Bobey - Siblings

Theoretically speaking, the concept of letting your music speak for itself is great, particularly if the music is good enough. Still, in some cases, it can go a bit too far, particularly in this day and age. With the artist that goes by the name of Bobey and his EP Siblings, we might have a prime example.

Unless you are family, good friends or somebody who reads every word on somebody’s Bandcamp page, you wouldn’t know that Bobey is Oakland musician Brendan Page. I mean, the guy didn’t even bother to update his Facebook page since sometime last year. Ok, he wants his music to speak for itself, and he might not care much who hears his music and probably doesn’t want (or despises) social media, but that might be carrying things a bit too far!

You see, Siblings certainly contains music that deserves to be heard. The first thing you realise about this six track release is that Bobey is possibly one of those ardent Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fans who has all those releases of Smile (bootlegs, The Beach Boys and solo Brian Wilson versions) and that he has studied them in every detail. But instead of relying exclusively on vocal harmonies (which abound), Bobey has digested all those melodic twists and turns Wilson has come up with and then updated and modernised them with very imaginative use of percussive and melodic loops. After all, he had much better studio capabilities and things like effects pedals.

In doing so, Bobey has not sacrificed the melodic flow and did not let his music be overpowered by technology. His songs have a logical beginning and end, with all the time signatures he uses serving a purpose and not being there just to make things sound odd and different. Actually, the music on Siblings sounds like the waves of the Pacific Ocean crashing on the shores, probably close to where Bobey lives.

So, Bobey’s music does speak for itself!  Hopefully, it won’t just be speaking to family, friends and casual visitors to his Bandcamp page.