While Peking Duk had found success prior, it was their debut at Groovin the Moo’s 2014 edition that launched the electronic duo to new heights. 

Any fitness guru will tell you that for all the pain that exercising might initially cause, there’s a dopamine-fuelled afterglow that lingers in the wake of every workout session. It’s this mentality that motivates working out in the first place, and it’s one that, after a 10km run that electronic duo Peking Duk took last year, birthed one of their most hyperactive singles to date.

Although he now speaks of that Manly-based run with an overlying disdain (it resulted in a chafe infection), Rueben Styles – who forms one half of Peking Duk-  is ultimately aware of its role in fuelling their newest release, ‘Honest.’ Born out of a post-exercise elation, the Slayyyter-assisted track marks the duo’s most rapturous foray into hyperpop, with all the anthemic chants that have characterised their previous work alongside new techno influences from the likes of Bicep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQg25nOpouc

Now, with a string of live performances already under their belt and a slot on Groovin the Moo’s 2022 lineup (tickets accessible here), Peking Duk are set to bring their euphoric, decade-spanning catalogue to the masses. We caught up with Rueben ahead of his Groovin the Moo appearance for a chat about the making of ‘Honest,’ optimal burger configurations, and the moment he realised his life had changed.

Your new single ‘Honest’ taps into a hyperpop sound with the help of Slayyyter and co-writer KLP, and it’s certainly an emerging genre, reminiscent of Charli XCX. What is it about hyperpop that attracts you?

To be honest, I’m a big fan of Charli XCX and Icona Pop, and all the [artists] who resemble this hyperpop genre. I didn’t know about the genre until our song came out, and people were like ‘you’re going down the hyperpop road,’ and I’d never heard it. I know that the style, and the big chant vocals, is something we’ve been in love with for a very long time, like with [our track] ‘High’ and ‘Stranger.’

With a lot of Duk songs in the past, we’ve done that 60-layered vocals all just chanting, and our song with Icona Pop [‘Let You Down’] has that big, chant, hyperpop chorus. It’s something I’ve only just learned about, and I’m glad it’s been reinforced in my mind so I don’t forget it. I’m glad there’s now somewhere for people to go and look for that genre. It’s nice to have your section on the bookshelf.

Does ‘Honest’ outline a new direction for you? Or is it more of an addition to the sound you’ve already carved out?

When we made the instrumental [for ‘Honest’], we started listening to a lot of Bicep and not really imagining chant vocals. But if you listen to the ‘Honest’ instrumental, it sounds dark and it sounds like it’s for an intimate nightclub with only 200 people, absolutely munted all together sharing an experience. So, it’s funny because I was riffing out ideas like *mimics instrumental.*

We started riffing some kind of Prince melodies over the top of it and Adam was like, ‘dude, let’s get KLP to riff those melodies.’ Then she came in with all these new melodies like *sings melody* and we were like ‘this is crazy!’ It took our idea of making this dark, clubby track a little bit funky, and then it went full circle on the opposite end of what we’d planned on, and I ain’t mad about it. I’m so stoked with KLP’s writing and ideas.

Look, I don’t want to say that we took a kind of Bicep song into the hyperpop realm, but at the same time, it’s the perfect way to let the world’s collide. So, yes, I think it is a new direction for us instrumentally, vocals-wise it does reflect similarities with our other songs, but we’re having fun venturing down the more clubby sounds right now, which historically we haven’t spent too much time dabbling in.

I read that ‘Honest’ came about after a 10km run. Was this a one-off, or is exercising a kind of creative outlet for you?

The run was Adam’s stupid idea. It was meant to be a health day. We’d just had a gig weekend so we were feeling a bit crook. We’d been eating fried chicken, playing shows, not sleeping and taking all sorts of … alcohol [laughs]. So we just needed something to sweat out the demons. So we went out for a walk in Sydney called The Spit to Manly. It’s a good sized walk, takes a few hours and you end up in Manly where there’s lots of good, fresh, healthy food everywhere. So it’s a perfect post-weekend. But when we got there, Adam’s like ‘let’s just run it, then it’ll be done in an hour.’

Adam is a live fast kind of guy, but my philosophy is that life is long, slow down. I’m very happy to do things slowly. But at the end of the day, we did run the whole thing, and I was wearing cheap shorts and they are not for running, and it hacked up my leg and I got an infection. I didn’t recover for like two months afterwards. So I went to the studio with hacked up legs, having run 12 kilometres for the first time in my life.

