Peak Park discuss letting inspiration find them working on Heartless Animal

Peak Park are a three-piece band from Naarm, combining elements of… well, a lot of music. Vocalist Mitch’s emotive, soaring vocals make us all feel something we’ve been burying deep within ourselves, while bassist Cal takes us for a walk and keeps us grooving. We caught up with Tom, guitarist and primary producer of the band, to chat about their new single “Heartless Animal”.

Guys, thanks for taking the time and congrats on the new single. Peak Park borrow from all genres, though the new single “Heartless Animal” is definitely leaning further is electronic music. Can you speak a little to your influences for this song?

We’ve explored dark, phat bass and beats before with singles “Need Your Love” and “Boyhood” and after writing a heap of demos for this new EP (spoiler) it became very clear this song was the hero ‘dark electronic’ track for this EP. We wanted to explore all the Peak Park sonic influences in pockets, with genres like Funk, Indie Rock, Pop, Club & Electronic beats and it became extremely clear in this EP format we could push each song down a particular lane without the risk of feeling like it doesn’t capture all things Peak Park.

The ultimate goal is to make music that pulls from all these influences and sits in the middle of it all, but sometimes a song just wants to be dark and electronic, or bright and funkier. Fans have always been complementary of “Need Your Love”, which is always a dream to play live.

A dank, dark room, smoke machine doing too much, the music bordering on too loud, and you’re grooving and dancing to thick bass and beats with guitars walling over the top, it always hits. That definitely influenced the desire to pursue the demo, it always had potential to go off live. To be self-referential, the production of those earlier songs clearly influenced “Heartless Animal”. “Need Your Love” loosely stemmed from a Billie Eilish reference and “Boyhood” from a Bon Iver track, plus I’m a Flume fan and that trap-hop style production was huge in my early twenties. Mansionair, James Blake, the artist influences are broad but all feel very relevant.

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How does a Peak Park song start?

There’s a few variations of the Picasso quote “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working”, but I fully subscribe to that idea. As an exercise I do these power writing sessions – sit at the desk with 20min timer, pick a tempo, experiment with any instrument and see where it goes, try another, and move on ’til the timer ends. I change the tempo, key, signature whatever, rinse repeat. It’s all extremely low consequence and ideas just flow out because of that. “Heartless Animal” is a perfect example of that process. It’s idea four of seven of the project file affectionately known as “EOY-DEC 23”.

90% of the sonics, structure and production were written in that brief session. That one started from a tempo change and wanting intense LFO’d chords. I used to fight the process and overwork an idea, but now I see it as Idea A leads to Idea B leads to Idea C, and whatever leads to an interesting idea, that’s all that matters.

There’s a few variations of the Picasso quote “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working”, but I fully subscribe to that idea.

I write a lot of musical ideas and show the fellas the best of what I have. If we collectively like it, we jam for hours, all three of us experimenting with instrumentation, vocals and melodies, jumping on each other’s ideas, sometimes lyrics form, but typically it’s gibberish. Ultimately it’s melody-focused and we interrogate the structure as it’s happening.

Depending on how successful we are, some songs are taken back to camp fire chords with melody & structure ironed out, then the production is built from there. Others, such as “Heartless Animal”, the chorus motifs and Mitch (vocals)’s gnarly falsetto in the post chorus were all hit in that first collab session after the demo music was written. Then Mitch will bunker down and flesh out any unfinished melodies and all the lyrics. Sometimes I upload ideas to the shared Google Drive, Mitch will write over the top and we have a song. Mitch is always cooking with ideas too and he & I, or all three of us, are always jamming ideas from the ground up. It’s a similar process of just noodling ’til it works. It’s fluid but the thing I’m most thankful for is we never feel short on ideas. A lot of this new batch of music stemmed from us jamming and writing from the bottom up.

TLDR; Peak Park songs start from anything. As lame as as it sounds, they usually start as a consequence of just exploring music and ideas. It’s extremely collaborative and low stakes.

Do you go through multiple revisions as a group, or is the initial idea generally pretty solid?

Some ideas are pretty fleshed out from the initial demo! “Heartless Animal” is a perfect example of that. We learnt some years back, I in particular had a tendency to overwork a song, and rewrite parts over and over just to be sure there’s no stone unturned. It’s our “in-the box-infinite-options-decision-paralysis-demon”.

Now, we always explore ideas and challenge the demo but if it’s good, it’s good. And ultimately, we’re better off writing a whole new idea rather than trying to rework an existing idea into oblivion just because we’ve put time into it. Having said that, sometimes the idea can be really strong but the execution and part is what’s letting it down. We have this crazy nine-plus minute song coming… that went through quite a few edits. There’s this wild club section that had a whole other flavour and instrumental tone but we couldn’t get it all to work. A tempo shift, adding another section, drum change out etc. and BAM the song just worked!

Ultimately, none of this is black and white, we make the call and I typically love the production stage and some songs really open up so there is a need to experiment, the hope is you get it right quickly more often than not. The trend now is to revise within reason, but if we’re overworking it, we’ll just write another song.

This new single, and others, are very groovy, though you’re noticeably without a drummer. How does groove, feel and rhythm fall into place for you?

Bass, drums, groove and feel have become the core of all our songs in recent times. If we’re not grooving, it’s not happening! Writing in-the-box and a lack of drummer is definitely not a hindrance, I actually love it, I’m a pattern/drummer/percussion lover so that infinite flexibility to explore patterns let alone the tone of the drums is always my favourite part of writing and production.

