Image by Charlie Hardy //

Get familiar with the Sydney quintet right here.

There’s a lot to love about the debut track from Sydney outfit PEEL: spacey but melodically rich vocals, gritty bass, a nicely stuttered drum beat that both pushes the song along and reigns it in… I could go on. Overall it’s the lush soundscape the band has created that is the most immersive feature of ‘Memory Loop’, with the group clearly having an agenda in the studio and nailing it.

In the track you can hear the band, which is fronted by Nick Stillman, pushing the boundaries of their instruments. It really sounds like they were having a lot of fun creating and experimenting which translates nicely into the track’s bouncier and noisier moments, and is backed up vocally by lines like “I had no control, I couldn’t make you mine. You slipped through the cracks, the memory’s now on loop.” The Laurels’ and Mezco’s Kat Harley, who lends her vocals to the track, also adds harmonic depth in these sections.

The accompanying visuals, which were directed by Mitch Noakes and effected by FuzzWah are a VHS odyssey that fittingly weaves the old with the new. Like the track, you could easily have come across it on Rage in the late 1980s with the low-fi effects giving it an unmistakable vintage wash.

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

Check out our interview with Nick below and head here to get tickets to their debut show at Waywards (Dec 11th)… and stay tuned for PEEL’s debut EP which will be out on Third Eye Stimuli:

There are some familiar faces in PEEL. Can you tell us how you all came together?

Harry (guitar), Tom (drums) and I have been playing music together for a long time – since the end of high school really. We played in bands together throughout our early ‘20s but we took a break a couple of years ago and never really got back into it – life and jobs got in the way, but we always wanted to start a new project at some point. We met Steve (synth) a couple of years back and Harry and I ended up playing in his band Misty Lanes, so that kept us going for a while. Then about a year ago I started recording some demos and it kind of felt like the start of something new. We started playing together again around the beginning of the year, then got into the studio to record pretty much right away. We got Steve to jump on synths and our mate Sam to play bass. Everything took off from there.

‘Memory Loop’ has some big shoegazey moments. What sort of stuff were you listening to when you wrote it?

We’re all pretty influenced by 80s and 90s alternative stuff from the UK. Bands like Ride and the Jesus and Mary Chain are big touchpoints for us, and I guess that comes through on ‘Memory Loop’ – washy guitars and heaps of reverb on the vocals. Our friend Kat dropped into the studio when we were recording too and she laid down this beautiful BV in the choruses, which definitely introduces a dreamy vibe to the track. I was also listening to Thee Oh Sees a lot at the time and I really wanted to double track the drums and pan them hard in the mix – this ended up being a pretty big element of the song. The drums and bass fill out a lot of the space and create this enveloping wall of sound, which was exactly what we were going for.

Tell us about the lyrics. What does it all mean?

The lyrics came last with this track. I was flicking through notebook and spotted the words ‘memory loop’ jotted down. They kind of resonated with the repetitiveness of the track, so that’s what I called it. Then it started working on lyrics that fit the title. It’s kind of an attempt to extract and remove a particular memory of a moment in time in my life, and a reflection that we can’t really do that even if we want to.

What was it like recording at BLANKSPACE? It sounds like you guys had a lot of fun/time to experiment in the studio…

It was unreal. We recorded in batches, doing one song at a time across about six months, which was an interesting way to approach it – but it allowed us to come in fresh each time. ‘Memory Loop’ was the third track we recorded, and I think we we’re really hitting our groove by that point. BLANKSPACE is an amazing studio. It’s one big room, completely open plan, with heaps of vintage synths, guitars and other fun toys. Everything is patched in ready to roll, so it was easy to throw down ideas and experiment. Our producer James is a wizard.

He’s really good at keeping energy high and steering a session in the right direction – if an idea had a vibe, he’d encourage us to push on with it, even if it wasn’t what we originally planned. Bringing Kat’s vocal in was a perfect example of that – it totally brought the track into new territory. We came in with fairly resolved demos and a good idea of how we wanted to sound, but he always made it better.

The clip really captures the 90s vibes of the track, was that what drew you to VHS?

We knew we wanted to explore a 90s aesthetic with all of the visuals for the release, from photography to the artwork and video. Our guitarist Harry, who makes the visuals for the band, was inspired by a lot of the 90s Madchester graphic design kicking about back in the day. This aesthetic was the inspiration for all the chaotic and textural backgrounds in the clip. After discovering FuzzWah’s work, Harry teamed up with him and our friend Mitch Noakes (who directed the clip) and the three of them worked together to bring this aesthetic to life.

FuzzWah did all the visual effects on the clip. He works purely with analogue gear and bounces everything through VHS. We loved the gritty and grainy textures this produced and felt it matched the chaos of the track really nicely.

Your EP is being released through Third Eye Stimuli. I’ve heard they make all their acts sign a blood oath ahead of each release. Can you confirm or deny this?

No comment.

How did you come to team up with them?

We’ve known Josh and Rick for ages. My girlfriend is friends with them from way back and I also used to work with Josh. Plus we’ve often crossed paths with them at shows and through stuff with Misty Lanes. We’ve always loved Third Eye and the community they create around their artists and other bands and people in the scene. They work super hard, are really creative and are some of the loveliest people you’ll ever meet.

They were some of the first people outside the band that we showed our recordings to and they were super encouraging. When we started getting ready to release this first single Josh hit me up and asked if we’d be keen to work with them on the release. We’re super excited to be a part of the family.

Are you planning on releasing this fuzzy beast live? When can we expect shows?

Yes! We’re launching the track on December 11th at Waywards in Newtown, Sydney. This is our first show, so we’ve been hitting rehearsals pretty hard. It’s a seated gig and we’re very loud, so we’ll see how that goes down.