Perhaps it’s in the blood: Rob hails from Teesside in the North East of England, a land of blast furnaces, petrochemical estuaries and fiery skies, the broken heartland of the industrial revolution. He grew up in a small terraced house, with six framed pictures of Elvis in the living room, and music never far from his parents’ record player.

Rob formed his first real band in the year 2000: Lyca Sleep spun a dreamy, languorous psychedelica, and toured extensively with South, The Warlocks and Engineers. Later Lyca Sleep morphed into Exit Calm: "This band reclaim the guitar band as something to have faith in again,” wrote Mojo, They released two critically acclaimed albums, played festivals including Glastonbury, V and Leeds/Reading. Big tour supports with Echo and The Bunnymen, Doves and The Music followed. After extensive tours in Europe and Japan, they split in 2015, and Rob found himself without a band, a stranger in rough-round-the-edges, bohemian Hastings on England’s South Coast.

Moved by his new surroundings, Rob eventually sat down to write, quickly developing a piece that sparked an idea for a soaring, ambitious project that dealt with the deepest of themes - mortality, the ways we find meaning, the liberation of the human spirit.

Humanist is also a magnum opus musically, a fully realised and rounded work - not only Rob’s first solo project, it was also the first music he’d ever fully produced, teaching himself production while making the record, just like he did with his signature guitar sound, forging its rich, brooding sound-world on instinct. Similarly, his production is raw, spirited and unique. Rob also played and recorded nearly all of the instrumentation, but he had a vision of the album going far beyond a one-man project, opening its palate and scope by making it a showcase for many of the singers he’d always admired.