Talking to: Robbie & Mona
Robbie & Mona is couple-duet, William Carkeet and Eleanor Gray, who have found a surreal creative outlet making their scrap-book glitch pop together. They craft erratic and psychedelic dream-pop which subverts the indistinct haze that often plagues the genre. Both members of Bristol-based indie collective Pet Shimmers, they started working together in 2019 on Ellie’s first solo album, which morphed instead into Robbie & Mona’s first; EW, which was released on January 28th. Melding Ellie’s distinctive dreamy, distorted vocals, her passion for surrealism and storytelling, and Will’s driven, glitchy, beautiful soundscapes and original production, it is a distinct and compelling invitation into the world of Robbie & Mona, where both artists bring their talents to the table and create something completely unique together.
Ahead of their live stream set for The Everyday Magazine on March 5th, we caught up with them and talked about what inspires them, their alchemic musical relationship and where it is taking them next.
Tell us a bit more about your music partnership as Robbie & Mona.
Ellie: Will usually begins the songs really, by making the musicality part of it; the structure.
Will: The basic idea of the song. Ellie is generally in the room whilst I am doing that, so if she doesn't like it it doesn't go much further. It kind of goes through a sort of funnel of where Robbie and Mona is.
Ellie: There’s not really a word, it's more of an abstract feeling, or sense of humour or taste or something, an intuitive feeling.
Will: Then you come up with the words for it…
Ellie: It's kind of like pass the parcel.
So, you two are a couple... what came first, getting together or making music together?
Will: The music came first. We are in another band, called Pet Shimmers, we met through that, and then at the time Ellie had just finished her first solo album, and I basically said I wanted to produce her second solo album, which kind of turned into Robbie and Mona.
Ellie: I had been working with someone else, and then after a month of being in Pet Shimmers together we started working together in his studio; it was all very entwined, the feelings of it all, and then a month later we got together.
Will: I think it comes across in the music as well,
Ellie: What is it you call it? Our audio baby.
The music you make together, is it very different to what you were doing before?
Will: I think it is, yeah.
Ellie: I think for me in my imaginary perfect land it is what I always wanted to do, which was difficult to find, because I would always be playing a guitar which I can’t even do that well, and making up imaginative little stories. But I wanted them to be bigger, in a kind of Julie Cruz-esque way, I wanted it to be more of a parity of sound type thing.
Will: You had interesting ideas, interesting vocals and interesting lyrics, but you were just lacking method and someone driving a project with some knowledge of how to produce things really.
I have spoken to a couple of musicians who felt like they got stuck behind a guitar, and then it was getting into more electronic, more produced music, that they then felt that they were able to come out and shine a bit more.
Ellie: Yeah, I find the guitar is really limiting in some ways, in it’s technical aspects but also in terms of it’s associations.
Will: It's got that kind of sound, synthesizers can do so many other things that a guitar can’t do.
In your own words, what would you say is the music you make?
Ellie: I always think of it as opportunity, short stories in audio format, different to the usual structure.
Will: It has definitely felt like an opportunity to express certain things that we can’t express in other projects. We have created this little world around Robbie and Mona that kind of, you can’t really expect where they go in some ways. The general idea of a song is kind of ‘first chorus, first chorus’ pop song, but we kind of take that and do something else with it.
Ellie: I would say it is very hot but not.
Will: The first album was lot of the automatism way of doing things, We try and use this in our music, so I was using a lot of tape machines and tape loops it comes out in quite a unplanned way. Using tape machines and tape loops, you can’t control the outcome of it in a very precise way, so using that is an interesting way of forming songs. And Ellie does the same thing with her vocals.
Ellie: It's like a branch of surrealism, automatism, being spontaneous, trusting that part of yourself, like doodling. I always feel like I can only do that on my own in a room with a mic though, just seeing how it goes, it feels really personal, rather than pre-writing it and then recording it.
It does come across that way; your music does sound very personal and very organic.
Ellie: It is a theme I have been obsessed with for the last year.
Will: I think it's always been a thing we use, but we never had a name for it, it was always our process! For instance, the first song on the album, fidelity, was just a recording of Ellie singing and playing a little shitty keyboard.
Ellie: Yeah, just completely unrelated to anything else we were doing, just my own things.
Will: She just came out with some stuff, some nonsense, and she just showed me it and I thought it was cool, so I put it into my old 60s tape machine, reel to reel, and it has a setting where you can put it through really slow, so I slowed it down as much as possible, so it disintegrates the audio and becomes something totally different to the original idea. So I created some samples out of that vocal that Ellie did and that forms the backbone of the song.
Ellie: It almost became the chords didn't it?
Will; Yes, because it is so slow it becomes chordal so you can layer it up and use it as harmonies.
