Interview with Frontman Pete Konakov

Written by: Jimmy Wah - Sense Music Media

WE ARE NOT ROBOTS is a Sydney-based rock band described on their Facebook page as ‘The musical lovechild of AGAIST ME!, PLACEBO and QOTSA (QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE) with a sprinkling of THE BRONX.’ Led by singer, guitarist and musical front-man Pete Konakov from his previous band CAPITAL COLOURS; WE ARE NOT ROBOTS is an amalgamation of seasoned musicians spread out right across Sydney, who come together to deliver the sonic energy that audiences will grow to know and love. After the long hiatus that everyone has been forced to endure during 2020, I was lucky enough to shoot WE ARE NOT ROBOTS at their first ever gig at The Factory Theatre with BOYSCLUB. This came on the back of WE ARE NOT ROBOTS’ brand new single I Adore from their recently released record A Mile’s An Eternity In Your Shoes. I was lucky enough to sit down with Pete and dig a little deeper into who these guys are and what it means not to be a robot.

The Interview

Joining me from the safety of his home in Randwick where he took cover to escape a 42 degree Saturday in Sydney, was Pete Konakov, the very man I’d studied closely through the lens not even a week earlier. The benefit of online video interviews has become extremely apparent during 2020, not just for convenience but also social distancing; something that Pete says hasn’t been a strong point at Sydney beaches near where he lives. All that being said, between dips in the pool and now sheltered in his bedroom away from the family, Pete took time out of his day to chat to SENSE.

I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering where the name WE ARE NOT ROBOTS comes from so I put the question to Pete. He mentioned having an idea for a 2-piece band when he was in CAPITAL COLOURS and not being able to come up with a name.

“Then one day at work I was doing a project with a mate of mine - we’re both web designers - when I had to put the Google Captcha in one of the designs and I said “Haha look at this, ‘I AM NOT A ROBOT’” and he was like “Oh that’d be a cool name for your band!” and I was like “Nahh… Nah that’s pretty lame”… but he just kept pushing it until I said “Ok, what about ‘WE ARE NOT ROBOTS’?” and he was like “Yeah that’s cool!”. So I took it to my drummer at the time and he said “Yep” and so that’s what it became… I mean it was just meant to be a joke… we’ve actually tried changing it a few times but everyone’s like “No, LEAVE IT!” so it’s just stuck [Laughs]”

The meaning behind a name is always a big part of anything Pete does so there had to be more to it than that.

“It’s kinda like the emotion behind the music as well. We’re not robots, we’re human beings - We have emotions and we feel things. So I thought I’d take something from this joke and make it mean something that the band is actually about.”

This impactful statement left me wondering, how did it relate to their sound? “How would you describe your sound to someone that’s never heard it before?”

”Oh man… I get asked this all the time and it never gets any easier to answer. Um… [long pause]… It’s a pretty big sound, there’s a lot going on in the music. It makes it sound like there are more of us in the band than there are. I guess if I had to compare it to other bands it’d be something between SMASHING PUMPKINS, SHIHAD and probably THE BRONX. Like a combination of those three.”

Having listened to WE ARE NOT ROBOTS just before the interview I couldn’t help but bring up how they remind me of PLACEBO.

“Yeah, yeah we get that” Pete agreed “particularly vocally… like I’ve noticed a few times I go into that territory and everyone’s like “Man, that sounds like PLACEBO!” and I guess I do have a bit of Brian Molko happening every now and then. [Laughs]”

This leaves an even bigger question of Pete’s personal musical influences hanging in the air and an unexpectedly definitive answer.

“STONE TEMPLE PILOTS. Scott Weiland was my everything. I probably started playing music because of STP. Other than that, DEFTONES was a massive influence, BIFFY CLYRO…” he said, pointing to his shirt which had the word BIFFY stamped across the front “… PUMPKINS - I don’t think there’s a single PUMPKINS riff that I haven’t ripped off at one point or another - and probably LOCAL H who are a two-piece that kind of hit it big in the mid-90s. LOCAL H stopped being a commercial band after the 90s but they’ve just kept going ever since; pumping our record after record after record for the last 25 years.”

