This isn't the first time this website has crossed paths with Peaking Lights, but whereas last time the band left an opaque, impressionistic trail that I made little effort to quantify, I asked the duo to do my homework for me this time.
Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes are recent newly weds who moved to rural Wisconson from San Francisco. Indra played in Numbers, Dynasty and Rahdunes. Aaron in “Black Label, Spacecobra, Heart of Snow, Unborn Unicorn, Omen Compass, Rahdunes, and much solo work most recently with Faceplant, as well as live with Sunburned Hand of the Man, Loach Fillet in Mummers EYPE, Jooklo Duo, and a recent recording session with Muraga Booker who played at Woodstock and with Parliament… as well as working with many other musicians, and artists.”
Self-described as “reggae and fucked modern pop,” their live set revealed a much more intricate and novel approach than those descriptors. This wasn't a dubby bass line with some delayed vocals and a casio, this was the A/V Club equipment left to grow its own limbs in someone's basement, a fortress of electronics impervious to either classifications or immediate comprehension.
I direct you to the video of Peaking Lights at Cake Shop to make sense of the following explication:
I built most of the things we use. My set-up is a very primitive form of a modular synth. Each of those EQ's are actually oscilators and the sliders on them do what the keys on a piano would do though with more range. The stuff that Indra has- the twirling light is a drum machine made out of an old sonar for fishing and that white thing on the top of her box is a cassette wired with a massacred keyboard to produce loops and rhythms. The record player that's spinning is hand cut from an old record, also use locked grooves on some. There are a lot more things in the mix too. I just finished building a three-head tape delay… though that's new.
Peaking Lights, “It's A Good Numb Feeling”
Peaking Lights has a Cd-r release called Clearvoiant available from Night-People on cassette, with a number of releases on the way including another LP for that label, a basement session tape on Pleasure Dome Tapez and a 7″ to be released on 8mm Records in Italy.
