Early 2000s band Ima Robot has unearthed a lost album from that time period, Search and Destroy, which will finally see the light of day Nov. 14 through Community Music. The title track is out now and can be sampled below.
Founded by future Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros frontman Alex Ebert in the late 1990s, Ima Robot eventually signed with Virgin Records for its 2003 self-titled debut. The album pricked up the ears of adventurous listeners thanks to its au courant blend of jittery indie rock and more dance-leaning music, but was not commercially successful beyond a core group of devoted fans.
“I hope it inspires people to remember that not everything has to be the same,” Ebert told SPIN at the time of the album’s release. “You can do different things and you can be fresh and you can listen to fresh music and things don’t have to stay in one area, you know? We all get into ruts where we forget that things can be different. The only comments I’ve ever seen are like, ‘not only did they pull from this band and that band, but they also pull from this little-known band,’ and I have no idea who these bands are. Never heard of them. No idea. It’s kind of cool for me because I get to build up my record collection that way. I like to call our music high-clash because to me, it’s elevated. It’s not metal meets rap. To me, it’s just everything all across the board.”
In the wake of the debut, Ima Robot wrote a wealth of songs while preparing for its second album, many of which were pressed in extremely limited quantities as Search and Destroy and sold at a handful of 2006 shows — much to the chagrin of Virgin.
“Never uploaded online nor formally distributed, it might have disappeared entirely if not for the dedication of a devoted few Robot heads who preserved its traces,” reads a new band bio about the project. “Today, echoes of that fervor endure with original CDs fetching hundreds of dollars on MusicStack and other resell sites, a testament to the enduring allure and quiet obsession the record inspired.”
“In a lot of ways, this stuff sounds like the original Ima Robot, the pre-signed fuck-it,” Ebert says now. “There’s a lightness to the whole thing. It feels more like the original concept, a reclaiming of the initial vibe.”
Ima Robot has been inactive since 2011, while Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have only played live on a handful of occasions since 2016.