As it turns out, Pete has always wanted to do a two-piece; and LOCAL H were actually the inspiration behind WE ARE NOT ROBOTS. Pete and his drummer formed the two-piece who later gained Lee when it was apparent that all of the songs were driven by bass. With Amanda added to replace the original drummer and Jess as a second guitarist and vocal harmony, two a has now become four - the lineup we now see today.

What has Pete’s life been like as a musician growing up?

“I’ve always had music in my life, the first record I got was when I was 5 or 6 years old. I asked my parents to buy me MOTLEY CRÜE Shout At The Devil. I remember back then it came on a double tape and on one side it was Shout At The Devil and on the other side was Theatre of Pain. I remember they used to take us to friends of theirs who had two older sons. MTV was on late at night on Channel 9 and they’d always be like“Watch this!” and it would always be MOTLEY CRÜE and BON JOVI and POISON and all these bands. MOTLEY CRÜE always really resonated with me for whatever reason as a five or six-year-old. So ever since then I’ve been into heavy music - so from MOTLEY I went to GUNS… then I remember getting OZZY OZBOURNE’s No Rest For The Wicked when I was 8 and Appetite For Destruction [GUNS ‘N’ ROSES] when it came out.

Then I kinda got out of heavy music for a while and got really into Hip-Hop. So when I was about 11 or 12 I was really getting into bands like NWA and PUBLIC ENEMY; I guess you might say heavier Hip-Hop and hardcore Rap. I remember when NIRVANA came out and everyone was getting into them i was like “Meh” [shrugs]. I remember at the same time getting NWA’s 100 Miles and Runnin’ and thinking that was the heaviest thing I’d ever heard. Then that thing PUBLIC ENEMY did with ANTHRAX was just “PHWOAR!” It was way heavier than any guitar bands that I was hearing at the time. So I was into that for a few years and then I heard Interstate Love Song by STP and that was it, I was done… That brought me back into heavier music. I started discovering bands like FAITH NO MORE and NIRVANA and PUMPKINS and things like that. I was very much a child of the 90s. Then I picked up the guitar when I was about 15 and I had all these make believe bands in my head and I think I wrote my first song when I was 15 or 16. My first band was in about 98 and I haven’t stopped since. This is about the 5th band I’ve been in, so it’s been pretty constant for the past 20 years.”

For a musician that never stops, this current time in our history is very unique to say the least. For any musician like Pete who is living today, the Covid lock-down is unlike anything they have ever experienced. After simply stating “It’s been weird…” Pete was left gazing in the semi-distance, lost in his thoughts.

“It actually reignited the band. We were going through this period before it [the lock-down] where it was just this cycle of - rehearse-rehearse, gig-gig, rehearse-rehearse, gig-gig - and it started to get a little bit boring. Then Covid came along and it put a stop to all of that, and all of a sudden we were looking at what else we could do with the band. We had to isolate and be apart from each other for so long… but getting back in the same room after not being together for a few months, it was just like… “WHOOOF!” … just this explosion of energy you know? We sounded better than we ever did before, to the point where I went from looking at doing other things to feeling like I was in the best band that I’d ever been in. It was just the three of us [Pete, Lee and Amanda] at this point, Jess hadn’t even joined the band yet.

Then we started recording together as a band whereas before it would generally be me recording and getting Lee to send me his bass tracks on top. We never really included Amanda in it very much because it didn’t work logistically and we never seemed to have the time. Now Covid has put everything into perspective and we’ve decided to do everything properly together as a band. We’ve even played a couple of shows which has been… weird.”

How do you mean?

“I mean it’s been awesome. We’ve played 2 gigs since coming out of lock-down. The first was at Frankie’s in early September where we played with HIBISCUS BISCUIT as just the three of us [before Jess came into the band]. It was packed… but everyone was sitting down which is so weird for that place [Laughs]… but that’s OK, I’ll take people sitting down over not playing any day of the week. It felt like we had all of this emotion and frustration building up and - that’s why you rehearse, that’s why we do what we do, we just love playing live - that first show at Frankie’s we played as if it was gonna be our last show ever. We didn’t even think we were gonna get to play that show so we kinda just went mental, which is the same thing that we did at The Factory.”

