Rob bangs the drums. He is also a synth master, like his fellow bandmembers.
He is a man of distinguished taste who appreciates good wine.
Technique[]
Rob uses a variety of drumming techniques to come up with beats that blend perfectly with the programmed drums often found in their songs, and vice-versa. These techniques include lightning fast rolls, fast paced switching and thorough syncopation. The band quite often employs odd-time signatures, to which he adapts effortlessly.
Notable examples of his technique can be found in these songs:
- Await Rescue: notable for the strong synergy between live and electronic drums, with a frantic pace, heavy with snare rolls.
- Hole: notable for having an almost shuffling groove.
- Unmake The Wild Light: multitasking in 7/8 .
- Supermoon: clever use of well-timed kicks to propel the song forwards.
- When We Were Younger And Better: a flurry of well-timed drum rolls.
Rob also held a drumming clinic, which can be still be found here, playing the song "This Cat Is A Landmine".
Equipment[]
Rob has notably collaborated with Shaw Percussion in order to create a drumkit. This was following the release of the soundtrack for the game No Man's Sky.[1]
Caspar Newbolt, a long-time collaborator for the band's artwork, provided some designs for that kit.[1]
Quotes[]
In July 2019, Rob Jones explained the themes explored in the album replicr, 2019[2]:
"This was supposed to be the future, but that future got cancelled. History is moving but it’s got nowhere to go. It’s piling up all around us. That’s what this record is about. This atemporality is an illusion, it’s the cultural logic of late capitalism, consuming everything faster and faster, each artefact a more diluted replica of the last. Even the idea that "pop will eat itself" is eating itself. We need to find a way out."