For all the young uns at the back, Bob Todd was the name of an actor mainly active in the 70s and 80s, who was most famous for playing a ‘straight man’ and one of the comedy stooges to the late great Benny Hill. He is also immortalized in the brilliantly named song ‘99% of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd’ by Half Man Half Biscuit off their classic 1985 LP ‘Back in the DHSS’.
When I discovered that someone had used the name of this well-loved cult British actor to name a band, It immediately pricked my ears and raised a big cheesy grin. According to bobtodd’s Bandcamp, they were born Boxing Day 2024 as an “as live” studio project. Name checking Cabaret Voltaire, Devo, Bogshed, Neu!, Brigandage, Max Romeo, The Cravats, Prince Jammy, John Foxx among others as their loves and influences, they signed off their description with “We don’t really sound like any of them. We are Electronic Punk Lo-Fi for people determined not to live in the past.” I bloody love that.
So following up from their recent ‘virtual 12-inch single’ “Further Beyond The Pale/Sticky Beak”, bobtodd have now come finally delivered their latest EP/Mini Album entitled “Dance Chapter 1”.
Right from the off the eponymously named opener has lo-fi fuzz drenched all over it. The speaker hum is just gorgeous. Minimalist (I will be using this word a lot in this piece) percussion and beats come in and drive the track forward to an abrupt end. Good stuff.
The brilliantly titled (and very Jim Bob) ‘Cops And Robbers And OAPs’ starts with the warm and every present speaker fuzz. Nice. Minimalist (I told you) percussion and beats come in as well as a very infectious skank. The repeated refrain of the title makes it feel like a Specials demo Terry Hall may have recorded on his mobile phone if they existed in 1977. Infectious, and you will be humming it for days.
‘Playing On Prejudices’ has the stark beats overlaid with lyrics about ‘hate you spread’ surely is a track reacting to the recent summer of hate that we’ve had to endure. The beats are so minimal they feel and sound like they were created on one of Rolf Harris’s Stylophones or a re-wired Gameboy. Amazing.
Four tracks in and we have the track of the EP. ‘Unsustainable’ is about the cost-of-living crisis and the lyrics are caustic and delivered in their dry and matter of fact way. The beats and percussion have a really great slice of fuzzy noise running through that accompanies and gives the track depth and structure. A standout track. More of this please.
Hold on scrap that. ‘Kneejerk’ is the track of the EP. What a banging minimalist disco track this is. Replete with the usual spoken word and barely sung lyrics about kneejerk press reactions to stuff like Kneecaps’ appearance at Glastonbury. Its hook is as infectious as Ebola and it even has something akin to a breakdown in the middle! Incredible stuff. Clever track name too.
Final track of this wonderful EP ‘Where Did That World Go?’ is a pean to when the world felt a little friendlier and more accepting. It’s not a piece of nostalgia porn. Far from it. It’s a funky as fuck longing for love, peace and happiness to return to this spinning globe of ours. It’s wish I think we all have, and that’s what makes this track about the need for love and understanding so beautiful in its restraint.
bobtodd paint pictures with the minimalist of strokes possible. Something that I wholeheartedly go along with. Some of the greatest bands that use electronic in this way (Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide, etc) are minimalist at heart, and as with some of the greatest visual artists of the genre such as Franze Kline or Robert Ryman, what is left out is as important as what’s left in. The adage ‘less is more’ can certainly be levelled at bobtodd and I for one champion this approach. Sometimes bands can throw everything and anything at their sonic canvas, but bobtodd don’t do this. They let their ideas formulate and bubble away and then they take the most potent parts and go from there. bobtodd feel like they don’t really care what people think and I really love that too. They aren’t afraid of experimenting and they aren’t afraid of over delivering too. If minimalist beats played out on a Casio is what they are about at the moment, then that is what you will get. Nothing more. Nothing less. Bobtodd are my favourite new band, and I certainly think they could be yours too. Go on, you know you want to.
‘Dance Chapter 1’ was released on 28th November 2025 and you can purchase a download of the full EP/Mini Album on Bandcamp.
Review by Ioan Humphreys
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