So September doesn’t seem very long ago, yet ROBOTS were still playing as a three piece until their latest gig at The Factory on Sunday 22 November. When did the second guitarist, Jess, join the band? It looks like she fits perfectly.

“Towards the end of October. We had a long search. We were desperate to get another girl in the band for some kind of balance. We tried the four-piece thing towards the end of last year when I brought a mate into the band. He was great! He was fantastic but there was just something wrong with the balance. I desperately wanted female backing vocals on the band because I’d always heard it in my head on the songs but we just couldn’t find anyone. We were running ads for 4 or 5 moths and we were getting abused like “Why does it have to be a fucking girl?” and even girls were saying things like “You’re just gonna exploit us”and I was just like “Oh my God, this is insane, this is waay harder than it needs to be”. I remember saying to Amanda in the beginning of all this “What if we asked Jess from MIS MADE and NITOCRIS” and she was like “There’s no WAY she’d wanna play with us”. So I just didn’t bother. Then one day after all this searching, Jess just messaged us. I remember letting the guys know and being like [with wide eyes]“Jess wants to play in out band. The chick from NITOCRIS… wants.to.play.in.our.band!”. She was so cool, she learned all the songs before our first rehearsal and just blew us away. Then in the second rehearsal she started singing with me, which I wasn’t expecting, but it was something I’d been waiting to hear for 20 years! So yeah, she’s been a God-send, it’s been awesome with her in the band.”

I mentioned that I was lucky enough to see him playing at The Factory the week before. I ask if it was Pete’s first time playing there and what it was like.

“That was bucket list” he said with a smile “I remember walking up the stairs and getting out on the stage with BOYSCLUB, looking out and thinking “Fuck me, how did we get here?” I’ve seen so many bands there. I remember seeing BIFFY CLYRO and CROSSES after Soundwave in 2014 where I had a backstage pass because I knew the guy from CROSSES who hooked me up. AFI were also playing that night and I remember seeing the crowd reaction when they walked out on stage from an angle I’d never seen before and thinking “Man, we’ve gotta play here one day!”. It took us about 6 years but we got there.” Says Pete with a smile.”

I noticed Pete seemed to be enjoying the space up on stage on the Sunday he played with BOYSCLUB and asked if that was the biggest stage he’d ever played on before.

“Yeah for sure. It was so good. I remember moving backwards as I was playing and usually I’d be worried about running into the drumkit thinking “shit I’m about to hit Amanda” then looking around and being like “Oh no! where are you?”. It was wicked.”

With the recent release of A Mile Is An Eternity In Your Shoes, I ask Pete if this is the first album that WE ARE NOT ROBOTS has released.

“Well it’s not actually an album really, it’s more of a compilation of everything that we had released up until that point. So what we wanted it to be was kind of like a book-end to that period of the band. We originally released I Adore about a year and a half ago and it just flat-lined straight away, it got no traction. I’m not sure why… We didn’t release it the right way. So we parked that and then we recorded about 5 or 6 songs with Amanda and the best sounding one was A Mile’s An Eternity In Your Shoes. We were thinking of doing it as a single but I was always struggling with the solo in it, I just wasn’t happy with it. Then one day I gave it to Lee and I was just like “Hey man, do you wanna try doing a solo on it?” and he did it and when I heard it I was just like “Fuck!” - It just sounded amazing and I was like “That’s gonna be our next single.” So we thought we’d go out to Bandcamp first, make it like a ‘Bandcamp only’ thing and packaged up everything that we had recorded and released up until that point. We put it up there as a compilation, did a full digital booklet with photos and lyrics - and put it out as the end of that period of the band and everything moving forward is gonna be a band recording. On that compilation Amanda’s only playing on A Mile’s An Eternity In Your Shoes and everything else is just me playing. So we put that out and then decided to put I Adore out again and give it a proper push, which we’ve done.”

So with that bookend finally propped up, where to now for WE ARE NOT ROBOTS?

