Deastro/Our Brother the Megazord

I call Randolph Chabot to set up an interview and literally the first thing he says before I can coordinate it is: “Does Aardvark have two A’s in the middle or at the beginning?” Then adds, exasperated, “It’s been bugging me all day!”

Randolph’s mind is always moving, often attacked by creative fits of melodies in his head that force him awake at 3 a.m. to record on any of the numerous technologies in his laboratory basement, Pro Tools, Acid, Contact, Recycle — all hooked up to various synthesizers, drum machines, guitar pedals or a microkorg.

Randolph is Deastro, a one-man electro-pop odyssey that draws just as much influence from the Beach Boys and punk rock as it does from Mega Man and the Bambi soundtrack. What kind of sounds crystallize when a possible musical genius happily embraces the cheese-tastic synths of Wing’s “Wonderful Christmas Time” and galvanizes it to its unknown potential? Deastro ... and for that matter, Our Brother The Megazord, his other project.

“Like T.S. Elliott said, your mind is like a montage,” Randolph says, “the more you put up there, the more tools you have to make stuff with ... I get disappointed with my music at least once a week, that’s one of the reasons I write so much."

He’s recorded full LPs respectively as Deastro and Our Brother, as well as material for an (also solo) acoustic-folk project called Junior Junior ... and a 34-song opus on the horizon. He’s somewhere near a hundred songs by now.

The affable 21-year-old Sterling Heights native, who carries a tin of markers around for poster designing, was home-schooled until 16, went to school to be a hairdresser and went to college in Minneapolis to get into social work where he became associated with a skateboard team that congregated at night. There he met all kinds of characters, like a nihilist-Cherokee strung out on heroin and cocaine. He ended up in Arkansas, playing as a duo, Velicoraptor, a mold for Randolph’s future forays into ambio-electronica.

Listening to his music can be overwhelming — high-flying synthesizers overlay each other endlessly, mixed with volatile-punk-style guitars and an '80s dance club drum machine beat. The sounds, ironically artificial with synthesized chimes, strings and trills, feel emanated from the earth itself, or the essence of the human soul.

Combining such influences as Disney soundtracks, M83, tacky McCartney synths, Sufjan Stevens, '80s pop detritus and even an old man’s fuzzy, wavy eyebrows recalls pop art's loose rules of artistic credibility. “T.S. Elliott said, when you draw art from history, from your surroundings, there’s already a depth of meaning to it because we are associating it with each other. So if I’m taking sounds from our childhood, that I remember, it’s going to associate meaning to me and to other people who grew up in my generation.

“It feels like I’m really trying to learn how to take everything in life and turn it into a symphony.”

I recall his blunt aardvark question when he says: “You can never be honest with someone unless you’re completely candid. You can never be honest with yourself as a musician unless the things you hear, that you want to play ... are the things that you’re going to play.”

Finally, Randolph changes the subject to something he’d rather riff on: “So what have you been listening to lately?” - Real Detroit!

A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon Deastro's unassuming MySpace page. His page has only registered 2,000 views as of this writing and this is a shame, because this act has definite potential and with a modicum of exposure he would win-over a horde of converts. Detriot native Randy Chabot handles all vocals, drums, piano, synth, guitar, and programming duties. His best song I've encountered is "The Shaded Forests"-- a tasty slice of ethereal electro pop-rock that proves Chabot has melodic chops in spades. The song succeeds largely due to the endearing combination of the lo-fi recording aesthetic and anthemic, stadium-ready choruses. Starting with a laid-back synth riff reminiscent of CYHSY's "Over and Over Again (Lost & Found)", the tune builds and blossoms into a near mini-epic. Chabot proves his songwriting instincts are keen, as this bad boy is brimming with strong hooks at every turn. The attention to detail and little things really give this one character-- see, i.e., the studdering "I t-t-t-t told ya"s during the verses and the wall of shimmering guitars before the chorus. While obviously recorded on a limited budget, the sound works quite well and the song is all the better due to this fact, as this brand of stuff could easily veer into dangerously poppy terrain with the application of excess studio sheen. However, with its bedroom recording feel and almost U2-sized ambition, "The Shaded Forests" is an undeniable winner.
- Moroccan Role

Randolph J. Chabot Jr. started to make electronic music when he was 13 at his home in Sterling Heights, MI. All the music is made in Randolph's basement with the help of a lot of sampled children's toys and synthesizers. The one-man band finished his first album that year despite the ecstatic, aural trauma it caused his mother.

