“We were jerks,” laughs Goolkasian.
He’s talking about the time his old band, The Elevator Drops, allegedly helped get themselves thrown off a Blur tour after an Oasis sticker appeared on their bass drum. It’s one of several stories that emerge during a conversation that also includes fake gift baskets, Star Wars toys, French poetry, homemade robots and a surprising amount of discussion about the end of civilisation.
Replaced By Robots, the trio formed by Goolkasian, Heather Joy Morgan and Adam Wade, occupy a peculiar corner of modern music. Their songs are catchy, funny and occasionally unsettling, while their latest release arrives with a stop-motion film built from vintage toys and scraps of junk. The group’s world is full of science fiction, dark humour and pop culture detritus, but what comes across most strongly is a shared enthusiasm for making things.
As it turns out, being replaced by robots sounds a lot more entertaining than expected.
Replaced By Robots is a great name because it can be read as either a joke or, in today’s AI age, a prophecy. Which reading do you prefer?
Goolkasian: You think this is a joke! Are we clowns to you?
Replaced by Robots® is a name that feels increasingly relevant. We love it. The name is amorphous, inspiring and non-constrictive. No preconceptions as to what we have to sound like. Songs like ‘The Laboratory’ which defies categorization still feel at home with this moniker.
You describe yourselves as ‘obsolete bohemians.’ When was the first time you felt out of step with the modern world?
Damon Wellner (Animator): For me it was 1985, at age 13, when “Masters Of The Universe” toys overtook the toy industry and Star Wars toys were no longer cool for about ten years. I call this period “The Dark Times”.
The Band collectively: Hahaha – The Dark Time!
Adam Wade: I suppose I felt out of touch with the modern world when Covid came along and everybody was sort of hunkering down to escape the outside, relying on electronics and technology really more than getting out, breathing air, etc. It was like Armageddon with all the music venues, closing down and the trampoline places and beaches everyone in a private box everything all shutting down and going away that’s when I realized my guitar and my creativity and art output was more important than anything if I were going to survive mentally at least.
Goolkasian: Watching humans fight for low-paid, repetitive work while machines are trained to dream in images, music, and stories.
Heather Joy Morgan: I’ve been out of step my whole life, I’m an oil painter, dragging sticks through colored mud. I recited french poetry off the balcony to my fellow grad students and they rolled their eyes, they were more into pop culture references. I moved to Berlin in 1999 when everyone was going to Brooklyn and I moved to Brooklyn when it was heading to Berlin. I decided in 2009 that Radiohead was pretty good. What does it matter what other people do?
Your songs often sound upbeat even when the subject matter is anything but. Is that a deliberate contradiction?
Heather Joy Morgan: Art is inherently contradictory. Songs about sadness make me happy.
Goolkasian: But don’t forget the songs that made you cry And the songs that saved your life LALALA
You have spoken about being pessimistic about humanity’s future. What keeps you optimistic enough to carry on making art?
Adam Wade: It’s the kind of music we like to listen to and kind of how we are an operate in general. I remember losing my mind dancing at clubs when I was younger to lyrics about nuclear holocaust and death and violence, but it had a great poppy keyboard and drum thing going on so you just danced almost like an exorcism. The songs having an upbeat, dramatic, and dark nature is very intentional.
Damon: I don’t think optimism is the driving force behind my work. For me it’s an escape from the world I’ve never really fit in, to create my own in miniature. The art I make has always been what I consider play. It’s rarely ever made me any money, and there’s rarely any message embedded in it. I’ve always enjoyed making my toys come alive and building worlds around them. Occasionally that has led to opportunities creating miniature worlds for others, including my all-too-brief dream job, making Star Wars videos for Hasbro back in 1999-2000. I consider ‘Zero Joy Zero’ to be my greatest achievement, so that could be considered optimism, because I gave it all I have, hoping it would lead to more work, but also driven by pure inspiration from the music.
