Peepholes – Caligula EP

photo by Alphan Nukan

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Caligula is the title-track from London duo Peepholes‘ latest EP, out via Upset The Rhythm.  Calmer than some tunes on the record, it nevertheless ascends gradually – but unstoppably – to a psychedelic, panicked plane, a place where the sun never shines and our mortality can no longer be ignored.  And yet, for all that it’s fraught, there’s also a beauty here: the beauty of honesty, of abandoning excuses.

Picture The World In Signs plots a similar path, but without the histrionics: instead it comes with a Prozac-ed mollification, as if heard at a distance or via a dream.  Including the industri-hell finale, it has the quality of those revelations you have just as sleep comes; desperately you try and grasp them, and resist the fatigue, but it’s a losing battle and they slip away, enigmatic and free.

Ghostliest of all is Moon Gangs‘ remix of Tunnels, a musical child run away from home, never to return.

Peepholes

Sometimes when I see those crazed people in the street – yelling at no-one, screaming up at bare windows, having it out with the fresh air – I wonder if maybe they’re the sane ones, and it’s me that’s mad.  Maybe they’re just the chosen few with flexible enough minds that they can see the ghosts, and recognise the push and pull that most of us walk blithely by.  Maybe they’re enlightened, and I’m stumbling around the dark.  Listening to South London act Peepholes, and their mesmerising drone-out, makes me wonder all over again.

(Peepholes currently have  a tape out on Nail In The Coffin and a split 12″, ‘Kingdom’, out on Upset The Rhythm, which prettily summarises Peepholes as ‘party music for the lost at sea’.  A new EP ‘Caligula’ is due imminently, also through UTR.)

SIGNS by PEEPHOLES

TUNNELS (early version) by PEEPHOLES

CALIGULA by PEEPHOLES