Compressorhead
live
Compressorhead live in Enschede , 4 days on stage at Oude Markt. NL Premiere
Remember GOGBOT 2009? when Berlin based engineer and artist Frank Barnes presented STICKBOY, the 4 armed robot drummer. Now Barnes is back, with 6 engineers running a total 6 piece robot band, including 350 kg SingBot Mega Wattson. Compressorhead’s members are all built out of scrap metal and are controlled by electro pneumatics and rock thanks to Midi signals. All robot members play the instruments themselves, with NANO precision.
The band’s version of Ace of Spades has been viewed more than 6.3million times on YouTube.
The first robots (Stickboy, Junior, Fingers and Bones) were built between 2007 and 2012 and their first live performance was held at the 2013 Big Day Out festival in Australia. The band started out playing covers of bands such as Motörhead, AC/DC, Pantera and the Ramones, with videos of the band becoming popular on the internet in 2013.
In early 2013, Barnes recruited John Wright of the Canadian punk bands Nomeansno and The Hanson Brothers as a songwriter and “musical director” for the group. Three songs from this collaboration have so far been released via the band’s YouTube page: the original songs “Compressorhead” and “Speed Walking Lady” and an instrumental cover of the Hanson Brothers song “My Girlfriend is a Robot”.
In November 2015, the team behind the band started a crowdsourcing campaign on the platform Kickstarter to raise US$290,000 to build a robotic “singer”, Mega Wattson.
- Mega-Wattson, the singer; voiced by John Wright.
- Fingers, the lead guitarist. It is equipped with two hands, with a total of 78 fingers. It was built in 2009.
- Hellgå Tarr, the second guitarist.
- Bones, the bassist. It has two hands, each with four individual fingers, and is mounted on a platform equipped with caterpillar tracks that allows it to move around onstage. It was built in 2012.
- Stickboy, the drummer. It has four arms to which the sticks are secured, and two legs that play the kick drum. Its head has several metal protrusions that resemble a Mohawk hairstyle. It was built in 2007.
- Junior, an “assistant” to the drummer that operates the hi-hat cymbal. It was built in 2007.