He studied youth development in college with the intent of becoming a social worker, dropping out to pursue music full time. He formed an electro band called Veleciraptor, which inspired the ideas for his current synthesized projects: Our Brother the Megazord and Deastro which try to blur the lines between electronic and acoustic music.

But what, exactly, does it sound like? Acoustic and electronic become not so mutually exclusive as you might believe. Infused with contemporary rock beats, creative use of sound effects and intriguingly complex melodies, this balance tips between the two types of music. Far from causing dissonance, it pulls the ear in draws parallels to ethereal electronic artists like Placebo and Ladytron, with sophistication and polish.

He has two full lengths to be released as a 34-song double disc in July 2007: Our Brother’s “Time the Teenage Twister” and Deastro’s “The Young Planets.” He is currently working on songs for his acoustic project Jr. Jr. and the new Deastro album titled "Dark Diamond." (Impressive!) - So This is What the Volume Knob's For

Let me introduce you to the multiple musical personalities of Randolph J. Chabot, an electronic basement multi-instrumentalist from Detroit who goes by the names Our Brother The Megazord and Deastro. Why the dual band/artist name? Apparently, he’d get bored with just one.

Our Brother The Megazord is meant to be heard at a dance party, and is an outlet for Randolph to run with how happy music makes him.

Check out An Empty Park by Our Brother The Megazord off the full length Time The Teenage Twister. Makes me think of Andrew Bird and Beck collaborating on this one.

Deastro is meant to be more like drunken fist boxing, touching more into life’s casual dips into sadness with optimism.

Check Out Michael the Lone Archer by Deastro off The Young Planets. What drew me into this song was the M83-esque wall of sound that backs up the chorus.

Regardless of which name appears, I’m a fan. A songwriter that knows how to make his basement sound good. - Indie Music Filter

had the chance to see the one-man extravaganza Deastro a week ago and, quite frankly, my mind was blown. Randy Chabot handles all instruments and crafts what kind of sounds like a more danceable, lo-fi version of M83, but with a lot more Nintendo influences. Something that must be heard for yourself. Live, it is one of the most fun, intense and breathtaking of times I've had in a while.

These songs come from his We Will Never Waver Quiverstar album, but in talking to him after the show he said there is a double disc album in the works for later this year that will be much higher quality, as these were recorded using merely a four-track. I am anxiously awaiting it. - and God Rock us Everyone.

Randy Chabot takes two things out of his backpack: his laptop (covered in black cotton with a No. 2 on it, knitted by his mom) and a gray, commanding wolf hat that he puts on, then smiles, his squinted eyes glimmering.
“That’s the other band mate,� I point to the computer.

“Pretty much,� the wolfman says. “It’s like my soul mate.�

It’s warped from being out in the sun, and its keys are sticky from a Sprite accident, but Chabot’s computer holds the hundreds of songs he’s written and recorded sans money, sans publicist, sans studio (but utilizing his lab tools: Reason, Acid, keyboards, guitars, vocal effects in obtuse places like stairwells, closets and bathrooms). It’s all pure gold, all pure soul, euphoric, hallucinogenic-but-calming music that materializes meaning out of a mad world.

Chabot is 21, and he has three bands. He’s not in three bands, he is three bands — all solo projects: the sun-soaked spurring space-pop of Our Brother the Megazord; the sweeping, cerebral electro-rock of Deastro and the simpler, neo-classical acoustic folk of Junior-Junior.

“Do you have trouble sleeping?� I ask.

“I do, actually,� Chabot replies.

