Alphabot!

Alphabot! and Gregory Pepper slander each other, before the official duel at NXNE 2012. - Harbourfront Centre Blog

Art has always required technology; there must be a practical method of expression. So there is no necessary antipathy between the two. It is only when we pursue the technological for its own ends that it threatens to extinguish the possibility of art.
Alphabot, aka Jake Roels, demonstrates the creativity that can be achieved and expressed in a live performance by a single, talented musician using modern musical technology. With an electric guitar, violin and keyboard, he creates a series of loops that weave about each other and his voice to make engaging and interesting music, creating a full canvas of sound and rhythm from a deceptively simple palate. And, in doing so, he proves we have no reason to fear that the technological will replace the human: the truly creative person will always be the master, never the slave, of the machines he uses. - Love Has Torn Us Apart

It’s acts like Alphabot! that make NXNE so interesting. After previewing Alphabot!’s music on MySpace, I didn’t really know what to think about the band’s electronic-robot approach. Jake Roels and his imagination get points for effort and Alphabot!’s set at the Whippersnapper Gallery was as bizarre as you could hope for. Roels, decked out in a red cape, would refer to himself as a robot throughout the set. He’d also interject between songs, outlining a narrative that linked the songs together. While I’m unclear as to what that narrative was exactly (something about a princess, a village, and a robot I presume), it was a nice touch. - Press Plus 1

"Interesting, but it was definitely not for the weak at heart that mi...ght not be able to recognize the art in it. It truly was structured chaos along the lines of A Certain Ratio. Alphabot are very entertaining to say the least – worth checking out if they make it to your neck of the woods." - Loose Lips Hot Gossip

The show seemed to really kick off once Alphabot took the stage. Armed with a keyboard, acoustic guitar, violin and loop pedal, Jake Roels established his beat and proceeded to impress with his looped cheap syth melodies that really impressed. When he kicks in with lovely synth chord padding washes it's absolute idiosyncratic bliss. His funny lyrics about Robots, Penguins, Cars and other stuff as well as his odd-ball stage presence were innocently endearing and you'd have to be a real grouch not to just seriously enjoy his set which was both fun and musically solid. For the myspace experience click here: http://www.myspace.com/jakeroels.

- Marc Z Grub

I'm not sure what to make of Crush All Humans, the debut full-length from Alphabot! It's uneven, to say the least. At its worst, it features emo-ish spoken word ("Easter Island") and forgettable, slightly off-key pop ("Penguins"). So it's definitely not an essential album by any stretch of the imagination.

On the other hand, there are enough strong (or, at least, interesting) moments here that Alphabot! definitely seems like an artist worth keeping an eye on. "Tire Fire", for example, sounds like it's straight out of a cabaret, while "Dancing On Top Of The Ocean" adds a bit of dance machine to the mix to give everything an creepy, oddly automated feel. Tracks like "Concrete Clouds" and "Robots Take LA" go even further in an electronic direction, showing that The Artist Otherwise Known As Jake Roels may have a good dance album in him once he's done doing cabaret-pop. I know that some artists hate hearing the word "potential", since a lot of the time it just means there's nothing good to say about their music at present time, but in Alphabot!'s case it's a good kind of potential. Crush All Humans shows that he's far from being a finished product, but it also hints that with a little more seasoning, Alphabot! could be something special. - iheartmusic