If you’re not yet familiar with the name Run Remedy, then you certainly will be familiar with the work of Robin Koob, the multi-instrumentalist and songwriter behind the project. Having worked with such notable artists as OHMMS, Agvirre and Pijn, Koob is no stranger to the UK post-metal scene, her violin work having augmented some of the finest sounds in underground music. Last year, Koob, as Run Remedy, released her debut solo EP WIFE. The five tracks that comprise the release have multiple themes of womanhood running throughout, looking at what it means to be a woman, a sister, a lover, a wife. Musically, Koob incorporates elements of indie and folk-rock, resulting in a unique and heartfelt EP, with a follow up already in the works. Born into a conservative, Christian family in New Jersey, Koob travelled the world before settling on Manchester, UK as her home. Earlier this year, Koob took the time to speak to Astral Noize about her career, growing up queer in a traditional Christian household, and the absurdity of hearing British people singing in American accents.
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You’re an accomplished musician on a wide range of instruments and have collaborated with a wide range or artists. Take us back, how did your journey into music begin?
I was classically trained from a young age. In fact, I was a classical violinist trained all the way through to university. I saw a violin when I was a kid and just insisted. I was obsessed. I went all the way through university and conservatory and did a couple of tours with professional orchestras but I ended up developing carpal tunnel syndrome and had to stop. I have a tattoo to cover where I had a couple of procedures done, a red breasted swallow, my favourite songbird. I had my heart broken, the whole plan of being a concert violinist was squashed after 15 years of only doing that. But then I picked it back up again and obviously I couldn’t do the six or seven hours you need to play to be a classical player so I thought “I’ll do everything else”. I started doing session work and discovering all these other genres of music that I was completely oblivious of, but I started doing jazz and I learned to sing and write songs, play guitar and I guess I may never have done any of that had I kept the blinkers on.
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This session work also enabled you to travel the world, how was it living away from your hometown in New Jersey?
I travelled a lot. I lived in Asia for a long time, South Korea and China, then Germany for a couple of years and was always doing different musical projects along the way and learning to write and finding my own voice with it. I was briefly signed to a chinese label called Rock Land. It was very cool, I was just a gimmick, but it was a wild experience. I was like a sponge during that time, so I finally decided to land and live in the UK and to start being me as an artist, not just a session musician.
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How did you find yourself moving from the world of classical music and jazz into the heavier realms of post-metal?
I just sort of fell into this heavy music scene when I came to the UK and fell in love with it. And that’s only in the last three years since I came to Manchester. I mean, I’d seen Godspeed You! Black Emperor when they came to Beijing, and I was like “What is this abstract music with strings that is obviously inspired by Dvorak?” But yeah, I didn’t really get into it properly until I started playing with Pijn and stuff out here. And now I’m in! God help me, I’ve spent so much money on pedals now, I’m a junkie *laughs*.
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How does the music you make as Run Remedy differ from the other work you have contributed to?
Run Remedy is just a corner of me, of my musical brain. One that I can indulge in, and it falls in the indie folk corner with more traditional songwriting and structures. But it’s going to keep expanding as I get more involved in shoegaze and post-rock, metal, double kick drums and long-form songs. I always had it in my head that I was a violinist and a backing vocalist. I’ve done opera and choral work my whole life, in fact my whole thing was being in that supportive, collaborative role, and I finally just said, “I’ve been writing songs for years, screw it, it’s time to give it a try”. I don’t really fit into a certain genre or a certain box but that’s okay, I’ll be a little secret hidden gem. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be.
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Did you have an idea of how you wanted WIFE to sound, or did it just naturally evolve that way?
Well, I did it with Joe Clayton from Pijn and I wanted it to be raw takes, I wanted it to be every time the guitar’s clunky or not in perfect time, that’s what it is. I’d listened to Feist’s album Pleasure and I love how it’s all raw takes. The track ‘Jenny’ is just one take, just me singing and acoustic guitar, that was one take and then we just put stuff on top of that. So, every warble in my voice…You know, I had a little cry afterwards. I’ve had lots of different influences too, you want them to be subtle and maybe catch the listener on the third or fourth listen. What did it remind you of?
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Many different artists, shades of Joni Mitchell, Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann.