“We’re in the process of recording at the moment and we’ve recorded 6 songs with Astrid Holz who played in RACKET and a few other bands. She has her own studio with her partner Kat called CARAMEL SOUNDS in Marrickville where we rehearse. So we got her to record Amanda and Lee, and I’m just recording the guitars myself with Jess. Then we’re getting Ryan Cramp who’s starting his own studio. I gave him one of our songs once just to fuck with and what he came back with was ridiculous [in a good way], so he’s gonna record my vocals. Then we’re gonna give it all to Astrid to mix and we should have all that done by mid-January and releasing the first single in Feb, then hopefully a tour. If everything’s back to normal somewhat. So we’ve already picked the song Raising Levels as the first single and I’ll be shooting a video for that in late January, then we’ll really push the shit out of it. It feels like a new band, Covid has turned us into a new band. With Jess in the band now as well, it’s all systems go.”

When I ask about their current single I Adore and what it’s about, Pete has the same reaction as he did with STONE TEMPLE PILOTS.

“It’s about my partner.” He says matter-of-factly. “The music itself? I’ve had that riff hanging around for… 15 years? I never had a chorus for it, I always had that riff but I never had a catchy hook or a decent chorus. We started fucking with it in CAPITAL COLOURS probably towards the tail-end of that band which was roughly when I met my partner. I was never happy with the lyrics until I met her and I felt inspired and I wanted to write something for her, then that popped out, it just flew out of me. When we brought it into ROBOTS, it wasn’t until we got Amanda in the band that it really took off. She took the drums and the entire song and she directed it, she really drives it. I think it’s our strongest song up until this point, it captures the band. The guitars in the verse are really razor-like and droney, kinda like I always wanted the band to sound. Then it’s just got this massive chorus which is something we can’t seem to get away from, it’s just like this big sing-along which is the bones of the band.”

So with that in mind, I recommend you give it a listen!

Music Review - I Adore

The track opens with the monstrous punk beat of Amanda that was so fondly reflected upon by Pete in our interview, coupled with the rumbling bass of Lee reminiscent of definitive bands like QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE. The uneasy, discordant guitar drone that Pete has sought for so long cuts through the deep tones with a purposefulness that indicates these guys mean business. What may come as a surprise (or none at all) is the equally uneasy vocal of Pete replacing the guitar to sing unexpectedly sweet words reflecting the song’s title. Flavours of Brian Molko from PLACEBO and Dave Bleus from SELF IS A SEED spring to mind for me, while I can definitely hear the DEFTONES influence in some of the notes he chooses. That being said, Pete has his own sound that is made more unique by the breath of fresh air that eases the tension as the chorus opens up and replaces the staccato notes of the drums and bass. Overlaid with vocal melodies that you can sing along to, the song all of a sudden has an anthemic feel.

The verses bring the tone back down to emphasise the sincerity of the lyrics which are given space from the guitars to reinforce the song’s meaning and give the listener a chance to hook back into the chorus, which doesn’t completely escape the drone of the guitars that tie it all together. The passionate cries of Pete’s voice are brought back down into a comfortable bridge that resolves the song’s conflicting elements before breaking down into a monumental groove (if you’ve ever seen them live you’ll know what I’m talking about). The words ‘It’s just you that I adore!’ repeated passionately heighten the melody of the final choruses. Maybe it’s the lyrics ‘I’ll meet you there’ or maybe there’s some magic in the structure of the music but somehow the discordant drone of the guitars no longer feels uncomfortable as the song draws to a close.

The Verdict

I Adore is a musically dynamic piece that is layered with all the elements of a great rock song and it’s own unique flavour that sets it apart from the rest. The message, the meaning and the feeling of the song bring it all back to that central implication of the band… WE ARE NOT ROBOTS!

7.5/10

More from WE ARE NOT ROBOTS…

Download

Download your very own copy of the digital album A Mile’s An Eternity In Your Shoes by WE ARE NOT ROBOTS on Bandcamp

Listen to their top tracks on TripleJ Unearthed or any of your favourite streaming services!

Social Media

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Pictures

Check out the full catalogue of images on Facebook taken by our Sydney photographer Jimmy Wah at The Factory Theatre with BOYSCLUB on Sunday 22 November 2020

WE ARE NOT ROBOTS on Spotify