Did you get a chance to play live together as Robbie and Mona before lock down?
Will: We played quite a lot of shows.
Ellie: In Autumn 2019 we put out a single and played shows then.
Will: We did a few shows last year as well.
Ellie: In between the lock downs we did two gigs in 2020. We played a show in London for So Young in London in December. It's been so annoying with live music being so stop/start, I really want a time when I can just keep going and evolving.
I presume when you play live a lot you build up an impetus that you don’t get from doing the odd show here and there?
Ellie: Yes, exactly.
Is music your full time thing then?
Ellie: We are trying to make it full time. I think it's easier for Will because he does production, so he makes money out of that. In terms of the surrealism theme I have applied to do an MA in Art Theory in September to go alongside the music.
Your album EW came out on 28th January. And your second album; it's nearly finished?
Will: Yeah, I reckon it will be done in about a month.
Will: It's really tricky at the moment because the album we [have just released] we made a year ago, so we have been sitting on the album for quite a while, and we have finished our second album now, and my head is definitely with that album, which is quite a step in a different direction. I suppose the second album has the same dreamy, synthy feeling, but it is also a lot more jazzy.
Ellie: It's a lot more mature.
It's just you two again? Or do you have other musicians come in and do stuff as well?
Will: We have our drummer Mig coming in and doing a few tracks.
Ellie: We play live with another drummer called Jez, so we are trying out a few different things. I think because it has been lock down we have been stuck doing the same, just the two of us playing, but when we get out and tour the second album we want to try and get a band together.
Will: The second album is definitely going to be a full band. This album is definitely more piano based, more woody, more organic, more jazzy, The first lock down I spent the entire time perfecting jazz on the piano. I have basically tried to write a jazz album.
Ellie: But we have added in the elements used in the first album.
You are based in Bristol, are you both from Bristol?
Will: Sadly not!
Ellie: Well, I have been here for twelve years, but Devon originally, and London.
Will: I am from all over the place. I was born in Devon, brought up on the Isle of Wight, lived in Portsmouth, then I studied in Manchester and moved to Bristol around three years ago.
How's the Bristol music scene for you then?
Ellie: It's gone through lots of different changes in the last decade I guess.
Will; I love it, it's interesting, it's done me very well in terms of work. Our drummer Mig was in Portishead before I was born! Working with Mig, he is so engulfed in the scene, it's been very easy for me to stride in.
Ellie: It's like The Louisiana, where Mig lives and works, it often feels like this weird other dimension where everything links together. Its where we met, its where Pet Shimmers started things, our studio is there. They have recently got some funding from the Arts Council to set up some projects; it's a hub and it's just getting better and better.
Will: I think Bristol has done pretty well in lock down in terms of funding for the venues, which is good.
Where have you played so far and what has been your favourite gig?
Ellie: So we have played the Bristol rounds, like Crofters Rights, Rough Trade, The Lanes…
Will: We played Rough Trade with Sean Nicholas Savage, that was amazing…
Ellie: Yes, that was one of my favourites. You need to check him out. He does like on the nose but eccentric, beautiful, amazing stuff.
Will: We did a cool show at Cafe Kino. We basically prerecorded the show on my VHS camera, and we put it on to a tape, and I got an old TV and played the tape on the stage, and we sat in the crowd and watched our gig.
Ellie: Yeah, so the TV sat on a stool and we got to watch a little you and me on the stage performing.
Will: It was like being sat in a living room with everyone watching. We kind of thought it would be interesting to play a different idea of a show.
What music are you listening to at the moment?
Ellie: We were just listening to some Peggy Lee before talking to you, and then Drake’s new album.
I like that juxtaposition!
Ellie: Also, Cindy Lee.
Will: They are like a mixture of croon/psyche/noise.
Ellie: Also, Beverley Glenn Copeland, the Tata Clerkin Trio.
To be honest I am very guilty of listening to music five years after it comes out, or really old stuff.
Will: Our friends Oro Swimming Hour have just put out an amazing album as well.
What's coming up next for you then?
Ellie: I've got my second album going, which is a good opportunity to make some music which is less production orientated, a bunch of songs and stories; I am thinking of putting it out on fifty tapes.
Will: I am making a collection of songs to sleep to; a little sleep tape, I want to make some art-scapey things to go to sleep to. I put out an album in 2020, a solo album, I recorded it ages ago, I didn't think it was good enough to put out but Ellie helped me to finish it. I am trying to do the second one at the moment, that should be out this year. There is another Pet Shimmers album on the horizon as well.
We are pretty engulfed in the second album at the moment, it's all I can think of or do. I get a bit obsessive about albums when I am making them.
Ellie: It's very much, it's really enjoyable to do, to be focused, and I put all of my attention into an album.