I Am Robot And Proud

Toronto native Shaw-Han Liem produces bright, wondrous electronic music under the name I Am Robot and Proud while also working as a video game designer. His output remains gentle and playful, often seeming straightforward yet revealing sophisticated compositional technique. The entirely instrumental pieces blend electronic and acoustic elements, drawing equal attention from indie-pop listeners and IDM enthusiasts in the manner of Dntel and ISAN. He first appeared with the childlike melodies and skittering beats of the 2001 mini-album The Catch before expanding into denser arrangements that featured additional guitars and woodwinds on the 2008 release Uphill City. After assembling a live band for concerts, he revisited earlier material through full-band treatments on 2015’s People Music.

Liem trained on piano for ten years at the Royal Conservatory and taught himself guitar. He launched I Am Robot and Proud in 2000 while finishing a computer-science degree. His debut, The Catch, came out on the British label Catmobile in 2001. The following year saw the 10" EP Spring Summer Autumn Winter and the limited CD-R remix collection You Make Me This Happy on Piehead Records. Grace Days, his second full-length, arrived in 2003, followed by the Duotone Records 3" CD-R EPs Electric Avenue Chapter 6 in 2003 and My Sky Your Sky in 2005. After appearing on the Little Darla Has a Treat for You series, he began releasing on Darla with the notably organic 2006 album The Electricity in Your House Wants to Sing; the label later reissued his first two recordings together as The Catch & Spring Summer Autumn Winter in 2007.

Uphill City, an upbeat exercise in chip-pop, surfaced in 2008 and was joined in 2010 by the companion Uphill City Remixes & Collaborations. Liem co-designed the musical video game Sound Shapes, for which he also composed a substantial portion of the score; the title reached Sony PlayStation platforms in 2012, gained popularity among gamers, and collected several awards. I Am Robot and Proud returned with Touch/Tone in 2013. People Music, issued in 2015, presented earlier compositions in full-band arrangements, while Light and Waves, also from 2015, incorporated two tracks recorded with his touring group. After a 2018 split EP with Oorutaichi, the project delivered Lucky Static, an album whose pieces originated from a sequence of computer-generated animations.