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Robert Wyatt

Robert Wyatt

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Robert Wyatt: Shleep

Review and Interview by Ben Thompson, MOJO, 1997

Soft Machine and Matching Mole legend makes triumphant return. Sterling work from all-star supporting cast Paul Weller, Brian Eno, Evan Parker, Annie Whitehead and Phil ...

Audio interviews

Robert Wyatt (1991)

Interview by Andy Gill, Rock's Backpages audio, August 1991

The venerable Wyatt talks about his new album Dondestan, setting his partner Alfie's poems to music and his singing voice. He also talks about sampling, his appreciation of hip hop, and his pleasure listening to Pete Tong's Radio 1 show. He then talks about leaving the Communist Party, which leads on to an extensive discussion of politics...

File format: mp3; file size: 73.1mb, interview length: 1h 16' 05" sound quality: ****

Robert Wyatt (1998)

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 1 December 1998

This lengthy interview roams back and forth from Wyatt's childhood to the present day, taking in politics, Jimi Hendrix, Soft Machine, his voice and his music. Fascinating stuff.

File format: mp3; file size: 95.8mb, interview length: 1h 44' 35" sound quality: ***

List of articles in the library

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The Softs, the Proms and drummer Wyatt

Interview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 5 September 1970

IT'S NOT long since Robert Wyatt announced that he was vacating the drum stool with Soft Machine in order to pursue a career with Kevin ...

Soft Machine: Inside the Mind of a Machine

Interview by Michael Watts, Melody Maker, 2 January 1971

Michael Watts talks to Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt ...

Robert Wyatt: Rock Bottom

Review by Ian MacDonald, New Musical Express, 27 July 1974

COUNTING MATCHING Mole's first album, this is Robert Wyatt's third solo record. It echoes his previous ventures in being a strong statement of mood, but ...

Robert Wyatt: Join The Professionals, Form A Rock Band…

Interview by Ian MacDonald, New Musical Express, 27 July 1974

YEAH, WELL – Robert Wyatt (fact) drummed with Soft Machine, led Matching Mole, and fell from a fourth-storey window in Maida Vale early last year, ...

Robert Wyatt: Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London

Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 September 1974

EVEN THOUGH the gig was due to start at 8.30, Drury Lane had started to clog up with earnest-looking hippies nearly two hours before the ...

I Played Robert Wyatt At 78rpm And Saw God

Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 October 1974

THERE'S SOMETHING extra special about green suede boots. A certain devil-may-care attitude, a touch of fearless dandyism combined with a sense of the earthy and ...

Letter from Britain: Something Might Happen

Report by Ian MacDonald, Creem, November 1974

SITUATION UNCHANGED. Still hanging on in here, waiting for something to happen. (Wait — was that a heart-grazing lobe-grinder of a new single from Mick, ...

Robert Wyatt and Henry Cow, Gong: Piazza Farnese, Rome

Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 July 1975

The Roman Spring Of Mr. Wyatt Thrill to the chariot racing. Dice with death in the streets of the Italian capital. Listen to the music. Special ...

Robert Wyatt: The Wild Spume of His Hair Broke Over My Bowsprit

Interview by Brian Case, New Musical Express, 26 June 1976

...and I felt the tape line tauten on my cassette recorder as ROBERT WYATT plunged forward into the waves. ...

Robert Wyatt: Up from rock bottom

Interview by Vivien Goldman, Melody Maker, 15 March 1980

Writing letters to political prisoners, listening to Radio Havana, thinking about music... Robert Wyatt hasn't been inactive during his five-year absence from the studios. VIVIEN ...

Robert Wyatt: Rock Bottom / Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (Virgin)

Review by Richard Cook, New Musical Express, 18 April 1981

THE REAPPEARANCE of Robert Wyatt's two Virgin albums (1974-5 vintage), now in a double package, is as welcome as a spring day after a relentless ...

Adam Kidron: The Man Behind the Mix

Interview by Andy Schwartz, New York Rocker, December 1981

Making Tracks with Adam Kidron, London's 21-Year-Old Production Prodigy ...

Robert Wyatt: Diving for Pearls

Interview by Adam Sweeting, Melody Maker, 4 June 1983

Adam Sweeting talks to ROBERT WYATT about shipbuilding, pop music, the Eurovision song contest, and revolutionary ideologies. ...

