POETRY IN C7SUS

Am I just a worthless solipsist fighting against the impossibility of time travel, creating an anachronistic freeing up of resources that I never got to experience while simultaneously mocking the way in which I managed to acquire those resources to begin with?

woah hi lady

the detritus of the fragment of the detritus
caused the extent of your ozone layer
to collapse into 1000 different pieces

as if you wanted to read this, you
fucking idiot, yet there was profundity
in every single word that you could not

deny the space of all your friends in
the closeness of a solidarity that was
present to your senses when you could

have been sure of them, yes you were
always sure of them to the finest degree
a finite infinite diamond of sense

furthermore, i was the trapeze toward your
mother on the 4th of july, and furthermore
i did indeed deign to muzzle your master

morose was the next word that arose:
your indifference was of that popular
poetic moon poetic moon poetic moon

i like you

DOWNLOAD "SCIENCE IS MAGICAL" NOW!

New album by Rob Crooks: "Science is Magical"

Download the whole album

Stream the album:



1. Science is Magical
2. Why
3. Mad Scientist
4. The Laboratory
5. Eureka!
6. Frankenstein

The Science is Magical project has come a long way. The concept was originally conceived before an album I released in 2005, called Plague City. When I first conceived the concept for Science is Magical, I was freshly without a sampler, and becoming increasingly hungrier to produce, write and record something that was uniquely mine. The first time around, all the beats for Science is Magical were created with a drum machine, an electric guitar and lots of effects; and all within one evening. After three weeks, I had all the lyrics recorded. Even at that time, the rudimentary idea of making an album that focused on the tension between the ‘religion’ of science and it's opposite, so-called "irrational" way of thinking was present in the tracks. However, the only song that has lasted from those initial musings is the title track, "Science is Magical." 

Having recorded the original album myself with minimal equipment, and very quickly, I decided the album was too disorganized to release, and it was forgotten for the time being. However, the concept continued to galvanize in my mind as an appropriate and relevant topic. Once I got a new sampler (the classic Ensoniq EPS), I decided to re-create some of the songs that I liked the most, while also adding new songs, in order to give the album more direction. During these efforts, the narrative that runs through the album as it is now began to develop. Recording the second version of Science is Magical on my computer, I began to envision the concept for the album more concisely. The album then, as now, was meant to follow the Western obsession with the Scientific ethos ("Science is Magical," "Why?"), through the individual's egoistic scientific pursuits ("Mad Scientist," "Laboratory"), to the inevitable failure of the purely scientific consciousness ("Eureka!," "Frankenstein"). 

And then my computer crashed. This left Science is Magical in limbo once again, as I was too occupied with other work to try to sift through what I had for what was salvageable. What’s more is that, at this time, I had replaced my Ensoniq EPS sampler with the upgraded version: the Ensoniq EPS 16 Plus. This meant that I had no copies of the second generation beats to work with. However, as before, I could not escape the album’s theme from pervading my everyday thoughts.

Eventually, I went back to my crashed computer, which would work for approximately 10 minutes at a time before it shut itself down. Right off of that computer, I recorded each beat back into my new sampler, piece by piece, in order to re-create them. At this point, I also wrote two new songs that were meant to make the album's concept more complete, neither of which ultimately made the final cut. The more notable of the two was a song called "Grave Robber," which was inspired by scientists in the seventeenth century who would steal fresh corpses from cemeteries so that they could study the human anatomy, since dissecting bodies was illegal at the time.
After some more time passed, I eventually found enough time to put the finishing touches on the album (samples, scratches), and found a decent place to record the vocals (I recorded the vocals at three different studios before I was satisfied). However, instead of releasing it then, I again sat on the album, considering it amateurish compared to the new music I was working on. 
In the meantime, Sam and I had created the "Space Music for Robots" blog, for the primary purpose of making the new Dynamo album (Let Us Explore the Stars) available for download. Not too long after that though, I happened upon the forgotten Science is Magical album by chance, on my parents’ computer. It was at this point that I figured: "Why not post Science is Magical on the “Space Music for Robots” blog?" And there you have it.


These six songs are meant to make up a concept album that follows a fictional scientist through being born into a culture with an over-emphasized faith in scientific reasoning, to the eventual realization that human existence cannot be explained, nor saved through the scientific outlook. It is an idea that has occupied much of my thinking since before I even conceived the concept for the album, and I feel it is expressed here as well as I could maybe ever do it. If you cared/were bored enough to read this far, I thank you. Hopefully it did not take you longer to read this than it did to listen to this short album. I also hope that I don’t sound too self-occupied, pretentious or stupid.


Rob Crooks        

VICTORY IN SAMSUNG LINGERIE (KEY OF A MAJOR)

To write about the present here and now as a morning, ritualised duty is impossible, or at least meaningless. My favourite writing is is just the inept transcription of secret messages from old dead folks whispered just before the second cup of coffee kicks in.

the innocuous hands of capital being
a murderous bore once again: being
a lovely little baby to cradle meant

the presence/absence dialect of
the memory was the furtherance of
the contrivance of Spain and Paris

buried treasure in Consenza spanned
the mountainous map to everywhere but
there was no hills! O(ooo), erotic nowhere!

Beyond the lottery ticket depicted intense
emanations grew to further flay inheritance
but it was owned by the gilded tear in your

State and i drew up figurative allies
in precise order through which the divine
comedy of Abraxas(e) was brazenly displayed

thus, the sublime merit of millions marched
into the sublime pleasantries of friendship
and the triumphal arch was nowhere in sight

Time travel: GRUBBS (2002)

2002 self-titled, self-produced, self-recorded album by Grubbs (a/k/a Rob Crooks). This was previously available years ago only at shows or from Rob himself.

From the original liner notes:

Thanks to Matt, Alex, Juice and El Presidente Fidel Astro for their efforts, resources and time. A E ting on this sound memorandum was done by grubbert himself, except the beats on number 12 and 8, which were in fact produced by this guy I know named Charlie (pro'fastners four liphe). Do I have enough Taxi Driver clips? Thanks for reading this. Listen to the CD. Thanks. I recorded this in my bedroom.

"Released" on Guaranteed Fresh Produce, which was our pitiful attempt at having a label back in the day.

Download the whole record

Stream the whole record:


1. Thought Liberation Movement pt. 2: Diary of a Revolutionary
2. godskilla
3. Silence
4. Ocean
5. Circles
6. Threadz
7. The Myth of the Universal Cool
8. Poison
9. The Void Interlude
10. Morals
11. The Irony of Praying for Free Will
12. The Beauty of Contrast
13. Inner Sanctum
14. Life pt. 1: A Love Story
15. Life pt. II: Inevitability
16. An Untitled Song About Faith
17. Dough Boy

Download a copy of Rob Crooks' more recent "Science is Magical" release.

"Science is Magical" up in a couple of days

When I have time. I'm busy.

In the meantime, here's a preview video: