Radical Friendship Theory

Radical Friendship Theory was formed through a collection of like-minded musicians. Robert Rotifer (singer-songwriter and guitarist/bassist with everyone from Louis Philippe & The Night Mail to Swansea Sound, The Penrose Web, Papernut Cambridge, Keiron Phelan and Fay Hallam's band) asked Kenji (formerly of sunshine poppers Friedrich Sunlight, co-inventor of GlasGoesPop) why he wasn't singing in bands anymore, and it all ballooned from there into a luscious LP featuring, besides Robert ;& Kenji, post-Glam veteran John Howard, young Viennese talent The Zew, living she-punk legend Helen McCookerybook and everybody's favourite singing drummer Ian Button. The original idea was that Robert would write songs for Kenji's voice whose gorgeousness naturally guided him into a melodic baroque pop direction. Lyrically, too, a theme evolved about friendship, mutual encouragement and the state of the world. What started out as home made demos in unfamiliar keys grew into fully fledged arrangements. Everybody involved sings lead on a track or two and harmonies on everything, so the album itself is the musical embodiment of the Radical Friendship idea, not in theory but in practice. Radical Friendship Theory is not a band, it's a lovingly realised set of songs in a wide range of styles and arrangements, from baroque pop, to psych, from country rock to bookish indie, sung by a circle of friends between Glasgow, Kent, London, Berlin and southern Spain - a celebration of actual human, creative friendship as a life-saving alternative to a world of fake digital engagement, captive consumption and artificially sown division.