“Instances where you gotta get a song out?� I dig.

“That’s all the time," he says. "I’m like, ‘This sounds cool in my head; I wish I could hear it!’�

Chabot’s ceaseless odyssey lies somewhere in the futuristic Gary Numan chills met with nostalgic Mega Man 8-bit melodies, otherworldly M83 guitar feedback, enthusiastic New Order dance romps and beautiful Beach Boys vocal melodies.

We trade the wolf hat, talking about philosophy, redux filters and show politics with hipsters hesitant to dance: “They put people on levels — ‘Is this person cool enough to talk to?’ That’s so not what music is about." Then, we come to a 17-song Deastro concept-album to release after his current, official debut, a 34-song, dual release split between Deastro and Our Brother the Megazord; within the jacket, a hand-drawn robot-house with legs marches under the message “Choose your own adventure!�

On "Darkwater Byu" he sings: “And their sons still rise, under the lone Penobscot eye …� “That’s about our city, even though we have so many problems here, their sons still keep getting up in the morning — that’s really inspiring,� Chabot explains. “There’s one philosopher who says, ‘The only real question is to commit suicide or not.’ It’s a very courageous thing — to keep living. You have the choice to live or not to live. If you’re not gonna live all the way, you’re already dead — that’s if you think everything is already written, which I don’t. I read this book called Einstein’s Dreams, about how every decision you make splits off into alternate patterns of time, a series of possibilities that every person’s life has. I’m really hopeful about the undetermined.�

Rendezvous with Chabot feel like lassoing a tornado, with feelings of nostalgia for a lost friendship that’s only just begun … because in my imagination of a world that makes sense, Randy will be gone very soon, launched into that mystic, untold world of The Big Time. And it’s crazy to live by absolutes, but I’ll finally decide, for certain, that there’s absolutely no justice in this world if he stays in Hamtramck bars. I’m happy to have him here though, and it’s not that success means the world … I just think the world needs him. | RDW - Real Detroit

First, a tale of the tape: 34 jams, 2 monikers, 1 dude, 21 years old. Both Deastro and Our Brother the Megazord are the refined fruits from the fertile mind of one Randolph Chabot, recorded in "basements, closets, stairwells, apartments, fields, coffeehouses, living rooms, parking lots, libraries, practice rooms and showers/bathtubs." In short, this double-disc comp is just the sort of magnum-opus-in-progress one might expect from a hard-working curious child of the download generation.
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The song titles alone suggest a mind tapped into the main vein of cultural, personal and artistic stimulus: "Michael the Archer of the North Shore," "Leah's Daughter the Giraffe," "Ima Vagrant Terrific," and so on. At the very least they indicate a sense of humor meeting artful conceits, with beauty attached.

The Deastro songs headline here. Seventeen selections tightly focused on creating a layered atmosphere and tone. They're melodic-yet-nervous works with nods to My Bloody Valentine, the Pet Shop Boys, Gary Numan and other Anglophilic delights of the synthezoid era. But there's a DIY energy all their own.

Chabot's nuanced, literary-leaning vocals come to the fore when the moto-beat veers toward aural wallpaper. He teases this tension, lulling your ears with shoegaze texture only to pinch you to attention with tricks such as a verbal stutter or a heavily processed male-female call-and-response passage.

Nearly subliminal meanings rise from torpid dreams driven by a persistent heartbeat inside a romantic young soul.

Were he working this territory in the '90s there'd most certainly be a 4AD logo gracing the CD. Then again, Chabot would have been, what, 5 years old?

Our Brother the Megazord veers into less-focused but well-bent terrain with mixed results. The lightly jaunty and synth-bloop numbers such as "Inventor Adventure Club" and "Hero Squad" sound custom-made for a 1980s Afternoon Special soundtrack.

And as extraordinarily prolific as this collection paints Chabot, stay tuned to this space as he's got an acoustic moniker out there called Jr. Jr. and another Deastro record due in November. Ah, to be young and talented. - Metrotimes