"Daddy" started it all in 1998.
Me and Milton James recorded drums n' bass on his four track.
Brain played guitar brain and I added a gravity defying xylophone solo.
It was the "go real fast to sound like
you know what you're doing" technique.
It worked somehow
Then comes the Vanilla Ice treatment.
And chorus shouting by Milt, Brain, Sean and Dr. Booty.
It was Daddy. The People loved it.
The People cried out for more.

It got repeated airplay on KCPR San Luis Obispo - the Cal Poly station.
It made me want to write more songs.

That might make it my most popular song to date though not my best some would say.
Which probably means I'm a shit song writer who got lucky once or I'm a funkpop croon rapper genius who hasn't
had the lightning strike twice. But I keep doing it cuz I like it; That's about the best reason there is.

So I moved to Oceanside and met Pete.

Pete is cool.

We jammed a bunch and recorded it all, eventually ending up with a truly unique album -
2000's How To Defeat Angry Monkey In 8 Easy Steps. Pete made Angry Monkey a reality with
his mostly functional 4 track and a fistful of cool mics, plus his mixing know how.
I mostly got wasted and recorded the first thing that came into my head,
all the while trying to stick to a narrative thru the whole album.
Pete did the rest,
with the lovely Chantal singing on 'Science In the Summertime' and 'King Apollo'

Then I moved to Santa Cruz. Whoah.
I don't know what happened; six years of confusion. But I have 2005's Soulfood and a Rocket Ship
to show for it. I spent 3 or 4 years (or was it 5?) trying to learn how to arrange and record.
Then Emerald Cocktail remixed them and made some production decisions along the way.
He did a damn good job too.
What are the stand out tracks?
I'm probably not the one to ask.
'You Don't Care' and 'Can You Dig It'.

Fast forward to now and I'm currently living in Camarillo with my wife and son.
I just dropped a full length album called And a Bottle of Sake... and it's here on Oxen Media.

You should check it out and tell me what you think.

There's a lot of time put into these records. A lot of time spent involved with misguided activities.
But if that's all the time I have, then I hope you like the music.

Love,
Robert AKA Erik

In typical animalistic fashion, 2007's And a Bottle of Sake... covers a lot of musical territory. But don't let the first track mislead you- this time there is less emphasis on hip-hop and soul and more use of the tools of acid-, trip-, and classic-rock. Raw, clever, and cool; this is one of the finest Oxen Media albums.

2005's Soulfood and a Rocket Ship has a lot of what's in the title: Soul. Funky raps hold hands with jazzy acoustic balladesques telling tales of bird night clubs, faerie parties and tired babies. Then, the transition via an advertisement for one skilled in the ways of rocketship repair leads in to a super cool R&B tale of blue ballin' bitch sidesteppery. Close it off with an folk ballad about people being full of it and top that off with a quirky monument to hotties, and you just had yourself some Soulfood. Beat that!

How To Defeat Angry Monkey In 8 Easy Steps (2000) is in all likelihood the most experimental of the Erik's Animal albums. This album tells the tale of the love affair between a monkey and a walrus and the ensuing backlash from the Monkey tribe. Different and stellar, the album is offbeat but has cool, accessible anchors for the general listening population.