GOITER is the cobweb darkwave producer of your nightmares

Profile of Portland based musician.

I try pretty hard not to miss Goiter shows. The first time I saw him perform with their collective, REAL COMPUTER PEOPLE, at Sun Tiki Studios this past winter, they single handedly saved an awkward night out by getting people moving on the dance floor. The next time I saw him, at the Apohadion, I brought a date with me which - while an intense act to take a first date to - definitely got us talking for the rest of the night. 

The warehouse space was perfect for Goiter’s sound - long songs that drift into droning repetitions, with glittery synth sprinkles on top. It’s music that sounds very purple, and makes you feel like you’re descending a cobwebbed tunnel in a vampire’s castle, or snaking your way through an abandoned post-soviet apartment building. And Goiter gets me shaking my ass. 

Robie is the human behind Goiter’s computer mask, who always performs with thick circles of black eye makeup around his eyes. I describe him as a “real serious, Russian looking kid,” when talking about him to my friends (although I have no confirmation about whether or not he’s actually Russian). He’s got a show coming up at the end of the week, sharing a bill with Cadaverette, Iron Gag, and Exit 18 at the Space Gallery. I shot him a couple of questions about what Goiter is all about. 

This interview is edited - if you want to read Robie’s full answers, they’re right here.

What’s Goiter’s origin story? 

I started the project in the summer of 2017. I was at a point of indecision with where I was going musically, and I was itching to try something new. I had only played in a punk band prior, but I always had a fascination with synthesizers and experimental music. I was listening to a lot of The Screamers, which inspired my noise punk addled brain to think that I could definitely make some loud angry synth music.

The project has a strong synthpunk foundation, but around 2020 I started experimenting with more Darkwave and New Wave sounding stuff, and that lead to where I’m currently at with Goiter. I've always had a sort of spooky inflection to my music, and it makes it easy to fall into that gothy/darkwavey kind of groove. I always loved acts like The Bauhaus and Suicide, but there's also a lot of spooky shit to be found around a corner or in between the cracks when you live deep in the Maine woods, and I think some of that weird eldritch atmosphere definitely seeped into my music somewhere along the line. After I released "Backroads" in January 2022, I felt I had finally settled into the best version of the project so far. Although there's still plenty of room to grow.

Your music has strong Russian/Eastern European vibes - when I hear it I feel like I’m in the elevator of a soviet-era apartment building. What’s your connection to that sound? Where do you want your listeners to be transported? 

I want them to be transported to precisely wherever it takes them! And then I want them to tell me all about it and where it is so I can get all excited that people are able to be swept away to somewhere else when they listen. As corny as it is, I do just want the music to be a vessel for the listener to experience something outside their current reality. Inside of an elevator in a Soviet-era apartment building definitely makes sense to me. There's such an inherent dreary listlessness to old pictures from 80's and 90's from countries that were in the Soviet Union that provides the perfect backdrop for a lot of darkwave music. But I feel that same dreary weirdness in a lot of places in New England as well, especially growing up in a decaying mill town. I really think the environment that surrounds you definitely plays a part in the kind of music you make. When I was in school learning about the Chernobyl disaster, it would always just make me imagine what would happen if the paper mill in the center of town blew up or something like that, so I always had the connection to that weird industrial landscape with a backdrop of a deep dark forest full of who knows what. 

Are you Goth? 

I'm goth when I'm Goiter. When I'm me, I'm just me. I've always had an obsession with horror and I consistently wear black, so I guess the influence has always been pretty strong. 

My language around synthesizers is pretty 101, but: What do you think are the best pedals and machines to make goth music? 

I think there's a lot of great options for synths that make solid goth tones. The Juno 6 immediately comes to mind, but I personally love using the Akai Miniak and the Elektron Digitone to come up with some of my best sounding goth tones and melodies. There's something about the two, which are both FM synthesis, that I think really capture the spooky yet hauntingly beautiful textures and sounds that encompass a lot of darkwave and goth influenced music. The Digitone provides the most insane stuff that I've been able to come up with, but the Miniak sits at the perfect border of unique and cheesy that make it a solid instrument when it comes to making the music that I make. As far as pedals go, any heavy reverb pedal would get the job done. I personally really like the Electro-Harmonix Cathedral reverb pedal.

Talk to me a little bit about your collective, Real Computer People. What’s the mission?  

Real Computer People began amidst the pandemic, right before summer hit. I was getting so anxious about the future of what the music scene might be, and I felt I had no real outlet for my creative ambitions. Even though I released two mini albums in those first months after COVID hit the US, it just wasn't doing it for me with the absence of playing on a stage. I settled on putting out a compilation, to introduce new people to new music that fell into the very broad wheelhouse of electronic music. 

I was dying to get back on stage. There's an extremely addictive quality to performing that leaves me with a feeling that I just can't get anywhere else - good performance or bad. As long as I can get up under a dimmed spotlight and share what I've been cooking up with people, and hopefully make some people dance, then I'm in the best headspace that I can possibly be in. The first Real Computer People event happened at Sun Tiki in February, and it’s been going steady ever since. 

In 2021 I decided to restructure Real Computer People a bit, making it into a sort of collective of musicians that appear on one another’s work, promote each other, and play shows together as individual acts but also as a sort of at-will interchangeable unit. 

Speaking of “Real Computer People,” are you afraid of AI/robot overlords? 

AI makes me uncomfortable. I feel that we're not far away from AI beating the human brain, and I'm already sick of being commodified and advertised to as much as I already am. If robot overlords do indeed take over, I at least want a computer head in place of my current head. A jetpack too. 

What’ve you got coming down the pipeline?

Quite a bit coming down the pipe! I've been working on a new release for a little while now, making progress every week. I haven't released the name or the album art yet, but everyone should keep their eyes peeled for updates on that. I’m also working on a new compilation album for Real Computer People, and am accepting new tracks as we speak. So if anybody reading this that happens to make electronic music of any kind and is interested in submitting a track, please get a hold of me! DM me on Instagram or Facebook or even Bandcamp, I'm not hard to reach. I've also got quite a few shows on the docket, some announced and some not. The next one coming up is at SPACE Gallery on August 20th, with Cadaverette, Iron Gag, and Exit 18. I love playing on heavy bills, darkwave to get people dancing and then hardcord to melt faces. I'll be featured on the September Stereo Dreams show at Sun Tiki on 9/7, and I'll also be playing a Rulers of the Spear joint at Apohadion on 9/23. More shows to be announced, and one little extra fun thing is that I'll be playing live on WMPG sometime in the near future as well!