On the previous single “Why Won’t They Talk To Me?”, there’s no way that song would’ve happened if we weren’t writing in-the-box and drowned the drums in reverb. Illegal right? But the whole song emerged as soon as the drums were written.

“Heartless Animal” on paper is 150bpm, it’s fast but depending on how you feel the song, it’s groovy with a half time feel or it’s pulsing and you want to bob along to it. The drums and swing of the synth LFO feel loose, a slow strut, borderline sexy— all in the hips. However, I’ve always felt the layers of 1/4 note stabs on the up beat and the hat/percussion pattern that give it some urgency and pace. Then how it all comes together with the staccato vocal… so much fun!

P.S. “sexy” is what the fans have been saying not us, but if the shoe fits…

P.P.S. to be clear – we’d love a drummer in the band haha the goal is to perform as a 4-5 piece with a drummer and a synth/keys player. From a live perspective, someone banging a real drum kit adds an unquestionable excitement and dynamic that track drums struggle to deliver. A hybrid kit, that’s our vision! If an article cross promo plug isn’t illegal, please reach out if you drum and want to jam/join our band!!!

Knowing you produce a lot at home, can you speak a bit to how you record music for Peak Park?

We’re pragmatic operators. I’m all for recording analog, hectic vintage gear and amps, but in the end if it sounds good it is good and no amount of fancy gear will make up for shit songwriting. Not to say we’re masters, because we 110% are not, but my approach to recording is to not be afraid of writing and recording directly in the box. Some parts are just easier to record as MIDI and manipulate a soft synth.

Synths & Keyboards: we love our Nord Lead A1, Korg Minilogue XD and Hydra Explorer so they always get a run direct in where possible. The majority of “Heartless Animal” is soft synths however and various drum samples and kits I’ve collected. The synth bass is Logic stock Mellotron absolutely rinsed, distorted and manipulated, was a tough one to wrangle, making it feel huge but not too farty! A Minimoog plugin has been in rotation lately too. Various Logic & 3rd party keys & piano VSTs.

Bass: the trusty Hofner with flatwounds either through the 500 chain DI, the Sans AMP Tech 21 or DI and manipulating it with plugins in the box.

Guitars: we’ve recorded bulk guitars with my Laney Tube Amp running via a UAD OX or my UAD Dream as a pseudo amplifier head. It’s just super practical. The controls are intuitive and it gets great results quickly. Various guitars are used, an American Standard Strat, Tele, Jazzmaster, Gretsch Streamliner & Epiphone Sheraton II are on rotation pending the part.

Running an acoustic through a cranked Laney is a fav tone!

Vocals: almost exclusively through an RE-20 into either the dbx 580 preamp or WA-12 500 preamp into an Elysia Xpressor and SSL UV EQ, all 500 series. The real secret though is our corduroy shower! It’s a fold out couch that we prop on chairs and make a little iso booth out of. It’s more about the mental consequence. Once you’re in ‘the shower’, no one can see you, the lighting is dark, it’s cozy, all the pressure is off and we’ve had some amazing performance moments come from that. Something to be said about the comfortability amongst each other too. We’ve been recording and producing for years now so the fear of sounding like shit or embarrassment is largely out the window. Although technically likely to produce a cleaner take, condenser mics rarely get a run due to the comfortability of singing into a dynamic.

Cal in the ‘corduroy shower’

Does the knowledge that you’ll have to perform these songs live as a three-piece affect your songwriting and producing at all?

We’re always conscious of how it’ll be to play the song live but it’s never a factor in the writing and production decision making. Translating a song in a live space is a constant interest for us. We’re not afraid to deviate from the record, it’s usually encouraged. Various artists over the years convinced me of this but King Gizz really solidified that idea. Live music by nature is a different experience so why not lean into that and make it unique for us and the audience. Making songs flow into one another or a cover are always fun moments. Our first release “Dreamy” has had a complete facelifts and is just a much better version to play live. Conversely, we wanted a soft moment in the set, so our fastest full band song is now a one guitar, three part vocal sing along.

Admittedly, we’re still working through it and experimenting. Some songs translate better than others but we’ve found game day sim and rehearsing out loud at volume reveals the gaps in a song. For instance, a bass part baked into the track might be better suited to a synth or too many small layers in the track can be replaced with one verb’d out guitar. It’s a fun puzzle to solve!

We iron all this out pre-show and load a finished backing track to our Roland SP-404 and then perform with the track. I 100% had hang ups about playing with a track, it’s not ideal but ultimately putting on an amazing show and connecting with the audience is what matters, however you get there. We used to bring more gear to shows out of fear people would hear a backing track and think we couldn’t play our instruments or it meant we weren’t a real band. We had another drum pad Roland SPD-SX, 2 synths on stage, each of us had a mic, three guitars, one bass, we’d swap instruments… It was fun but the performance suffered for it.

Nowadays for Peak Park it’s a balance, we love playing our instruments so any opportunity to we will, plus we’re all multiple disciplined so rotating on bass/guitar/synth is a fun little element that we’ll always explore. Lastly, there is the practical element, if we’re playing a support slot, having excessive gear on a tiny stage with limited sound check… disaster waiting to happen!

Are you a drummer and want to join Peak Park? Keep up with them and get in contact here.