IM // UR | Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson // Interview

BEFORE TODAY by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

It doesn’t take much to make me feel stupid. Trying to find the words to describe the debut album of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti at 4AD is just one of many examples I could give you. To me, ‘Before Today’ sounds like an album that Kevin Barnes could be recording if he loved goth bands more than funk ones. Or like the cold wave genre entering a multicoloured psychedelic stage instead of glazing at it's own depression. Don’t mind my threadbare examples; this is the album that will make it onto every interesting top 10 of the year and you don’t wanna miss it.

WE // R \\ WEARING

I can't resist (probably overpriced) basics-with-a-twist. My wardrobe, full of T by Wang, Oak, Bassike and yes, American Apparel is proof of this; and since in Australia, a new favourite has emerged in the form of Nathan Smith. His selection of supersoft tees, tanks and dresses have sucked me into buying multiples of a number of styles in different colourways. You just can't go wrong with these though! Addictively and endlessly wearable - and not in actual fact, overpriced in the slightlest - Nathan Smith is the way forward for your wardrobe.

WE // R \\ WATCHING

I don’t think any series will treat teenagers the same way that Freaks and Geeks did almost 10 years ago. Although relying on every teen American cliché they could, this series was the closest thing to reality you could get whilst still being something fun and interesting to watch – cause, you know, life is boring. With bands like The Who, The Clash and XTC being either part of episodes or the soundtrack, this 80’s based cult show was short-lived (only 18 episodes), but long enough to enrich the careers of some young actors (i.e. James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Busy Philipps and, erm, Linda Cardellini) and is greatly missed. Can we have a movie about them meeting again in the 00’s?

WE // R \\ GOING

Once, a friend of mine wanted to take me to this 'cheap Chinese restaurant', situated in the heart of Liberdade, a Japanese neighborhood in São Paulo. When we got there the place was packed, but because it looked cheesy and kinda poor, I didn't want to wait it out. It took another friend for me to go back there and fall in love with it. Now, every time the mood for some freshly made noodles (you can watch the chief making the noodle dough through a window) framed in some horribly painted pink walls takes me, I go for Rong He. Did I mention the food is also incredibly generous and cheap?

WE // R \\ READING

The ultimate in peeping tom into other, cooler, more fashionable, richer, quirkier and more-hipster-than-thou lives is Todd Selby's The Selby. Having previously been an internet only voyeur's dream, Todd has just last month released The Selby Is In Your Place, a book the coffee table tome full of twee drawings, colourful interiors and people showering. Half of the images in the books are favourites from the website and the other is stuff he hasn't published online yet. So go check it out, maybe buy it if you can to make your crappy coffee table in your crappy apartment that little bit cooler with pictures of someone else's cool stuff.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson // Interview

Wednesday // July 29, 2009 at 08:39 // filed under Music

MBAR

Say hello to Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson.

Here at IM//UR we prefer to do interviews the old fashioned way; face to face. But in this international day and age, with the internet at your every convenience and inconvenience, it simply must be used. So I'm putting this interview down to virtual (mis?)communication. Daaaaang I must have been in some kind of wonderful mood when I wrote these questions. Maybe I'd taken too much in of his press bio and the interviews I'd read. Maybe I was just in the mood to provoke. Either way, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson is most definitely an entity to be reckoned with, musically and, well, email-ably.

With a wry grin and a somewhat weary shrug at life, a devil may care kind of whimsy in a musical smirk, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson is full of a shuddering kind of strength and a tough tenderness. So we rumbled via email.

In a nutshell, what exactly is your damage? I wish I could have met you face to face to check it myself, well, according to your press release that is (yes yes, I've read about your ire with it)

I have decided that the journalisitc depiction of my life as tragic is in actually an expression of profound jealousy by people who have never done anything even marginally interesting in their own (lives).

I moved to New York in 2000 when I was 17...I saw some of the first Strokes shows...I lived nine blocks from Ground Zero on September 11th...I partied, a lot. My best friends happen to comprise two of Brooklyn's most critically celebrated music groups. The album is neither about homelessness nor drug addiction. I was off hard drugs and engaged when I recorded it. I spent the next three years getting up at five in the morning to cut wood, build things, and wallow in bitterness and disappointment. It is profoundly tiresome to talk endlessly at age 26 about things you did when you were 19.

What do your friends call you? And did you ever think to shorten your quadruple barrelled moniker?

My friends call me Miles. My family calls me Ben. I've always found those two fairly manageable.

Are you named after anybody besides your father?

I am not named after my father, my father is named after the murderer Miles Terry Anthony Robinson. I am named after Miles Davis.

I read somewhere you said "...but after learning about the industry...you have to keep a small degree of naïveté. You have to keep on believing the lie to some extent." What exactly is that lie and why is it you feel you have to keep believing it to a point?

Apparently what I meant at the time of that interview was that I wished I was able to not resent and sonically punish my audience for wanting me to perform an album that I had recorded three years prior. 'You' in that instance was directed at someone both more professional and more hypothetical than myself.

I feel your music actually sparkles with a wry kind of humor; some of the time I can't really understand what you're singing, but I can feel it that's for sure. Are you at peace with where you are right now life wise?

Thanks, I feel like too many people miss the humor. I am more at peace than I ever have been. I'd like to be recording the album i wrote last year instead of promoting one from four years ago and gearing up to release one that's been done for two, but worse things have happened to better people. You can read the lyrics on the myspcae page if you're interested in how at peace I was at 20-21.

Have you ever been formally trained in music?

Nope.

Musically speaking, are you satisfied with what you've produced so far?

Not at all.

What advice would you now give to the you of ten years ago?

Be more sexually irresponsible.

Would you say you are better behaved nowadays?

Immeasurably.

Where in the world do you want to be right now, doing what? And in ten years time?

I want to be touring right now. In ten years I want to be touring in a hybrid bus.

PS I love your music

Thanks.