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Made in Oakland: Maldroid
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Alison Peters
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January, 21 2008
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| Cross AC/DC with Devo, add Beck as the slick lead singer with a British Invasion aesthetic -- and you get Maldroid. |
Photos: Cameron Platt
Cross AC/DC with Devo, add Beck as the slick lead singer with a British Invasion aesthetic -- and you get Maldroid.
The Oakland-based seven-man outfit evolved with vocalist/mastermind Ryan Divine quietly and purposefully plotting to steal musicians from local bands to form a group where the audience would be confused about what they were: band, or just really cool videos?
Mr. Divine, who describes Maldroid lyrics as “absurdist humor wrapped in metaphor” refuses to take anything too seriously. That's a good thing: if you haven’t heard, Maldroid created the video before the band solidified, won the YouTube Underground contest and landed an interview on Good Morning America before they’d played a single show.
“We’ve all played in other bands before, so we knew what we were doing and where we wanted go. It’s all by design,” Mr. Divine explains. They record initial tracks in Mr. Divine’s home studio, then head to Oakland’s Skyline studios for late night finishing touches. They make their own merchandise -- hoodies and T-shirts -- with guitarist Todd Brown screening the T-shirts. “It’s not saving us a lot of money,” Mr. Divine admits, “but it’s something we like doing. I wanted to create a way for everyone to continue doing their art – not only playing music. The band is an umbrella for everything else.”
For further examples of the group’s artistic bent, check out their crop of painstakingly rendered videos. “Humans have all become robots, day in and day out, just doing the same thing,” Mr. Divine theorizes, referring to the video for ‘Heck No (I won’t listen to Techno)’, complete with a puppet Bush and Lite-Brite stop-animation. “Just do your own thing!”
Maldroid with the "Robot"
Maldroid’s first residency was at Oakland’s Stork Club last fall. Refusing to do anything the easy way, they picked traditionally non-clubby weeknights to gauge how well they can build an audience now that word is out, reviews are coming, and the hating has begun. Their label, Fuzz, agreed to let them do it the Maldroid way: with guest bands and DJs, playing and releasing singles in the spirit of serialized installments rather than dropping an album – to “bring the rock” to a live audience. See it for yourself at www.myspace.com/maldroid or at the Rickshaw Stop on Friday, January 25 at 155, Fell Street in San Francisco. |
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