Congratulations on the release of “Bitebybite” how does it feel?
It feels incredibly good! This song is one of our favorite so we were pretty excited to release it.
What’s the story behind the song?
‘bitebybite’ is a representation of how our desires are eating away at us from the inside.
We crave things that we don’t have, we point fingers at people that have different opinions, we’re all convinced that we’re the next star to shine. We tried to portray this culture of individualism by building a very dark and intense atmosphere, where desires are demons, waiting out there to eat us bite by bite
The video is very striking, how did you come up with the concept for it?
We wanted to recreate a thing called “White Torture” by shooting it in a white room, giving the spectator that sense of emptiness that somehow comes with craving desires too much. At the same time we shot the red clips to portray the sense of frantic that we experience when we need something too much to realize how it’s making us going insane.
You are a duo from Italy how did you come together?
We’ve been friends for a very long time, but we played into separate projects. But then, in the summer of 2019, we started to meet and write songs together with zero expectations. We found the process of writing together so natural that we decided to take it more seriously. That’s how PEAKS! has started.
What were your influences starting out?
It’s a very long list! Haha! In general, we’re influenced by some of the classic rock acts (The Beatles, Metallica, Nirvana), the 90s punk wave (Weezer, Green Day), Electronic music, Hip Hop, and some contemporary artists like grandson, K.Flay, BMTH, Royal and The Serpent and so on, that are blending influences and genres into something new.
What were your early writing sessions like?
We’re pretty independent when it comes to writing new material, so both of us sometimes write in his own studio, then we meet up to finalize the work together and add some magic touch to the songs. 😉
We started pretty much the same way cause we felt more productive. We’re not always together so we decided to write songs when we feel inspired in order to not lose some great material in the waiting of being together in the same studio.
You are playing The Great Escape Festival in Brighton in May, how are preparations going for that?
We’re setting everything up and we’re challenging ourselves once again cause we’re going to play with a touring drummer from the UK that we’re going to meet the day before the show. But we’re doing all the preparation with him remotely. We really believe in the power of remote working and we want to use it as much as we can to get new connection across the globe.
On a scale of 1-10 how excited are you to be back on stage again?
We’d say 100, haha!
COVID impacted the creative industry what kept you motivated?
The first COVID wave happened when we were at the very beginning. We really didn’t know how to handle it cause we were already planning to release a song (Blackout) in the beginning of 2020 and, eventually, play a couple of shows. At first we thought we had to wait till this pandemic was over, but then we found a way to write songs remotely and still working on the project even if we were not phisically together. That helped us a lot and we decided to do something risky: release the first single in the very middle of the second COVID wave. We felt it was the right time to come out with a song and started this journey that we put in a “stand by” mode for months.
The last couple of years have been a time to reflect, what did you learn about yourselves?
A lot. We grew up as individuals and musicians as well. This thing really changed the perception of our lives and what’s important/what’s not.
We’re more conscious and sensitive to certain things. I think this pandemic had a pivotal impact on the awareness regarding mental health and more and more people started to take it more seriously and that’s one of the good things that came out of this tragic event. There’s always something good, even in bad things, you know?
Did you pick up any new skills?
Oh that’s a good question. I guess we’ve been through all the stages of been self isolated. From the super committed to something phase, to the laziest man on earth phase. It’s been very hard to be consistent in something, but I guess we did pretty good in learning new production techniques. We produce all of our songs by ourselves and the last year gave us the chance to study and experiment more in the writing/production process. I personally started to learn piano, but I’m doing it at a very slow pace cause I always want to enjoy things and not put myself in the position of “schedule” everything in my life. Lorenzo stepped up his game in video/lightning production and that will certainly have a huge impact in all the next things we’re about to deliver.
What are you listening to at the moment?
The new Machine Gun Kelly album is on heavy rotation at the moment along with Turnstile.
What are you looking forward to next?
Play our first show is the main thing we’re looking for. Then we can’t wait to release our EP and we have a lot of new songs that we want to put out and release in the next months.
But, as we said before, we really need to play some shows and sweat on stage while doing what we like the most.