So, when you’re in a state like that, you’re not trying to achieve anything, you’re just like let’s have fun, let’s not go out with a mission. When you’re not thinking of the end goal and just thinking about having fun with the creative process, it’s a good recipe for making good tunes. You get in there without any plan, so before we even made anything we spent an hour relaxing, so it was a good headspace to be in.

Why did you choose claymation as the medium for the ‘Honest’ music video?

Ben Dennis, our manager, suggested doing a claymation video, and we have always been fans of ‘Wallace and Gromit’ and ‘Chicken Run.’ Claymation is sick, I’m so into it. It’s something we’ve been into and it’s something we haven’t done, so simply that just means we had to do it. When the director sent through the treatment, we looked over it and I was hooked, because in the second line it said ‘then they take off their heads and start passing them to each other.’ I was like, this is already taken out of the realm of what’s possible with humans. Then seeing his lighting design and everything else, it was epic.

‘Honest’ is your first single in a while. Did you, like what you read about other artists, have a creative outburst during the pandemic? Or was lockdown more of a time to reset?

I guess [‘Honest’] was in the pandemic, and it was in one of those rare circumstances where Adam was in Sydney at the same time. I’d been working creatively quite a lot during the lockdown, especially on my side project, You’re Only Great Always, and Adam’s being doing stuff with his side project as well. So I think us going off and doing different things made it really fun and exciting to be back in the studio together.

So, while we hadn’t been widely proactive making Duk songs through 2020, by the time 2021 came around, we had a solid year of lockdown where we’d just done nothing but studio stuff. So coming back to our trade, it was just fun. We didn’t have any feeling of ‘We’ve got to get this done.’ We still had six singles up the belt, ready to go. But in 2021, there were a lot of lockdowns and we were very productive, and I’ll tell you what, there is a lot of good shit to come.

The last time you performed at Groovin the Moo was in 2014. What’s changed about your music, or your outlook on music, since then?

It’s crazy because Groovin the Moo was the first festival we played after releasing the song ‘High.’ We’d played an unreleased version of it at Big Day Out, which was sick. We were having great sets, sometimes with 400 people and that’d be crazy. Groovin the Moo was like that times one hundred. Groovin the Moo was the moment we relaised our lives changed. Rocking up to the set and the tent is spilling out the side, and there’s north of 7,000 people ramming to get in. It was pretty eye-opening. We felt like we’d made the right call quitting our cafe job.

It felt like that moment when we could probably start looking at music fully as a career. So lots of really big, beautiful, nostalgic memories from Groovin the Moo. It also made us realise that live shows are what the whole project is about. It’s not just about putting songs up for Spotify so people can hear it in their cars on the way to work. It’s always about playing to big crowds, and it works best at festivals. And I think that’s something that Peking Duk is really well-suited to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNtIA2fgHfg

You’re slated to perform at both Groovin the Moo and Field Day, which sit on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of location. What are some similarities and differences between performing rurally versus in the city?

It seems like every time we do something outside of the cities, people have a few less fucks to give. I don’t know why, but when we do rural Queensland shows, the people go crazy! I don’t know what’s going on. But in saying that, the last time we did Horden in Sydney for our own show, that was insane. I was so blown away by that. I guess in the cities you get the extra numbers, it ends up making up for it. Like in rural sets, you might get 300 people going harder than anyone’s gone before, but with the bigger cities, the numbers turn it into an atmosphere, so it’s a tough call. Both are as rewarding as each other!

Which track are you most looking forward to playing at Groovin the Moo?

Definitely keen to see how ‘Honest’ goes, because before it came out, it was going hard. The first time we played it was in Darwin last year and for an unreleased song, I’d never seen people dance like that. So it got us really pumped to release it. We like doing it like that, the road test helps us know what songs are good to put out, because if it goes out when it’s not released, I wonder how it’ll do when it’s released. We played in Tasmania over the weekend, and ‘Honest’ went hard. I want to see how it goes at Groovin the Moo!

I also saw your recent collaboration with KFC for the peking Cluck burger. Can you tell me a little bit about how that came about?

It tastes exactly like Peking Duck pancake! It’s uncanny. The way it’s added spring onion, cucumber, and the way everything is sliced. And the slaw is so clever, it’s not like a mayo slaw, it’s a full Chinese, spring onion cabbage vibe. My mouth is watering thinking about it!

Can you reveal anything special on the cards for the rest of this year?

We’ve got a huge run of shows coming up soon! I dare say, end of the year, that’ll be well and truly when we go ham. It’s been sick getting shows like this, and I’m so pumped for Groovin the Moo. But yeah, we’ll just keep putting out tunes, keep playing shows and keep doing the good thing!