photo courtesy of Jesse Dvorak
The grand melancholia, lost memories, electric embraces of "Autonomous" and "Stay" by "LANDROID, the High Desert project of Cooper Gillespie and Greg Gordon (and from their upcoming sophomore album "Constellation" due June 12th), feel so different as to dazzle you and sort of confuse you at the same time and I love that. So much music today falls into verious boxes, some rustic, some beautifully ornate with silk bows and some utterly unadorned but in boxes just the same, easy to deciper and organize and describe but not so with these two tracks. "Autonomous" featuring an absolutely killer vocal performance by artistic cohort, Joshua Tree based songwriter Nigel Roman who contributes songwriting to "Constellation" as well. Roman wails with such raw passion that it might make me feel uncomfortable if I were at a Landroid show and in the front row, his bloodletting expressed in in a voice that stands on the precipise of vocal cracking as he vocally pounds his head against sonic walls.
Speaking of those sonic walls, the track full of massive down beats and almost unworldly spacey sythn ascensions and sounds that flirt with industrial punk tones, darkly ethereal pychedelic choir like mellotron-esque vibrancy is just fucking beautiful . Cooper Gillespie (vocals, bass, guitar) and Greg Gordon (drums, sequencers) frame the song in art rock fanfare that, to me, feel late 70's leaning into space rock and psychrock places too.
On the flipside of "Autonomous", "Stay" featuring Cooper Gillespie on lead vocals primarily but with Roman in an askew duet of sorts. If the song was not as heavy as it is and it is fucking, glorious heavy it might feel like fantasy rock, like it could have been in The Never Ending Story right next to Lamahl's title track and I mean this (really) as a total compliment. "Stay" is saturated in romance, in wanderlust, in a mysterious adventure set in the past, present or future but (again) feeling an ethereal space rock, space opera lean here.
Landroid are mining some wonderful emotional frameworks and universe building in wonderful ways, and while comparisons might be futile, listening to both of these tracks had me thinking of a diverse array of artists like Porcupine Tree, like Tropical Fuck Storm, like Vangelis, like Slift, like Chromatics, like Beach House (on high) and the 1967 song "To Sir With Love" by Lulu, don't ask me why. My brain work in mysterious ways sometimes.
-Robb Donker Curtius
LINER NOTES (excerpted / bracketed):
"Autonomous" is about looking back at your life and wondering how much of it was really yours.
It's the reckoning that comes when you finally have to ask: was I making choices, or just following a script I never knew I'd inherited?
"Autonomous" is about looking back at your life and wondering how much of it was really yours.
It's the reckoning that comes when you finally have to ask: was I making choices, or just following a script I never knew I'd inherited?
The song sits with a man in his final moments. He’s suspended in space, watching the earth
recede before he's pulled into the sun, and what surfaces isn't regret exactly, but a devastating
honesty. The drinking alone, the surviving instead of connecting, the belief that he wasindependent while repeating everything his own father taught him without ever questioning it.
The questions that move through the song don't resolve: Where do we go? Who's to blame? Did
I ever know which way the wind was blowing me?
recede before he's pulled into the sun, and what surfaces isn't regret exactly, but a devastating
honesty. The drinking alone, the surviving instead of connecting, the belief that he wasindependent while repeating everything his own father taught him without ever questioning it.
The questions that move through the song don't resolve: Where do we go? Who's to blame? Did
I ever know which way the wind was blowing me?
It's the woman's estranged father, and his story casts a long shadow over hers because
"Constellation" is about exactly this: the inherited patterns we carry and often don’t question.]
"Constellation" is about exactly this: the inherited patterns we carry and often don’t question.]
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THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7DIJjtbZhJdqXSVSFfBWyP
https://www.instagram.com/landroidmusic
https://www.tiktok.com/@landroidmusic
https://www.facebook.com/landroidmusic
https://www.landroidmusic.com/
https://www.nigelroman.com/
Cooper Gillespie (vocals, guitar, bass) and Greg Gordon (drums, sequences) of LANDROID are veteran performers that have traveled the world as professional musicians. Now they live in the California town of Landers. Population: 2,632. After years immersed in various strains of Los Angeles punk and rock, Gillespie and Gordon relocated to the desert and became, unmistakably, a desert band. Named for their adopted hometown, LANDROID makes music that mirrors the environment in which it was created: vast, cinematic, and ethereal. Their debut album, Imperial Dunes, released September 13, 2019 via their own Mojave Beach Records label, introduced LANDROID’s lush and otherworldly sonic world. LANDROID’s forthcoming album, Constellation (out 2026), is a mythic narrative about inheritance, imbalance, and how stories repeat across time and space. It features prominent songwriting and vocal contributions from Joshua Tree–based songwriter Nigel Roman, introducing a male–female vocal interplay that enhances the album’s emotional range. Beyond the studio, Gillespie and Gordon are also the co-founders of Mojave Gold, a music venue and cultural hub in Joshua Tree that has been hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “Joshua Tree’s most promising new music venue.”
Landroid, Cooper Gillespie (vocals, guitar, bass), Greg Gordon (drums, sequences), songwriter singer Nigel Roman, art rock, dream rock, fantasy rock, space rock, psychedelic, new album "Constellation", "Stay", "Autonomous",
https://www.instagram.com/landroidmusic
https://www.tiktok.com/@landroidmusic
https://www.facebook.com/landroidmusic
https://www.landroidmusic.com/
https://www.nigelroman.com/
Cooper Gillespie (vocals, guitar, bass) and Greg Gordon (drums, sequences) of LANDROID are veteran performers that have traveled the world as professional musicians. Now they live in the California town of Landers. Population: 2,632. After years immersed in various strains of Los Angeles punk and rock, Gillespie and Gordon relocated to the desert and became, unmistakably, a desert band. Named for their adopted hometown, LANDROID makes music that mirrors the environment in which it was created: vast, cinematic, and ethereal. Their debut album, Imperial Dunes, released September 13, 2019 via their own Mojave Beach Records label, introduced LANDROID’s lush and otherworldly sonic world. LANDROID’s forthcoming album, Constellation (out 2026), is a mythic narrative about inheritance, imbalance, and how stories repeat across time and space. It features prominent songwriting and vocal contributions from Joshua Tree–based songwriter Nigel Roman, introducing a male–female vocal interplay that enhances the album’s emotional range. Beyond the studio, Gillespie and Gordon are also the co-founders of Mojave Gold, a music venue and cultural hub in Joshua Tree that has been hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “Joshua Tree’s most promising new music venue.”
Landroid, Cooper Gillespie (vocals, guitar, bass), Greg Gordon (drums, sequences), songwriter singer Nigel Roman, art rock, dream rock, fantasy rock, space rock, psychedelic, new album "Constellation", "Stay", "Autonomous",
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