We Are Bodies is the British duo of Dave Pen and Robin Foster. They create anthemic electro-prog soundscapes that combine guitars and electronics with lyrical subjects inspired by love, loss, paranoia and….robots.
Dave Pen is a south coast-based vocalist and guitarist who is also one half of the alternative/electronic group BirdPen and co-frontman with the experimental trip-rock collective Archive, who have built a huge continental fanbase during three decades of activity that has seen them sell out arenas and achieve significant album chart success in multiple territories.
Based in north-west France since the late 1990s, Robin Foster is a composer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist with a penchant for creating brooding soundscapes packed with lush cinematic textures, underpinned with his signature guitar sound. He has written scores for award nominated movies, Netflix and Amazon Prime dramas, numerous TV commercials and has released several acclaimed solo records with guest vocalists that have included Pen.
The duo began collaborating in 2011 and released an eponymous debut as We Are Bodies in 2015. Its long-awaited follow-up, the genesis of ‘The Love Was All We Had’ was as a pandemic project with ideas emailed back and forth across the Channel themed around what was occurring in the world at that time. Its focus then switched to the present, with the lust for power and war taking centre stage. The album finally took shape, its songs primarily concerned with love and loss, both on a personal level and for mankind as a whole.
The music is a mixture of the stridently luxurious and atmospheric, with Pen’s lyrical subject matter describing love from different perspectives, including those dark places where relationships create negative energy and drag people into hurt, hate and even madness. Typical of this approach is the album’s first single, ‘Lost’, an upbeat earworm about a twisted relationship and a central protagonist who has tried his best to make it work but is ultimately left with nothing.