Robert Wyatt: When The Boat Comes In

Interview by Richard Cook, New Musical Express, 4 June 1983

Well, Robert Wyatt's boat has certainly come in with the surprise success of his single 'Shipbuilding' on its re-release. In this interview Richard Cook talks ...

Robert Wyatt: Mongrel Musics

Interview by Cynthia Rose, New Musical Express, 8 September 1984

Nobody could have told me how Robert Wyatt's cover of Cuban pop star Pop star Pablo Milan´es' 'Yolanda' was going to capture my ear more ...

Robert Wyatt: Old Rottenhat (Rough Trade)

Review by Mat Snow, New Musical Express, 30 November 1985

CAN POLITICS and music mix? Are songs about matters commonly deemed to belong in the political sphere not really songs at all, but rather singing ...

The Things You Should Know About Robert Wyatt

Interview by Dave DiMartino, Creem, January 1987

IT'S DIFFICULT to call it more than coincidence. ...

Robert Wyatt: Rock Bottom and Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard

Review by Martin Aston, Q, August 1989

NOW ON CD: how Robert Wyatt found beauty in the aftermath of personal disaster. ...

Robert Wyatt: Dondestan (Rough Trade/All formats)

Review by David Quantick, New Musical Express, 14 September 1991

IT'S BEEN six years since Robert Wyatt last made a record, the wayward and twisty Old Rotten Hat. Before that, Wyatt spent a decade making ...

Robert Wyatt: Wheelie Saying Something

Report and Interview by Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 21 September 1991

Beardy-weirdy radical ROBERT WYATT may have ended up in a wheelchair pursuing rock 'n' roll Nirvana with '70s experimental cases Soft Machine, but he refuses ...

Robert Wyatt

Interview by Martin Aston, Q, October 1991

"I'M A MUSICIAN when I remember to be," Robert Wyatt confesses with an earnest tug at his straggly, greying beard. "In fact, I don't even ...

Robert Wyatt: Dondestan (Gramavision)

Review by Ira Robbins, Rolling Stone, 6 February 1992

THROUGHOUT A career as singular and honest as his expressive voice, Robert Wyatt has remained a true progressive. From his days in the Soft Machine, ...

Robert Wyatt & Bill Nelson: Tough Guys Don't Dance

Interview by Mac Randall, Musician, August 1992

Bill Nelson meets Robert Wyatt. For 20 years they've bucked the system and made music at the edge of rock. Two vets discuss the never-ending ...

Robert Wyatt: Mid-Eighties (Rough Trade R2952 CD)

Review by Ian Penman, The Wire, April 1993

AT TIMES during the last ten years you might have wondered why Robert Wyatt didn't simply junk music and park outside supermarkets; his solemn Spartist ...

Robert Wyatt: Going Back A Bit - A Little History of Robert Wyatt (Virgin)

Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 1994

AT LAST, a long-overdue anthology of stuff and nonsense by one of the great eccentrics of English art-rock, Robert Wyatt. A miscellany of bits and ...

Robert Wyatt: Going Back A Bit – A Little History of Robert Wyatt (Virgin)

Review by Richard Cook, MOJO, August 1994

HE IS A GREAT ENGLISHMAN, a pragmatic jazz buff, a witty and wise lyricist, an ingenious instrumentalist; but it's by his singing that Robert Wyatt ...

Robert Wyatt: Invisible Jukebox

Interview by Mike Barnes, The Wire, December 1995

Every month we play a musician a series of records which they're asked to identify and comment on — with no prior knowledge of what ...

Robert Wyatt

Interview by Richie Unterberger, Perfect Sound Forever, 18 November 1996

RICHIE UNTERBERGER interviewed Robert Wyatt on November 18, 1996 for his book Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll, which profiles 60 of the most interesting cult acts ...

Robert Wyatt

Interview by David Stubbs, Uncut, December 1997

ROBERT WYATT'S career has meandered long and strange, like an underground driver. He's played alongside Hendrix, Mike Oldfield and Phil Manzanera, as well as avant-garde ...

