Peaking Lights: "We really wanted to explore a more pop direction" • Interview • DIY Magazine

Peaking Lights are a productive outfit: there’s no getting around that. Having released something pretty much every year since their formation in 2007 – whether it be self-released CDRs or creating companion dub albums to match their full-lengths – they know how to stay creative. What’s a more strange concept to the husband-and-wife duo, is the idea of taking their time.

“Well,” starts one half of the two-piece, Aaron Coyes. “With the record ‘Lucifer’, we wrote and recorded it in three weeks.” For their latest album, they finally decided to give a more patient approach a try. “It was really quickly done, and we just wanted to develop. We wanted to have some time to develop the sound and what we were doing, to reconfigure our music a little bit. We wanted to try some new things out and build a library of songs. With all the drum sounds, they’re all sounds that I made from mixing regular drums and synthesisers I had built. It was just a really detailed recording and we wanted to have time to develop the songs and work on our songwriting. It was to really further our art form.”

Having spent the last eighteen months working on ‘Cosmic Logic’, they also decided to steer clear of touring. Whilst previously their live shows had worked as an arena to debut new material, this time they wanted to iron out the kinks in the studio. “We weren’t touring at all, so we were analysing and we did a few different mixes of the album, changing things around and arranging it, before we finally had a version where we wanted to take it into the studio to finish mixing it. Before, with other records, we had already been playing those songs live before we even recording them, so that gave us time to develop them. Even though we weren’t playing these songs live, we had time to listen back to them and to hear the different parts and to make those necessary adjustments.”

Their new full-length feels the difference: no longer do they boast dreamy psychedelic journeys, it’s that much more succinct. “We really wanted to explore going in a more pop direction,” Aaron assures. “I think we just really wanted to do something that people could relate to. We were definitely working on changing the structure. We were really experimenting with a lot of different things; a lot of changing the structure, a lot of different aspects of sound. The pop thing was definitely a big influence, and we tried to have that come out that little bit more.” He laughs, “we wanted it to be real catchy.”

As for what they hope listeners might take away from the record, it ties in perfectly with their new venture into pop. “I really hope that people just enjoy it and listen to it,” he offers, “have fun with it, dance to it, move to it, make love to it, sing to it. Just to have good times with it. After all, we wrote it to try and be light and to bring some positivity into whatever people are doing.”

Taken from the October issue of DIY, out now. Peaking Lights’ new album ‘Cosmic Logic’ is out now via Weird World.

Tags: Peaking Lights, From The Magazine, Features, Interviews