When Andy Studer, lead vocalist of the band Red Robot, was in elementary school, he created a super hero named “Red Robot” that he would write stories about. When Studer, his brother and fellow band mates decided to create a band, they decided to use an aspect of Studer’s childhood creativity to come up with a name. The group will be performing tonight as part of CAC’s continuing concert series with UCLA student band The Internship. Studer talked to Daily Bruin’s Marjorie Yan about the group’s music, writing process and current EP, “Identification.”
Daily Bruin: Tell me a little about how Red Robot formed. When, where and how did you all meet?
Andy Studer: Well, we all went to Hamilton High School together in Los Angeles and originally it was just my brother and I, and we basically … started writing songs together. Then our bass player joined in. We asked him and … when we got to college, one of our old high school friends happened to be there too so we asked him to join.
DB: How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard it before?
AS: I would describe it as maybe a mix of Radiohead and Coldplay, a mix of indie rock and pop. We use a lot of classical instrumentation in a lot of our songs so that’s what sets us apart in some ways.
DB: What are you most excited for when you perform on Monday at UCLA? Have you performed here before?
AS: I haven’t, and I’m really excited because we have a lot of friends that go to UCLA. There are a lot of people I haven’t seen in a long time. I’m excited to see how the UCLA student body will respond to our music. We played a lot at our school, CalArts, and in other places in West L.A. and it’s going to be fun to see how they react to the acoustics that we do.
DB: Tell me a little about the band’s writing process?
AS: Well, we’ve pretty much done it as I’ll come up with songs. Those songs, they can start from a little flicker from an idea. I usually sit down with a guitar for an hour or two at least. Sometimes it’s more of a waiting process with me. … It’s like catching lightning in a bottle for me. When that does happen, I’ll sit down with a song idea and flush it out and write parts, and once that’s finished, I’ll bring it to Ryan (Studer, drummer of the band) and we’ll start picking it apart and try different things. Sometimes I’ll bring it into rehearsal and we’ll try to figure it out. Our guitar player Aaron and our bass player Andy, they’ll come up with ideas too. It’s really a collaborative effort to make the songs (the) best … they can be.
DB: Can you tell us about recording “Identification”?
SG: The recording process primarily takes place between my brother and I. We have a songwriter/producer partnership between us. … I usually bring in the songs and we produce them together and the recording process is always filled with arguments and disagreements on almost every little detail you can imagine, and so basically the recording process took over three years. … We had school and spent a lot of time on how the songs would sound and (in) what direction they would go. The album is a span of songs that I’ve written over four or five years. We just picked the ones we liked, they were not necessarily the best songs. All of them are considered strong but we picked ones that fit together really well. … There are acoustic songs featuring a string quartet so we really thought about making it a fluid listening experience, and that was basically our focus for the EP.
Email Yan at
myan@media.ucla.edu.