Oxbow founder Eugene Robinson is leaving the band after 35 years

Eugene Robinson, lead singer of San Francisco noise-rock experimentalists Oxbow, is leaving the band. Robinson, who co-founded and has been with the band for more than 35 years, announced his departure on Substack, explaining that the exit was due to “irreconcilable differences, none of them aesthetic or musical.” Oxbow has yet to issue an official statement. Read a longer excerpt from Robinson's note below, which also includes news about the band's now-concluded European tour. Find the full thing at Substack.

Robinson and guitarist Niko Wenner, former members of the hardcore band Whipping Boy, formed Oxbow in 1988 in San Francisco. Oxbow released their debut album, Fuck Fest, the following year, and quickly gained a devoted fan base for their uniquely punishing, experimental noise rock and intensely noisy live shows. The band continued to release records at a steady clip, sharing projects in the 1990s such as the Steve Albini-recorded Let me be a woman and Serenade in redand continuing with the latest Slim Black Duke and Holiday of love.

Eugene Robinson:

While I do not feel that my life, my physical life, is threatened, I feel, under the weight of irreconcilable differences, none of them aesthetic or musical, that I must now leave OXBOW. Recent circumstances have caused me several dark nights of the soul, and while it feels/seems crazy to kill my involvement in what I started, I feel it is necessary so that maybe some kind of healing can take place that will make OXBOW a comfortable place to be again. If not, then no.

So the last five shows of the tour have been cut short and I'm sitting in a cheap hotel in Fuengirola, Spain thinking about how the band started and how the latest video that just came out Holiday of love so aptly named. “All is gone” it was and perhaps seems to be.