Goolkasian: Creating Music is not unlike being a junkie. Waiting for that next creative wow moment is sort of like Scraping the bowl for an extra hit.
Heather Joy Morgan: It is not optimism that keeps me working, it is the desire to wring every last drop of lived intensity out of the short amount of time I have on the doomed planet.
The ‘Zero Joy Zero’ film draws on everything from Metropolis to Blade Runner. Which science-fiction film do you return to most often, and why?
Damon: I know it’s not strictly sci-fi, but Star Wars has always been my happy place since it came out when I was 5. I was the perfect age to become addicted to both the films and the toys. The toys released by Hasbro for the past 30 years have become more and more poseable, making them better and better stop-motion puppets. The awkwardness of admitting to being a Star Wars nerd ebbs and flows with the fluctuations in quality of the films and shows released. I still love it, but sometimes it feels like an abusive relationship at this point.
Heather Joy Morgan: I return to Total Recall quite often, because I saw it in the theater on the first of only a few real dates I have ever been on. It was intense. “Dates” are weird, much easier just to sleep with someone if you like them than to sit next to them in the dark for two hours, unsure if they like you, but wondering. Verhoeven is also a complex storyteller and I admire him a lot.
Damon was keen to point out that no AI was used in making the video. Do you think audiences are beginning to value evidence of human craft in a different way?
Goolkasian: I wish but I doubt it.
Damon: I should clarify that no generative AI was used. I need to own up to the fact that I did use the new AI powered object selection tools made available by Adobe for rotoscoping. I feel like that’s a forgivable use of the technology I’ve been reluctantly feeding with my work for many years. I predict that there will be an ever-expanding split between the people who gleefully embrace generative AI, and those who consider it a dealbreaker. Sadly, a huge percentage of people wouldn’t notice nor appreciate the difference between genuine stop-motion animation and an AI emulation. In my opinion there are probably ways to inject AI tools into the creative process that will be time savers without eroding the ability to use your brain to hatch the ideas at the core of the art.
Heather Joy Morgan: the ubiquity of digital forms make the lesser seen analog skills more precious and valuable, at least to some. As I mentioned, sticks in colored mud, and I also write in cursive.
Goolkasian: Also, One of our next singles is ‘Blue Skies On Mars’ which is an epic line from…
The robots in the film were built from old toys and bits of junk. Is there something fitting about making a futuristic story out of discarded objects?
Damon: Absolutely. I’m not a hoarder, but I keep a lot of random objects that others might discard. I’ve been making toy videos for almost 30 years, which makes me look at everything differently. I think about what any object might be seen as within a miniature world. I keep a lot of small objects that I’ve got a feeling I might eventually find a use for, even if I have no clue what that might be. For this project I was able to find uses for lots of things I’ve had sitting around for years, or even decades.
Some things I want the audience to recognize out of normal context, like the UFO made from a sauce pan lid, which is my hat tip to the first and still greatest Star Wars parody fan film, “Hardware Wars”.
I named the robots, and developed lore for their backstory that’s not told in the video. I’ve only ever discussed it with my co-director Heather, who oversaw every decision I would propose, down to the small details, to make sure it aligned with the vision and sense of humor of the band. I’ve never had a smoother collaboration. Heather is a genius artist. Working with her was the most synchronous creative experience I’ve ever had.
You’ll notice several Earthly and human references in the designs. The title character, 0-Joy-0, is a robot with human-like hands (taken from a ‘70s Cher doll), and a single holographic human eye. G001-KZN is designed after a vintage guitar amp, and a home stereo speaker, and has a living brain (from a Micronauts toy, lit from within using a laser pointer cat toy and fiber optic fibers from a vintage novelty lamp) in a triangular water tank protruding from his chest (from a ‘80s LazerTag sensor cap).
The way I see it, these robots are from our future, and have the vestigial remains of human culture, and possibly body parts and DNA from their creators, built into them, even though they lost touch with humanity long ago in their timeline. Built with spare parts after humanity fled a dying planet.
