Ima Robot (partially found tracks from pop-rock group; 1999-2010)
Status: Partially Found
Ima Robot is a Los Angeles-based pop rock group founded by Alexander Ebert (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros) and Tim Anderson[1]. Popular in the early 2000's, the band released three albums over its lifespan before phasing out into obscurity around 2010 after the release of their third album, Another Man's Treasure. Two of the three albums the band released under Virgin Records kept a pop-punk style to them while the third album, while under their own label, took a turn for a more experimental sound, turning a lot of fans away.
While a lot of their music was pop-punk based, a lot of the demos created by the band took on styles unlike anything they released under a label ranging from hip-hop to alt-rock.
Many of the demos written by the band were released under the band's MySpace page somewhere between 2004 and 2008. Additionally, around 2008, the official Facebook page of the band posted a handful of zip files, hosted under timmytheterror.com[2].
1999 Demo Tape Tracks
On June 4, 2007, Yahoo! user robkoss1 posted a request thread in the Yahoo! Email List group Music Wanted Email List looking for Ima Robot obscurities. In the thread he mentions 'Demo tape (title unknown) (ca. 1999?) cassette/cd featuring the tracks Weirdest Girl and Sink or Swim, plus others I am unaware of.'
On April 9, 2014, Tumblr user snakechildlurking posted the song Weirdest Girl to his Tumblr page[3].
On May 26, 2016, the same user, after many requests, posted the song Sink or Swim[4].
Both songs have been uploaded to the ima-robot.net fansite YouTube page.
On May 16, 2017, Osker Borst on the fan-forum ima-robot.net posted the following[5]:
"Back story to these two recordings. They were indeed on a cassette that was a 'mix of old songs, mostly IMA' from that era, although nothing else rare, apparently. The tape was nearly lost forever, then found, somehow transferred digitally then I got copies of them. I don't know anything else, the songs were sent to me from girl I met on myspace. She said her mom was friends with Alex back in the old days. Also, if it's not mentioned elsewhere, Alex once said that there exists a piano version of Weirdest Girl, so maybe that may pop up on a crappy cassette one day?"
References
- ↑ Discogs page for Ima Robot Retrieved 31 July '17.
- ↑ Example of demos released under timmytheterror.com Retrieved 31 July '17.
- ↑ Weirdest Girl (snakechildlurking.tumblr.com) Retrieved 31 July '17.
- ↑ Sink or Swim (snakechildlurking.tumblr.com) Retrieved 31 July '17.
- ↑ ima-robot.net (Weirdest Girl (Restored)) Retrieved 31 July '17.