The Quiet Dream of Robert Wyatt

Interview by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Globe, 16 January 1998

A radical thinker composes for the imaginative mind ...

Deep Shleep: Robert Wyatt Gets Personal

Interview by Mac Randall, The Boston Phoenix, 20 January 1998

"THE BIG PROBLEM I have with rock and roll is the rock end of it," says Robert Wyatt. "But I love the rolling. I'm into ...

Robert Wyatt: Rock Bottom/Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard

Review by David Stubbs, Uncut, July 1998

Overdue CD reissue of Seventies English avant-rock classics ...

Robert Wyatt: EPs

Review by Stephen Dalton, New Musical Express, 20 February 1999

ROBERT WYATT has been a ghostly presence in progressive British pop for the last 30 years. ...

Nothing Can Stop Robert Wyatt: An Interview

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1999

THE DAY before I drive up to Lincolnshire to interview Robert Wyatt, there is a march through the streets of Santiago - a procession of ...

Robert Wyatt and Annie Whitehead: Songs In The Key Of Louth

Report and Interview by Nick Coleman, The Independent, 25 October 2000

The trombonist Annie Whitehead has arranged a suite of Robert Wyatt's tunes, spanning 25 years of his off-beat career. Nick Coleman talks to them in ...

A-Shleep at the Wheel: Robert Wyatt

Book Excerpt by Ben Thompson, 'Ways of Hearing', 2001

ROBERT WYATT lives on an isolated estuary in the misty North-East of England, where he sometimes likes to sit in quiet contemplation with his wife ...

Robert Wyatt: Cuckoo In The Nest

Interview by Andy Gill, The Independent, 12 September 2003

Idiosyncratic and eccentric, Robert Wyatt's unique musical style is consistently lauded by both critics and musicians. Andy Gill talks to him ahead of the release ...

Robert Wyatt: Cuckooland

Review and Interview by Mike Barnes, Jim Irvin, MOJO, October 2003

Wyatt's first album for six years features guest appearances by Annie Whitehead, Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, David Gilmour and Paul Weller. By Jim Irvin. ...

Triumph Of A Late Bloomer: Robert Wyatt

Interview by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, 2 October 2003

CONTRARY TO THE impression given by the list of cool, metropolitan mates who play on his latest album - Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Paul Weller, ...

David Gilmour: And This Is Me...

Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, MOJO, April 2006

STRINGS SHIMMER, a bowed double-bass growls, a saxophone sighs. Heads bowed before the sound desk, David Gilmour and his two engineers listen. Again and again ...

The lasting legacy of 'Shipbuilding'

Retrospective by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, 5 April 2007

During the Falklands war, Elvis Costello wrote a passionate elegy for a lost way of life that still resonates today, says Robert Sandall. ...

Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt

Retrospective and Interview by Simon Reynolds, The Guardian, 24 October 2007

"I COULD HARDLY recognise him at first," says Kevin Ayers. "But there, under that great beard, was Robert and he hadn't changed a bit." The ...

The Music of 2007

Special Feature by Gavin Martin, Daily Mirror, 28 December 2007

GIGS OFTHE YEAR LOU REED: Hammersmith Apollo, London Critically mauled on its original release, Berlin – Reed’s 1973 masterpiece of drug-addled despair, emotional and physical breakdown – ...

Orchestra National De Jazz & Robert Wyatt: Around Robert Wyatt (Bee Jazz)

Review by David Stubbs, The Wire, July 2009

ROBERT WYATT has become more and more an object of attention and devotion with the passing of time, as if taking on the status of ...

Robert Wyatt: His Greatest Misses

Review by Jude Rogers, bbc.co.uk, June 2010

A reminder of the palpable greatness of this Great British Eccentric ...

Robert Wyatt: The End of an Ear

Review by David Stubbs, bbc.co.uk, 28 May 2012

Wyatt's sometimes overlooked solo debut shows off his multi-instrumentalist chops. ...

Soundtrack of my life: Robert Wyatt

Interview by Jude Rogers, The Observer, 26 October 2014

The prog-rock pioneer on his love of jazz, falsetto singing, the thrill of meeting Bulgarian folk singers and why Pharrell Williams is as good as ...

see also Soft Machine

see also Wilde Flowers, The

see also Matching Mole

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