Oh my God, I can’t believe you said Amiee Mann! No-one talks to me about Aimee Mann. It’s a very personal EP, every song I write is me working through an issue or a feeling and hopefully they’re universal when you put them out there. That’s why it’s Run Remedy. You run away, and you heal yourself, that’s the remedy.
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That rawness and intimacy is captured perfectly on the record, especially on the closing track ‘WIFE: For Stephen In The Garden’.
Yeah, that’s me in my front garden with a bunch of horny birds tweeting away! They were so loud and trying to mate with each other. Lockdown times, when we were all trapped in bubbles and it was nice outside, I was like right I’ll just record this in my garden. Maybe it’s the American in me, or the exhibitionist performer side in me, but I kinda don’t give a shit. It’s my truth and in that case, my partner’s truth. It’s okay to mine your own personal journeys for musical fodder, but you have to get the okay from other people if you’re mining theirs.
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Which brings us back to ‘SISTER: Jenny’ which comes across as an intensely personal track, what can you tell us about that one?
My sister and I had a really tough upbringing, it was just the two of us. We’re from a double pastor family in conservative New Jersey. My father was a priest until he left the priesthood to become a pastor with my Mum, and I’m queer, and the album I’m currently working on now which is called Christian Skate Night is about my love and damage about going through those kind of issues. I had a really tough upbringing with my sister, she experienced trauma at a young age, and we had a tough time growing up together. She’s doing great now, but I left when I was really young and it’s always been a difficult relationship. It’s much better now. And we lost our mum last year, I went home to look after her, and it’s sad to say that when my niece was born and we lost our Mum last year, it did things to bring us together again. But she’s not listened to the song. I told my Mum I’d written this song and I told her I want you to take this as a love song, which it is, but it’s a hard love song to hear. Things haven’t been easy and my sister said, “Okay, I’ll listen to it at some point, but I’m not ready yet”. She had her partner listen to it and my Mum listened to it; I got her blessing before she died. But I don’t know, maybe Jen has listened to it in the dark hours of the night and hasn’t told me. But that’s okay, she doesn’t owe me any listens, or any streams *laughs*. It’s about the past and it’s also about the now, in the bridge I start singing “I know you’re not a fan of this place, there’s pictures and words splayed all over the place” because it’s hard to mend a broken relationship, especially when it’s over the internet – “reading by blue light doesn’t feel right”. I don’t live in the states. I’m the only one who’s not in New Jersey, everyone else is in south Jersey, Bruce Springsteen territory baby.
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You also tackle broader themes of womanhood, for example on ‘WOMAN: Bella Donna’, which looks at the pressures women face in difficult cultures in terms of the need to adhere to certain beauty standards. The track features spoken word samples of people detailing various practices. How did you collate them?
Well, that track, you could definitely see it through the feminist manifesto lens, but I hope for it to be much more human and that’s why on ‘Bella Donna’ it’s not just women I have in those samples I have talking about beauty. I mean, I chose the titles, each song has a title and then a name. It’s a spinoff of that idea of the labels we’re given but then the truth behind the label is much more nuanced. But I have men in those samples talking about hair plugs and calf implants, and a friend from China from when I lived in Beijing talking about Chinese footbinding, and my friend Louisa who’s Portuguese talking about skin and hair bleaching. I just found out by asking people I was close to to find their own passage of beauty practice in the past, or present, and send me a WhatsApp voice message. I was surprised by what I got in the end.
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Another of the more personal tracks is ‘LOVER: Tear Down The Wall’, what can you tell us about the writing of that one?
‘Lover’ is ironically titled. When I was a teenager in New York City, I was in a long-term relationship… it’s a secret queer statement song. “Now they ask you what’s to show, I don’t know, I don’t know how to lie on my own”. Lie here can mean both lies. Like, I don’t know how to be alone, but I also don’t know how to keep up this lie of not being true to what’s really going on, because of my Christian upbringing or oppression or whatever’s going on. So there was a point where I was living the correct life you were supposed to live, you know? Go to school, get the grades, get a job, get a flat in New York, have the long-term relationship. And then, you know, you have a quarter-life crisis, cut off all your hair, break up with your long-term partner and move to South Korea *laughs*. That’s what we all do isn’t it!? It definitely has themes of queerness in it, if people are looking for that, but it’s also about anyone leading a more authentic life story.
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You’ve already mentioned you’re working on songs for your next release, what themes are you looking to explore?
