Free The Robots – Ctrl Alt Delete (Alpha Pup Records)

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Free The Robots - Ctrl Alt Delete

Its been a long time coming, but the debut album for Free The Robots released on Alpha Pup Records is finally upon us. Initially started as a side project by Chris Alfaro in 2003, a couple of EP’, free internet teasers, and a split 7” with The Gaslamp Killer, we are finally bombarded with some mind-warping electronics, fuzzed out psychedelia peppered with blistering hip hop beats, reinstating his position at the forefront of the L.A. beat scene, alongside The Gaslamp Killer, Flying Lotus, Ras G, Nosaj Thing and all that have played at the late night Low End Theory Club.

Free The Robots mix up dusty samples with crazed synths, live instrumentation and a futuristic ideology that looks back to many influences, yet manages push boundaries of jazz and psychedelia beyond the now. Modern jazz stylings mix with a dubstep swagger, wonky Dilla inflected beats mesh with psychedelic drums and melodies, the raw experimentation of Free The Robots hip hop beat science seems to know no bounds. Featuring Ikey Owens from Mars Volta on “The Eye”, pushing aside the purely electronic psychedelics for a traditional take with drums, guitars and screaming organ, showing the level of experimentation that sits comfortably with Free The Robots. Like many in the L.A. scene, influences of Turkish psychedelic rock seem to be a mainstay, and just as The Gaslamp Killer and Gonjasufi before them, “Turkish Voodoo” shows us the Free The Robots slant on a resurrected, underrated period of psychedelic rock Havana.

Ctrl Alt Delete is a blistering record of intense synthesizer wizardry, but along the way it has absorbed so much more than just another electronic album, the influences are varied, and the result would please many a fan in varying genres, from dubstep, grime, hip hop and wonky abstract beat science. Highly recommended.

Wayne Stronell

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