I love robots. Anytime a music group decides to throw in the vocoder or talk box into a song, it ranks three points higher in my book. My favorite is when a rock band adds a robot to the band’s line-up. As robots have been synonymous with electronic music, nothing better when they jump genres. I think the best part about vocoders and talk boxes, is that it transforms a singers voice to something familiar, something we’ve heard before. It’s like I’ve had a favorite singer since the first time I heard Peter Frampton or Electric Light Orchestra, and they keep popping up to do guest appearances ever since.

So I’ve collected a dozen robot songs for the first volume of the Robot Round-up. Keep in mind that robots only speak in binary; hence their dozen is only 11 because they only have ones and zeros to work with.

Snowden - raymfer made me a mix cd for my drive up to Coachella. It was one of the most bad ass mixes I’d ever received, and track four was from a band called Snowden. The original versing of the song didn’t have robots, but La Castle Vania* made a good decision to add them to the chorus to create a song that is sure to get you out of your seat. Please put this one at full volume to garner the full effect.
Snowden - Black Eyes (La Castle Vania Remix)

Snowden - Anti-Anti

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Does It Offend You, Yeah? - I heard this song on Indie 103.1 a few days ago. The beat immediately made me love the song, and then they brought in the robots - bravo!
Does It Offend You, Yeah? - We Are Rockstars

Does It Offend You, Yeah? - You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into

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Rafter - This guy is not only an amazing producer who works with Sufjan Stevens and the Fiery Furnaces, but he also makes his own quirky, yet awesome, music. It’s really worth checking out an album to hear all the genre-bending kick your slippers of and dance in the kitchen music. Oh, and he is on Asthmatic Kitty Records and doesn’t mind a robot dropping F-bombs in his songs.
Rafter - Long Ago A Rodent As Big As A Bull Lurked In South America

Rafter - Sex Death Cassette

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Justice - Justice may be the new Daft Punk, but they need to learn a lesson from their predecessor duo and add some more robots to their music. Here is a single selection from their Cross album in which they give the robots some love.
Justice - New Jack

Justice - Cross

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Black Eyed Peas - If you let Bridging The Gaps play a couple minutes after the Macy Gray riddled “Request Line” ended, you were treated with one of the boldest uses of robots in music. BEP uses a hype man on the song, that can best be described as what a blind person hears when they use a computer. Also of note, this album came out when BEP was still making good music, also known as when they only let Fergie sing “la la la la la.”
Black Eyed Peas - Secret Song (from Bridging the Gaps)

Black Eyed Peas - Bridging the Gap

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Will.I.Am - Yes, he managed to make the playlist with back to back songs. I think too many people slept on WIll.I.Am’s solo album, but there were some really good songs on it. And as you can see from this one the production value is top notch. This is also the original song that Will decided to just use the same beat for Estelle’s first single; I’ll never understand how producers get away with that.
Will.I.Am - Impatient

Will.I.Am - Songs About Girls

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The Apples in Stereo - This band came out with an album this year that is great, but it was last years album New Magnetic Wonder that put the band on the map in the robot community. The album is 24 tracks long and about half of them include anything from robot back-up vocals (as in the song I’m posting) to full on robot run songs. I really thought about posting a few songs just from this album for this list, but I think you should buy the album and experience the magic for yourself.
The Apples in Stereo - 7 Stars

The Apples in Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder

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Rivers Cuomo - For info on this track please see my previous post here: http://audiomuffin.com/the-rivers-ran-weezer/. But if you are too lazy to click the link, suffice to say in the annals of music history Weezer’s second album was supposed to be a concept album involving space travel, multiple singers, and of course, a robot.
Rivers Cuomo - Blast Off!

Rivers Cuomo - Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo

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The Mountaineers - This band doesn’t exist anymore, but if you can get your hands on some of their music, expect a rocking robot of a good time.
The Mountaineers - Apart From This

The Mountaineers - Messy Century

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Schneider TM - What more can you ask for than a robot doing a Smiths cover with backing music that sounds like it was copy and pasted from a Dntel album?
Schneider TM - Light 3000

Schneider TM - Binokular

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Daft Punk - The best electronic album of all time is hands down Daft Punk’s Discovery. It not only packed the clubs with the dance tracks you expect from techno, but the French duo rounded things off with slow songs. A great album runs the gamit of human emotion, and nobody knows this better than Daft Punk; and they did it using robots.
Daft Punk - Something About Us

Daft Punk - Discovery

* thanks Oliver