority of the live shows that we’ve done. And he was the drummer on Unbecoming so he’s super psyched to do it since Darren is not as available or as inclined to go on tour. I feel like I’m in a very enviable position of being able to play with a couple of really incredible drummers that I really click with, you know?
OS: The fishing trip analogy really resonates because you can certainly be there and not “catch” anything. But then just be willing to say, “okay, we’ll just come back tomorrow and see if we have any better luck.” And I imagine that’s probably difficult, but maybe has gotten easier over time?
JR: It has gotten easier. But I’ve also just got a lot of songs that just show up in my head, and I want to finish those songs and play them for people. So that becomes almost like a practical matter for me. Here is this thing that’s waiting to be born, ready to go out into the world. That’s where I want to put my energy, versus getting together with people and starting from zero and kind of seeing what comes up. That can be really awesome and rewarding, but can be frustrating too if you’re waiting for those things I mentioned to happen already. It feels funny to even say but I have this internal sensor that keeps telling me, don’t say “be a songwriter”, right? But that is what I’m doing.
OS: I’m curious about the artwork for the cover of the record. Where did this image come from?
JR: Well, I knew that I wanted the record to have a substantially different look from the first record. I really love surrealist-influenced photo collages. And my wife, Janet, has friends in London who are an artist team called KeelerTornero [Chin Keeler and Emma Tornero] and I love their work. So I just reached out to them and asked if it would be possible to use some of their work for the record, and they said yes. So the front cover is a piece of theirs from a few years ago called “Turquoise Valley”. Then I actually commissioned a portrait for the back cover because I thought that would be kind of cool to actually put my face on the record, but also sort of not… you know?
OS: Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s very futuristic. It’s very sci-fi, which I know is kind of something that inspires you quite a bit.
JR: Oh yes! I was talking to a friend of mine about this. Just how happy I was that I found that piece. I could go back retroactively and tell you why I think it grabbed me immediately, but I just chose it based on a gut feeling. In some weird way it feels a little bit like making peace with my teenage self that was a Ray Harryhausen and H.P. Lovecraft reading monster nerd, you know? More recently I haven’t been terribly generous towards my younger self. I sort of look back and have just not been kind to that young man. And lately I’m pleased that I’m starting to think very differently about that. I would have loved this image when I was 13, I would have loved this image when I was 25, and I love it now. It’s a little bit whimsical and a little bit dark, so it spoke to me for both reasons and I was happy they were down for me using it.
OS: I do want to explore the title of the record, Basilisk a bit. It’s based on a mythical creature and harkens back to Lovecraft, where did that idea come into play with the record?
JR: Much like the artwork it was sort of a gut thing. Going back to my childhood, the basilisk was a monster that I used to do little drawings of. I referenced it in the song “Exquisite Corpse”, and I couldn’t tell you for sure where it came from. I was just playing around with those concepts. And in trying to come up with a title for the record I had a lot that I was playing with and that just felt like the right title to me. And it goes back to collaboration. Sometimes you’re trying to create something beautiful and you create a monster instead.
OS: If you don’t mind exploring a little bit what you talked about before, you know, kind of reconciling with your younger self. Was that a theme in the record at all or was that just something that happened after the fact?
JR: Well, it’s just a larger project in my life. I think it’s reflected in the record to a degree. To give one example, the song “Open Mind” is an example of deciding to write a song about a subject that I have no connection to. It was primarily inspired by reading about and watching videos on YouTube about this group of people in England in the 70s who trephined themselves. They became enchanted with the idea that trephining would increase the blood flow of their brain and open up their minds, quite literally. That’s not a typical thing for me, like and I didn’t think that it was personal, but in a way it’s sort of… in a way it’s cool to sort of look at it? Like actually it can’t help but have a personal dimension to it. Not like I’m gonna trephine myself, but it was a project to write a song about something as opposed to just wearing my heart on my sleeve.
OS: Well, and then you go to “A Ray of Sunlight”, “Deep in the darkest timeline, climbing the steepest incline, just to feel a ray of sunlight.” And, I mean, you go from people experimenting with trephination to…that.
JR: Well and that’s the thing about that weird little group of people, they were seeking something beyond themselves. They were trying to open up their world, and in a pretty radical way. But “A Ray Of Sunlight” is I guess kind of about seasonal depression. And depression is a pretty serious word that maybe isn’t fair for me to just throw around. But I get that feeling in the winter, or when it’s dark, or when it’s raining, or anything like that.
And then also… I never really know how much to talk about this, or how much I should talk about it, but… my son passed away in 2020. And, that’s been an ongoing situation for me where I try to look for one positive thing wherever I can. My son had spinal muscular atrophy, which is a very severe physical disability. And his diagnosis six months after he was born in 2006 sort of radically reordered and continues to reorder my thinking about life, and how small positives are incredibly meaningful. I think that’s what that song is trying to express a little bit. The world can be a really dark place and you have to seize that one thing, that little ray of sunlight coming through the window or whatever. If that’s the best you’re gonna get, acknowledge that it’s pretty fucking good that you got that. You know what I mean?