Music: Rollo Jean

Rollo Jean got a ‘New Band of The Day’ slot in The Guardian in December 2009. “We don’t even know his real name, and rumours that he’s called Toby are completely unfounded,” wrote Paul Lester, which cracked us up big time. He is called Toby and we know him because we put out a single for his last band, Zan Pan, on our very-very-short-lived Pigeon Coup label. The song was called ‘Sirens of Titan’, it was a hard-glam rock opera and it came complete with artwork of a well-hung monkey hanging out on the moon.

Now Toby’s oiling up his third eye and getting his new project Rollo Jean off the ground, so here’s an into to this super-musician in his new guise. We begin with forthcoming debut single, ‘Sweet Lies’ — a ‘Miss You’-like stomper put through the cosmic mincer: synth strings, falsetto vocal, heavy riffing, disco beat… the whole enchilada. ‘St. Tropez’ has been floating about for a while, but this is a new version of a song that manages to be proggy, classical, folky and a bit reggae. It’s incredible and it has a MOST SAUCY video, shot by talented up-and-coming filmmaker Bronwen Parker-Rhodes, who also recently published a book of photographs of the girls in the video. More info here

And there’s more from Toby soon, in even another guise. Along with former Pink Greaser Steve Santa Cruz, he’s formed old school metal band — a proper Judas Priest-style metal band. It’s what we crave.

*Notice! The sound on the video seems to be knackered. Start the movie with the volume killed, play the soundcloud above, bingo.*

Rollo Jean, ‘Sweet Lies’ by The Stool Pigeon

Rollo Jean, ‘St. Tropez’ by The Stool Pigeon

St Tropez by Rollo Jean by brindog

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