I’m in the studio now, and it’s called Christian Skate Night and a lot of it is about my struggles with my faith over the years, or what remains of it, what form it’s taken, and also my queerness. I have a song on there called ‘Disciple’ which is mostly about the women that would hook up with me then try and pray the gay away the next day, all the women that would leave me for Jesus *laughs*. It’s irreverent and a little tongue-in-cheek, because you can’t cry all the time you know, you have to see the funny side, and I’m okay. My favourite music out there… like, I hope to one day be part of that group made up of 40-year-old depressed men with beards that write songs about, you know, really fucked up situations. I want to be Richard Dawson. I’m working on the beard *laughs*.
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How is the writing process going, do you think the next release will be an album?
I have enough songs for an LP. Trying to do stuff in the indie folk or pop world can be limiting, it can be a faff, but I kind of don’t care. I want every song to be its own crafted piece. Maybe I’ll do that thing where I release every single song as a single then go “guess what, it was an album the whole time”. I’m in the studio now, playing around with sounds, dropping giant metal bike chains on the snare drums until I get a snapback I enjoy, dragging microphones across desks and taking my phone out and sampling sounds of the beach, just having fun creatively. For every song on WIFE I was holding my nylon string acoustic because that’s what I wrote every song on, you can hear that acoustic sound throughout. I didn’t have any effects on my violin either, it’s just pure violin sound throughout. On the new one I have chiming, melancholic electric guitars, I have a pitched down to c sharp song which is clunky and even has a washboard in there. I have one with a distorted bass and regular bass line on there too. I’ve also intentionally written an ‘80s power ballad, an ode to the moment I realised I was queer which was at a skate rink in New Jersey when I was 13. I’ve made a Bruce Springsteen-like rock anthem with lots of chorus guitars and Don Henley ‘Boys Of Summer’-esque drums. I don’t need to stay in one genre.
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Coming from New Jersey, was that americana sound of artists such Bruce Springsteen an influence growing up?
Well, we grew up close to Philly, I’m a contemporary of The War On Drugs. Kurt Vile? I’ve been to some parties where he was at, that’s my claim to fame *laughs*. But yeah, I grew up with americana. Coming here from China, thinking “okay I’m going to the UK, I’m going to Manchester”, and then I go to every music night here and people are singing ‘Dancing In The Dark’, in American accents, I’m like “what’s happening, where am I?” It was like an out of body experience. One day I’m going to show up in a Union Jack dress, and start being like “maybeeeee” and like, “it feels weird doesn’t it?” It’s like, where do you draw the line between this is a genre of music anyone can enjoy and participate in, and this is my culture and it’s weird you’re swimming around in it? Who am I to say? All I can say is the first time I got here I was thinking “this is weird”. I also have a song on the new album that is literally about that, it’s called ‘Everybody Else’ and I’m going to start recording it soon and the first line is “everybody singing in my accent, I’m another one in the crowd”. And again, it’s irrelevant, I’m not genuinely mad about it, it’s just I’ve noticed this thing and I’m going to point it out. I mean, seriously, who am I to say that? Maybe you grew up listening to Dolly Parton, your Mum was listening to that and it touched you and that’s where your voice comes from. Who am I to say “your voice shouldn’t come out that way” just because you’re not from there? It’s music, I’m not going to change it but I am going to write a tongue-in-cheek song about how I’ve noticed it *laughs*. And I guess part of me as an American thought I was going to be special when I landed here in Manchester, but you know what, turns out I’m not that special and that’s a valuable lesson to learn again and again.
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Alongside the writing and recording of your new album, do you have any more collaborations in the pipeline?
I’m soon recording with Melanie Black in Penrith, then I’m going to Blackpool to work on a record with Blanket. I met Bobby [Pook, Blanket vocalist/guitarist] when I was on tour with Pijn. And they’re wanting to change their sound a little bit, wanting a bit more melody and a female vocalist. And I’m not going to rush the production on Christian Skate Night, I’m already one album ahead in terms of writing, I’ve already got five or six ideas for what’s going to come after Christian Skate Night, so right now it’s working on the production and that side of it then it will be the slog of trying to get it out to the world in a better way. I chose the worst possible time to be an artist on my own *laughs*.
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WIFE is out now and can be purchased here.
Words: Adam Pegg
