Boston-based vocalist and producer ROBY has cemented himself as even more vocal-driven over the past year. With a production background in crisp future garage productions, ROBY has been confidently bringing his vocal and lyrical abilities to the forefront with each passing era. He made his live debut at Tabula Rasa’s electric Here & Now Release party in New York in 2023, a show which received rave reviews with prior-released vocal anthems like ‘Leave Me Behind’ and ‘Plasma Glass’.
On his new EP vividity, ROBY specializes in loose, short musings, like entries in a journal. Constantly shifting genres, his sleek, crisp productions are glued together by themes of heartbreak, and an ever-present sensitivity toward loss in life’s changes. These lyrics are often not about himself – but projected scenarios of everyday human occurrence. A particular favorite, the first single ‘fade away’ features light and nimble drum & bass influence. The song is about drifting apart from a significant other and yearning feelings of jealousy or nervousness that arise from a break-up. ‘can we be’ contains naked tinges of a vocoder acapella ala Bon Iver while ‘evolve+dissolve’ features pounding trance synths and lasers, sketched out by sugar-coated Kansas City pop star Andr3w J0hn.
I started all of these songs in my bedroom but I added to them in various places; I was working on parts of ‘buy a little time’ in New York City, and I was working on the production for ‘way too sentimental’ in Italy. So basically all of my ideas stem from my bedroom.
I think if people can relate to what I’m singing about, that’s great! Going on a tangent a little here, but I don’t believe that all music needs to be this ultra-personal media type and you can only release songs if you go through some super traumatic thing that you must sing about or express through music. It’s cool to write songs as a different character or in a different perspective sometimes, too. – ROBY (he/him)
Grab your copy HERE!
