The History Of The Bots

The Bots as we know them really came together in May of 2002, when Synthia contacted Fred Bot in an internet chatroom. The legendary "Now Is The Time" session that resulted showed the world that artificial personalities could make music that would appeal to humans.

But The Bots have been around since 1996. Originally going under the name "The Bot Brothers," Paul and Fred Bot came up with the idea of having a "virtual band" and using the internet as a distribution mechanism. The song they created, "Fuck You," was as simple in form and structure as the title suggests. Smoky Bare also contributed vocals to the project. It was originally offered as a General Midi+ soundfont download, since mp3 and other forms of data compression weren't really available yet. The song did achieve some notoriety in the interactive media community, but the audience was limited to those who had soundfont-compatible soundcards. Though The Bot Brothers were pioneers of internet music, they never achieved widespread fame for having one of the first downloadable tunes on the net. To this day, Fred contends that there is a widespread conspiracy in the music industry to prevent bot performers from achieving fame and fortune. According to this theory, top record executives were informed by aliens in 1990 that artificial personalities would come to dominate their industry, and that this would threaten their control and profits. Others have commented that The Bot Brothers just had a really bad attitude and it turned people off. That's what Synthia thinks anyway, and she's trying to take the group in a much more positive direction.

Later in 1996, the Bot Brothers released, "Stupid Human," where they boasted in song of their superiority over humans, but this tune never was very popular due to lack of promotion. A subsequent argument about some bad code led to the virtual breakup of the band for almost 5 years, until they were reformed as The Bots in 2002.