After a short hiatus to double down on parenting, Peaking Lights almost have their new album finished. Dub experimentalists Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis made the music together, Coyes produced it and Matt Thornley from LCD Soundsystem is mixing it.
Ahead of the band's May 6 stop at the High Noon Saloon, Isthmus talked with Coyes about touring with kids, opening for Panda Bear and making the new album.
Isthmus: Do you bring your kids on tour?
Coyes: Yeah. It's really expensive, and it's really hard to do that. People think because we're just two people, but we're like, "We're not really a two-person band." We have to bring our kids, and we have to bring someone to watch our kids. And they're little. Mikko's three and Marlon's one. It's a different game with two kids. It's not like it's twice as hard. It’s exponentially [harder]; it's squared.
You have a couple of shows with Panda Bear coming up. How did those come together?
He asked us to do a few shows. He asked us to do some other ones as well, but we just couldn't do it because it's just hard for us to tour. He might have [heard of us] from Pete Kember from Sonic Boom, who produced his recent record.
Pete and I are producing a record together. It's totally different from Sonic Boom or Spectrum, or Peaking Lights. We've been working on it on and off whenever he comes to the States. The songs are longer on that one. On the new Peaking Lights record, the songs are shorter, which is kind of crazy because we always did really long songs.
Can you describe the new record?
Yeah, it's psychedelic, but in a way where there's still a lot of elements from old stuff. Also it's really syncopated. It's a lot cleaner sounding. All the drums are between synths and live. It's way more produced. It's way heavier, punchy. I don't know how to describe it, but we might do a listening party at Good Style Shop the day of the show.
Cool. Yeah, Good Style Shop is now where the Project Lodge used to be.
Yeah, it's crazy. Indra and I started that so we could fund our music. [Former Isthmus ad-sales rep Peter Benck] took it over and is doing such a better job than we ever did.
