“Some sort of freak-folk, pastoral, krautrock mindblow. seriously, SOOO good!...On Safari gives the folk tradition a twenty-first century kick up the arse...
The breadth of approach and scale of ambition mark TWATR out as innovators."
Drowned in Sound 8/10
"The Witch And The Robot add something piquant and properly odd to the psyche-folk pot...
On Safari is studded with cracked gems."
Uncut 4/5
"genuinely great."
NME 7/10
"It's Twisted, It's charming and it's too good to miss" Bearded
8/10 "You cannot help but get absorbed by the music...an enderingly weird and irreverent listen." To Cool to Die
“As the music gets more intense, so the mood gets a little sinister. It‘s obviously performance art put to music, but so against the grain of typical ‘indie’ careerists it’s a little un-nerving.” The Cumberland News
“You should have a listen to The Witch and the Robot, they’re doing good things in Cumbria” Yan – British Sea Power
“The music started with Cumbria’s The Witch And The Robot. This unfathomably absurdist gang sing of industrial disease and Morecambe Bay tour guide Cedric Robinson - over guitar, flute and volleys of cream pies.” Review of Britsh Sea Power’s Sing Ye From The Hillsides Festival
“TWATr (their preferred abbreviation, case sensitive) play darkly psychedelic anti-folk with a bit of blues about it, an occasional flute and a large sense of impending doom. It has no close relatives (no small achievement in itself)... were it played by the sort of boring looking beards that normally produce stuff that people call "anti-folk" (whatever that even means), it would still be as disturbing as walking alone across a deserted landscape as the clouds close in and stumbling across a dead body with your own face on it.” Cath Aubergine's famous blog
“Putting the projectors to their best use, these masters of mood control conjour a heck of an atmosphere. Described as “Bizarre, compelling, always entertaining” their music is powerful, technically superb, and frankly speaking if they hadn’t assaulted each other with cream pies periodically for light relief, the atmosphere of menace might have become too intense for my comfort “ The Juice ‘Contemporay Media E-Zine’
“One minute they're a mildly threatening Violent Femmes doing film noir soundtracks, the next an acoustic goth Fall with the scariest sounding flute you've ever heard. These comparisons are still pretty wide of the mark” Manchester Music
“No matter how much you've been told about The Witch and the Robot (or TWATr, of course), they are at least ten times more deranged.” Fugitive Motel
After you've finished here, you may like to hear this poem sung on myspace...
Poem 162 of 230, WalkaboutsVerse (please see my blog): TEES TO TYNE: FIRST IMPRESSIONS - SUMMER 2001
Where traditions are not so rare; Sea, country and works scent the air; A multitude of monuments, Planted tubs and patterned pavements.
The longish pedestrian malls; The remnants of defensive walls; Historic buildings are a gauge Of the respect for heritage.
Wheat, rape and pines in the fields; Estuaries guarded by shields; Long sandy beaches and wide scenes; Romantic-ruin go-betweens.
Rivers in parts licked by trees, Or fringed by boat clubs, wharfs, gantries, And crossed by practical delights - Varied spans, forming pleasing sights.
Fine churches headed at Durham; Football kits ad infinitum; Kept castles - one for study; Masonry behind masonry.
And, with moulding-works out that way, It’s somewhere for a longer stay..?
Check out 'The Bridge EP', our first ever proper recording. You can hear all the tracks on our Myspace page, and there's also a link if you want to download them for free.
Very much looking forward to seeing you play in Shoreditch, please freak out the hipsters with as much meat as you can feasibly get your hands on. A show a 10th as good (and possibly drunk?) as your Islington Queen's Head one should go down a storm.
