The Wisconsin-based husband and wife duo, Peaking Lights, can be added to the wave of loosely connected artists like Ariel Pink, High Wolf and Sun Araw who are engaged in what can be regarded as a musical backlash against hi-tech culture.
What connects these names is a preference for analogue sounds; a choice which reflects a rejection of the cult of newness and the built in obsolescence that serves corporate interests.
Arguably this choice is also partly borne out of a frustration about the difficulty of creating something brand-new and not purely retro; after all, one of Peaking Lights' tunes on their debut release in 2009 (Imaginary Falcons) was entitled All The Good Songs Have Been Written.
Aaron Coyes seeks to make something organic out of discarded electrical parts, picking over the waste products of the consumer society. He rejigs circuit boards, builds synthesizers, resuscitates keyboards and generally adopts a trial and error approach to any old electronic gear he can lay his hands on.
936 is the pair's second full length album which was previously available only through on the US label Not Not Fun and now released in the UK on the Domino imprint Weird World.
It has a smoother finish than that of Imaginary Falcons and finds the couple perfecting a mellow Hypnagogic dub groove.
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Musically and lyrically it utilises layers of blissed-out loops that evoke a mood of lazy/hazy summer days.
On the track All The Sun That Shines, Indra Dunis repeats the line "all the sun that shines, shines for you" while on Summertime, the title becomes a kind of one word mantra over a spacey psychedelic backing track.
Their philosophy is to create music that exists as an experience and which taps into the subconscious. In an online interview with The Liminal they say of the album: "it wasn't directed in any one form, just to let the shit rip, open up and channel the inner light". This is exemplified to best effect in Bird Of Paradise (Dub Version) where wordless vocals help create a dreamy flow.
The focus on a zen-like go-with-the flow ethos means that 936 is an album that will, depending on your taste and mood, either soothe and transport you or irritate the hell out of you.
Peaking Lights' Website
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