Photography by Blackksocks
Production Company COMPULSORY
Executive Producer Kiran Mandla
Producer Henry Cristerna
COVER DESIGN BY ANISA CLEAVER
Lighting Assistant George Robson
Art Director Mari Esa
Styling by Beanie Stolper
Styling Assistant Jess Miller
Hair and Makeup by Eliza Clarke
Production Runner Robbie Dark

“She’s a little princess. She’s never been aggressive. She doesn’t love being held… I think she pretends she doesn’t love it, but she secretly does,” Cavetown beams of – yep, you guessed it – his cat Juno, aka one of the most famous felines on the internet and the subject of track 12 on his fifth studio album worm food. Currently on a headline tour across Europe and the UK in support of the aforementioned record, Robin is speaking with GAY TIMES from Vienna about their “shy and lady-like” best friend who admittedly “likes her own space” and is “pretty independent” so for now, she’ll survive. “I love talking about her, I could talk about her forever, honestly,” he says. “I miss her.” 

Our conversation takes place a few days after Robin announced the launch of his incredible new foundation, This Is Home Project, which aims to empower and support LGBTQ+ youth via donations to various queer-led organisations such as Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project (BLMP), True Colors United, Trans Lifeline, Black Trans Femmes in the Arts and Stonewall. Over the next three years, a minimum of $1 million will be donated. “It felt like a natural progression,” explains Robin. “I’m excited to work closer with charities that I really love and that I’ve worked with before and, on a more personal basis, be able to fund one person’s top surgery or someone who is in a bad home situation or someone who needs help accessing any kind of medical resources. It’ll be cool to do that on a wider scale.” 

The news coincided with the release of worm food, the successor to their fourth studio album Sleepyhead and their second EP, Man’s Best Friend. While the former received praise from fans and critics and became their first album to chart in the UK, Robin says the era is tainted, of sorts, because it reminds him of a “stressful” period in his life. As their first album under a major label, Sleepyhead marked their first album to not be written, produced and recorded from the comforts of their own bedroom; hence the “bedroom artist” label that is often associated with the ‘Cavetown’ moniker. “I’ve always been used to writing and producing in the same environment with plenty of time and no deadlines,” he says. “It was an abrupt change that I didn’t enjoy, really. I look at it like a learning experience for both me and my team; figuring out what my limits are with how much I can do at once and what my boundaries are with saying yes. I’m definitely proud of a lot of those songs, but I do feel like the album didn’t come together in the way that I would’ve wanted and it feels unfinished in many areas. So, it can sometimes be hard to play those songs or even listen to them.”

Robin’s manager and label witnessed how recording Sleepyhead on the road affected his creative process and allowed him to return to his old methods for worm food; resulting in a “naturally finished” product and a more “relaxed” experience for him. “Listening to these songs is gonna remind me that I had a good time writing them,” the Cambridge-born artist says. “It’s an important process for me and they tried really hard to help me maintain that, and I’ve been given a lot of space and time, especially over the pandemic, to work at my own pace. If I hadn’t had that rough experience with Sleepyhead, I wouldn’t know that we were doing things wrong. Overall, it’s good that it happened.” 

Fronted by the critically-acclaimed beabadobee collaboration Fall In Love With a Girl, worm food is one of Robin’s most personal offerings yet; featuring an homage to Juno, extremely famous cat, with incredibly wholesome lyrics such as, “I do it for Juno / Pretend her life is on the line / Manipulate myself into staying alive / For Juno.” (Crying.) Meanwhile, Wasabi sees Robin collaborate for the first time with his mother, a professional flutist who frequently performs in orchestras and teaches in London and Oxford. “For a while she’s been like, ‘If you need a flute on one of your tracks, you know who to call!’” he says, before reminiscing on their (adorable) creative process: “She got up the morning of the recording and started practising and was like, ‘Robbie, I don’t know if I can do it! It’s too fast and there’s nowhere for me to breathe,’ and so we went through it and I don’t think she understood where we were in the song at any point. She was pretty confused the whole time.” (Crying, again.)