Roger I. Insomniac and the Circadian Rhythms

Roger I. Insomniac and the Circadian Rhythms (or RIICR) are an experimental music group that formed in 2014. RIICR describe themselves as tired music: music that often contains nothing but continuous yawning or snoring for more than five minutes. RIICR are known for their spectacular covers of famous tracks -- most notably Jefferson Starship's "We Built This City", which has been remixed by the group as "We Built This Bedroom", containing a spectacular backtrack of snoring to the Roger I. Insomniac's patented yawn singing.

Background

Roger I. Insomniac was born in Burlington, Vermont on the 7 January 1965. For all of his life, Roger, including the rest of his family, never ever slept. Various doctors have stated that all of Roger's family have no internal circadian rhythm; so, to cope, Roger and his family would yawn themselves to sleep. Roger enjoyed yawning to the rhythm of songs being played on the local Burlington radio station. Often businesses found the family's lack of circadian rhythm a great business incentive and those who worked in factories would work all day and all night and local TV stations found the Insomniac family to be a media sensation. For Roger however, this meant nothing. At age 17, Roger found the love of his life -- a bass guitar, of which he would play at night surrounded by his family.

Soon, Roger's skilled bass playing caught the attention of various record labels who asked Roger to sign up, but Roger declined, saying "This is for me and my lack of sleep only." In 1992 Roger formed a band called Sleep Team and played a cover of Foreigner's "I Want To Know What Love Is", titled "I Want To Know What Sleep Is". Here is where Roger created the talent of yawn singing.

Yawn singing

Yawn singing, as defined by the U.S. Patent Office, is a type of singing that utilises nothing but the process of yawning in order to sing lyrics. As a result, yawn singing can be quite dark and abstract in terms of sound, but is not actually defined as sound as thus.

Yawn singing, rather, still covers syllables without the sharpness of generic singing. A standard RIICR song sounds like this:

Urhhhhhh urhhhhh urhhhh urhhhh *snore*

Urh urh urh urhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaa

Urh ha urhhhh hurh hurh

Hura hura hura

Urhhhhhh urhhhhh urhhhh urhhhh *snore*

As one can see, the inconsistency of yawn singing can create large levels of originality within RIICR, something that has been picked up by critics, especially by Pitchsnob Media.

Formation

Sleep Team was disbanded in 2009 after one of the members of band was actually able to go to sleep and did so mid-concert. It was considered a disaster for those who followed tired music. Insomniac disappeared from public life until May 2014, when he finally formed Roger I. Insomniac and the Circadian Rhythms. Insomniac soon declared that the sound of yawning was now back and bigger than ever. RIICR's first recording was a re-release of Sleep Team's 1992 cover "I Want To Know What Sleep Is", which was met with great applause by fans and critics alike. It reached no.28 on the Billboard 100 and was a global hit worldwide.

A year later and RIICR released their debut album, Sleep With Me, Sleep With Me, Sleep With Me with a new single titled "Just Like Melatonin".

In 2018, the band will release a split album with drone band Sunn O))), entitled It Took the Night to Sleep.