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Los Angeles duo Peel have shared “Climax,” the latest preview off their debut album Acid Star, out March 29th. Inspired by the 2018 Gaspar Noé movie of the same name, the song is an urgent blend of jagged guitar stabs and disco-inspired drumming. The accompanying video see’s the band performing the song, captured on grainy VHS against the concrete backdrop of their downtown Los Angeles loft. Paste Magazine described the track as a “unique convergence of post-punk, electronica and psychedelia.”
The creative partnership of Sean Cimino and Isom Innis, their bond was initially formed as touring members of Foster The People (now both official members live & on record). The two developed a musical language all their own over the years, ideas coalescing organically until the eventual birth of Peel. Inspired in part by genre-bending Creation Records bands like Primal Scream and Madchester groups like Happy Mondays, Acid Star expands on the industrial edge of early Peel, adding layers of psychedelia, electronica, and even reverb soaked freak folk, as seen on the title track.
"The sonic landscape of Climax nods to our post-punk roots, while the spirit and rhythm propel us forward into the realm of club and dance music” shares Cimino. “The lyrics are inspired by the Gaspar Noe movie ‘Climax’ and a bizarre rave I went to in Mexico City,” explains Innis. “The movie is about a dance party gone wrong because someone spikes the punch with acid and everyone freaks out, but our song flips the perspective - a psychedelic dance party gone right where everyone has fun. At the rave I was navigating this really dark dilapidated industrial building trying to find the basement where the dance floor was. It was like a crowded maze with all these hazardous drop offs and dead ends. That tone came out in Climax, the alarming but exciting feeling of dancing into the unknown.”
Second-generation Jamaican, Floridian rapper Wahid shares details on his new EP ‘feast, by ravens’, out 22nd March. The title of the project comes from the parable of Elijah in the Book of Kings. Alongside the announcement, he releases his single/video “Mezcal” - a vibes-heavy party tune tied together by personal anecdotes of a love-hate relationship: “‘Mezcal’ is the expression of love towards a vice of mine liquor, and the vibes it puts me in. I tend to cope by turning to drugs, alcohol, in hopes that it can become our savior or at least a mask. It’s hell on earth.”
Last year’s two-track EP “WILT/CORNERSTONE” was his debut for the LA label, which landed him in Complex-Pigeons and Planes’ highly respected Best New Artists feature for their October edition.
Through Wahid’s sonic storytelling he refuses to submit to negativity and fatalism. His hip-hop collective had just wrapped their first national tour. Their DMs were flooded with A&Rs offering deals and producers looking to collaborate. Then the group split up. It was over before it even began. The ensuing depression was all-consuming. There were days where Wahid didn’t budge from bed, drawing the blinds closed, and numbing the wounds with bottle after bottle of liquor. Despite his best efforts to salvage the wreckage, none of his attempts yielded anything positive. But through the duress, he discovered his inner resilience and perseverance. The results are manifest on his debut Innovative Leisure EP, feast, by ravens – an artful refusal to submit to negativity and fatalism, and a testimonial to the indomitability of the human spirit.
The Allah-Las perform highlights from their recent release, Zuma 85, on a KCRW session Live from Apogee Studios.
Los Angeles duo Peel have announced their debut album Acid Star, out March 29th via Innovative Leisure, and shared two singles. “Y2J” opens with a wash of deceptive dream pop before breaking into psychedelic dance, whereas “Acid Star” is a hallucinatory blend of acoustic guitars. “Our first sessions were for fun to experiment around, trying to come up with rhythmic patterns from memory of pop songs on the radio from when we were growing up” explain the band, “Looking back, we opened a channel that would become Acid Star, where a large swarm of ideas flowed through in a very short amount of time.”
The two songs are a perfect preview of an album that swirls dance-music paint onto a rock canvas. Inspired in part by genre-bending Creation Records bands like Primal Scream and Madchester groups like Happy Mondays, Acid Star expands on the post-punk and industrial edge of early Peel, adding layers of psychedelia, dance, and even reverb soaked freak folk, as seen on the title track. Watch the video for “Y2J” below, directed by the band’s Sean Cimino.
The creative partnership of Sean Cimino and Isom Innis, their bond was initially formed as touring members of Foster The People (now both official members live & on record). The two developed a musical language all their own over the years, ideas coalescing organically until the eventual birth of Peel. Their 2020 self-titled EP channeled influences from Aphex Twin to New Order, and yielded the “Citizen X,” which garnered the band an audience and appeared in the 2021 edition of EA Sports FIFA.
For Acid Star, the duo began by tapping into the music that they liked as kids. That is, the music they gravitated toward before they had “any taste or judgment,” as Innis puts it. “If you think too hard, and you try too hard, you can kind of ruin the expression that comes out,” he adds. “But there’s something about trying to recreate a song that was in my DNA before taste came into it that just sounded, listening back, like it had a lot of energy and life.”
The opener, “Y2J,” was one of the results of that childhood-song experiment, and is, appropriately enough, named in reference to Y2K. “Climax,” a song inspired by the 2018 Gaspar Noé movie of the same name, is a rocket-ship ride of a tune, as much within Nile Rodgers’ wheelhouse as Spoon’s. “OMG” renders a psychedelic experience Isom shared with his wife in sonic form, putting the duo's studio proficiency to work in service of the track's rich tapestry.
Each side of the album is bookmarked by ghostly ballads—“Acid Star” and “The Cloak”—both driven by acoustic guitar and gentle vocals that push home the crucially melodic underbelly of Peel itself. “You’re smiling, laughing there, my acid star,” sings Cimino on the former song, an ode to an idea of a certain ephemeral and untouchable type of rock god. “That lyric is a tribute to the power of words beyond our everyday use,” Cimino says. “I was thinking of a term for someone, something, or an idea that is so meaningful—almost too important.” When it came time to decide what to name the album itself, it was right there in front of them.
The Los Angeles-based Allah-Las have announced a North American tour that kicks off on April 12 in Nashville, TN. The band will make a stop at Webster Hall in New York City on April 17 and in Toronto, ON at The Concert Hall on April 23 before concluding the run in Chicago, IL on April 27. Additionally, the band will co-headline this year’s Atlas Obscura Festival on April 7 in Hot Springs, AR. All announced shows are listed below and tickets are on-sale Friday, January 19 at 10am local time and will be available here.
The band recently visited the studios of Seattle’s KEXP where they performed songs off their recent critically acclaimed album Zuma 85 - “Right On Time,” “The Stuff,” “Jelly,” and “The Fall.”
This tour will mark Allah-Las first trip to the East Coast since the release of Zuma 85 which was released last fall via their own label, Calico Discos, in partnership with Innovative Leisure. The band teased the LP with several videos - “Sky Club,” “The Stuff,” and Dust,” The Fall,” and “Jelly” - and they saw support from Under The Radar, Brooklyn Vegan, Austin Town Hall, Buzzbands LA, The Big Takeover, MOJO and Ghettoblaster, among others.