Album Prologue By Literary Author Adam Houghtaling I've known Rob for roughly 12 years now. Most of that time has been spent playing video games, eating, arguing, repeating lines from Glengarry Glen Ross, and generally just using one another's failures and embarrassments for amusement. Around 1999 ("What's an iPod?")—while Rob was listening almost exclusively to Serge Gainsbourgh and my CD player had Odessey & Oracle on infinite repeat—we actually collaborated when he produced some of my plodding Smog-meets-Galaxy 500 material, which he took from its choppy, miserable beginnings and made… well… musical. I never did anything with them… though looking back I certainly should have. We actually have a tentative plan to work together again soon and one of the reasons I've decided to take another swing at my songs has a lot to do with Rob's nature: I'd likely never say this to his face, but Rob's dogged work ethic and laser-like focus are nothing less than extraordinary and is… as schmaltzy as it sounds… inspirational. In the past year alone his band Tub Ring released their most ambitious album to date, Secret Handshakes (he also produced); another one of his groups, the Super 8 Bit Brothers, released a couple singles and a video; he co-wrote and co-produced the song "What Part of Forever," which was performed by Cee-Lo Green on the Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack; he composed the soundtracks to two films, one of which included his first symphony; played over 50 gigs across the country; and even soundtracked a half-dozen greeting cards. That doesn't include the remix and production work he's done for a handful of groups including Oh Hush, Left Rights, and Secret Colours, and it also doesn't count most of the material on this album… or the other album's worth of material he's completed since I started this long paragraph. That's a staggering year and it's not even mid-November as I write this. I've heard everything Rob has written and recorded in the past decade, and the music here represents real growth… something I attribute partly to his work ethic and partly to his skill, but more mysteriously to his ability to listen: A talent critical for any capital-A Artist… and surprisingly rare. Influential psychiatrist Karl Menninger once called listening "a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force," and while we are pinched at daily and nightly by technology's insistence that we make ourselves heard, "listening" only increases in value. I am always fascinated when I bump into musicians who seem wholly unconcerned with the act of discovery and it reminds me of the often repeated line about the fact that more people write poetry now than can be bothered to read it. But whenever I mention an album or a band to Rob because I think he would find something interesting about it, he quickly tracks it down and absorbs it. He doesn't always like it, but he takes something from it, and that's true whether it's an album, a film, a video game, or a ballpoint pen doodle. I remember reading an interview with David Mamet (writer of Glengarry Glen Ross among many others) years ago and in it he stressed the importance of obsessive note taking, of always observing and recording. That act, when run through your personal sieve of experience and neurosis and whatever else curls up in the corners of your mind, is crucial to creation. That careful absorption of the things around us is an essential part of the artistic process and it's present in these songs. As I listen to these tracks I hear a consolidation and re-configuration of a wide range of influences: He channels Michael Hutchence (who was channeling Mick Jagger) in "Cell Phone Radiation," which comes across like a simmering and nervy response to Lady Gaga's "Telephone." "My Bones Colossal," featuring Chris Shern from Edison's Arm (one of Rob's other, other groups) on vocals, and sounds like a less narcotic Massive Attack with a Game Boy solo. "Devil in Disguise" is a great lost The The track, while "Big Winter" is like the sketch for a Procul Harum song punctuated with a schizophrenic slap of Boredoms-style noise. There's a lot happening in these songs and since all of these tracks have their origins in other projects (soundtracks, remixes, etc.) it's best not to search for too cohesive a message beyond the artistic growth each one represents. This busy year (2010), and in particular the frantic days surrounding his deal for "What Part of Forever" (i.e. "That time he whistled in a summer blockbuster."), seem like the beginning of Rob's second act, as he now seems to be re-defining himself primarily as a songwriter and producer rather than a road warrior, and if these songs are an indication of what's to come from his spending more time at the Studio Edison console, and less time attempting to become a record holder for catching the most air while launching a high-kick from a keyboard stand, I think, as listeners, we can be grateful for the transition. -AH <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Rob+Kleiner+and+the+Satanics">Read more on Last.fm</a>. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.