In 2023, Robert Francis moved to an equine community south of Sunland, set against the San Gabriel mountains. "People come here and say it feels like hill country, West Texas skies and sunsets." The small ranch he shares with his wife Lily and sons Rio and Del has become a hideout for prestigious musicians.

2024 was artistically productive. Daniel Caesar holed up at the ranch to record "Son of Spergy" with a revolving cast including Tyler The Creator and Mustafa The Poet. Francis produced Grammy Award winner Sierra Ferrell's duet with SoCal surf-punk heartthrob Brooks Nielsen, "Without Eyes." He also produced songs for Ramy Youssef's A24 project "Number One Happy Family USA" and recorded "Keep Talking To Me" for the Woody Harrelson feature "Last Breath." His theme for Apple TV+'s "Frog and Toad" earned an Emmy for best original score.

Fresh off this impelling year, Francis began work on his own album in early January 2025. Then the unexpected struck. On January 7th, the Palisades Fire ripped through the west side of Los Angeles, while the 800-acre Hurst Fire burned just south of his studio.

"That morning, winds exceeded a hundred miles an hour. My mother lived about three miles from the Palisades Fire, so we evacuated her to my sister's house in Altadena. That night, the Eaton Fire erupted, so we had to evacuate her twice in one day.

His sister Juliette's house survived, but the neighborhood was crushed. Black soot, lead, and cyanide contaminated their home. After their children's school burned down, Juliette and her husband Joachim moved to the East Coast. Her collection of analog synthesizers—a Prophet 5 and Moog Voyager among them—wound up in Francis's studio.

The Birth of Phantasmagoria

These instruments, born from devastation, became the album's beating heart. "I've always been synth-obsessed, but they never fit the folk narrative," Francis explains.

Recording the synthesizers to tape revealed something magical. "Analog gear is alive—physical, tangible. We'd track the synths to 2-inch tape along with the reverbs and delays. You can hear the tape interpreting the synth in real time, as if deciding what to do with it.”

Francis played most instruments himself: drums, bass, guitar, banjo, mandolin, organ, piano, synthesizer, flute, percussion, harpsichord, and tubular bells. Rob Douglas laid down bass on tracks 3 and 6. Joachim Cooder played drums on "Black Mark" while Griffin Goldsmith handled drums on "When You Are Alone." Cori Elliott's background vocals grace nearly every song. Marla Moya appears on tracks 1 and 6. Amir Yaghmai (The Voidz, Feist) added strings. Mike Bolger (Red Hot Chili Peppers) added trumpet. Jeff Liffman (organist for the LA Dodgers) contributed to tracks 3 and 6, while Drew Phillips sang backgrounds and played electric on “When You Are Alone,” as well.

"My entire life, managers and labels whispered about self-editing and simplification. They warned against adding too much, said it would obscure the song. This time, I ignored all that. What happens if I explore every idea, chase every melody, turn over every stone? Let's make a maximalist record."

The result defied Francis's folk-driven catalog. Ethereal synthesizers pan across the stereo field. Tight kick drums meet woody open snares. Deliberately pedestrian thumping bass lines. Acoustic guitars are painstakingly doubled, sometimes tripled. Atonal vocoders blend with close-mic'd electric guitars. Songs shift through multiple time signatures—7/4 to 5/4, 6/3 to 3/3—all in one piece.

"These were mental exercises that excited me. Sometimes I wasn't sure I could pull it off. But I put my head down and took it one note at a time."

Recording Process

Engineering partner Eric Fuller spearheaded the technical side. "Eric has a wondrous mind and an even better work ethic," Francis notes. "Some days you're exhausted, mentally and physically. But Eric always went the extra mile. That kept me bringing my best."

Recording mostly solo proved grueling. "Playing everything yourself takes ten times as long. Cutting to tape means everything must be perfect. Endless fast-forwarding, rewinding, troubleshooting—it's not for the faint of heart."

Francis told Fuller early on: "We're on a little boat at sea. We can't see land and don't know when we will. But if we make it to shore, we'll always know going forward what our limits are."

Sound and Vision

Francis champions the west coast sound in speaker design. "This record is designed to be listened to LOUD—loud enough to blow out a match." He admits he might be "the only duck in the pond" who listens this way but relishes making choices based on personal taste rather than external opinions.

Aeronaut Records' John Mastro notes the album shares similarities with Francis's debut "One By One," recorded when he was eighteen. "It's true what they say—you have your whole life to write your first album. Your sophomore has just a few months." Phantasmagoria allowed Robert the time to explore.

He drew inspiration from George Massenburg's interview about recording Little Feat's "Long Distance Love." "They never stopped until they got it right. If it meant staying up for days, then so be it. That became my mantra."

Human Touch

"I'm not worried about AI," Francis states. "It’s an amalgamation of what resides online. It cannot know what awaits in the chasm of our hearts—where authenticity exists."

The album's lyrics evoke a vanishing world: "What about my own life? Out of jurisdiction / And day by day the memories / Seem more and more like fiction." Yet Francis speaks with quiet optimism, uncharacteristic of the pessimist he once was.

"I have kids now. I have to believe in the future. But I know better than to get lost in it. Our greatest fears lay in anticipation."

His heart clearly lives in the present, as he croons in "The Mountain"—a Gaelic reference to liminal space between the mortal world and thereafter: "What I wish I know'd / As I earn'd my keep unknowing / Was how fare the road / To the mountain for aye snowing."

Phantasmagoria is slated for release in February 2026 on Aeronaut Records.

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