However, they have traveled great distances at unimaginable speeds using technology beyond our comprehension, (a dimensional wormhole known to them as “bubble-space”,) which returned them to Earth back in prehistoric times from our perspective, which is why they had to hide at the bottom of our ocean and wait for human society to evolve, so they could emerge and overtake it.
They destroy us and replace us right before we have a chance to destroy the Earth. Humans were expendable to save the planet, but the robots wanted to live in the glorified but lost infrastructure familiar to them in the mythology written into the core binary code of their hard drives. Maybe they’ll succeed where we failed.
Goolkasian, The Elevator Drops opened for everyone from Pulp to Echo & The Bunnymen. Looking back now, what do you think that band achieved that wasn’t fully appreciated at the time?
Goolkasian: Well, I think we were sort of ahead of our the times and I was way too impatient to wait around for fame to find us.
The Oasis sticker incident on the Blur tour has become part of indie folklore. Did it feel funny at the time, or only years later?
Goolkasian: We were jerks. That was Fitts (drummer) hahaha. Well in a way maybe it was stuff like that which got us in trouble and slowed our progress. We got kicked off tours. Radio stations.
But it was all kind of honest and fun I mean look the song, “I Wanna be a Drop 19” was written because we were getting overshadowed. We were excited to work on one of our best songs “Elevator to Heaven” but got bumped out of the studio by The DROP 19’s who were more important and booked the same night.
It’s not a mean spirited song it’s about wanting what they had. I wanna wear those dark sunglasses. Yet Paula Kelly from the Drop 19’s is a sweetheart, she laughed about that song and called us jerks for recording it but still laughs at it and is always friendly and helpful.
Other people were not so nice. OH NO Now I can’t stop I have to tell my favorite story. One night we were starving while recording at new alliance in Boston and a giant box showed up with a THANK YOU CARD for the BAND O POSITIVE – MUCH LOVE FROM THE GANG AT WBCN (big Boston radio station). In the box was a GIFT basket with Delicious Pasteries, Cheeses, Candies & Good Coffee.
Bent over with laughter we instinctively, removed the gift basket and replaced it with a disgustingly dusty fake plant we found near the studio utility shed just about the same size. Resealed the box and reattached the card. HAHAHA so awful. Any how we have matured a lot since then.
Many artists now release a steady stream of singles rather than albums. Does that suit your attention span better, or do you still think in terms of larger bodies of work?
Goolkasian: WTH Are you reading our minds? Our NEW goal is a steady stream of singles. It’s like baking fresh donuts and serving them right away!
Adam Wade: We love the idea of creating singles, sort of making drinks to order and then if you want the waiter to bring you the whole bottle that’s coming too.We will collect the singles into a killer album at the end. It just really works for us to come up with an idea and finish a song from beginning to end and then move onto the next. GOOL is so brilliant at great melody and simple evocative lyrics. The music on my end just comes naturally it’s very inspired.
Paul Q. Kolderie has worked on many legendary artists. What did he hear in Replaced By Robots that convinced him to get involved in The Experiment EP? What’s it like working with him?
Goolkasian: I love that Kolderie sent back ONE mix. I argued with him about a few things and he stood his ground. He calmly explained why he did these odd things and either he was 100% correct or he brainwashed the heck out of us because that mix has sounded perfect to me ever since. I can’t wait to do more with him. We also worked with Josh Hager aka Garvy J (Edrops) on ‘Are We Falling in Love or am I just losing my mind’ and as always had Terry Palmer master it all. It’s fun learning from talent Producers.
When people hear the name Replaced By Robots twenty years from now, what do you think they’ll assume you were trying to say?
Adam Wade: I think 20 years from know they will think we were in on the robot takeover of human kind or just really sensitive and aware.
Heather Joy Morgan: as Marlene Dietrich intoned at the end of “Touch of Evil”, “what does it matter what people say?”
Goolkasian: I do hope they feel the love.
