New release – The curse of the mind (EP) by Joe Peacock
Joe Peacock is a singer-songwriter from Birmingham (UK) who describes himself as a genre-hopping storyteller. Joe has released three albums as a solo artist and is also playing in an alt-folk duo called The Missed Trees, who released their first EP in April.
Joe releases his EP ‘The curse of the mind’ on 18th August. A pre-save is available here.
“It’s a concept EP of sorts. I am trying to theme my releases based on the lyrics for a bit. That might mean that you may not see another album from me for a while, as 3-5 songs is optimal for me in terms of being able to stick to a topic. The title gives away what this one is about to a certain degree.”
“The lead song’s called ‘Thought camera’ and is basically about privacy and the desires of the powerful to monetise our thoughts with modern technology, although the thought camera was actually something Nikola Tesla wanted to invent. That’s probably the catchiest song on there and I definitely wouldn’t say they all follow a particular style. Influences range from britpop to experimental alt rock, shoegaze and there’s even a bit of spoken word – I definitely wouldn’t describe it as rapping, though.”
“I’ve made two videos so far for ‘Thought camera’ and ‘Poltergeist’, taking royalty-free video clips from an online design platform called Canva and cutting them together. It doesn’t require too much skill, just a bit of time. I’m not sure whether I’ll do that for all of them, but I like to do a couple.”
“I think this is the first time I’ve released a song in an odd time signature (5/4) and the first time I’ve sung a whole song with the lead vocal in falsetto. I also mangled and looped a guitar part to create part of one of the songs, which was kind of new for me.”
“I find it hard to judge how different my releases are, because I am always going from genre to genre, so you’re never sure what you’re going to get with the next song and I like it that way. Stylistically, it’s definitely not the same as my last solo singles, but I would hope that people who’ve listened to a few of my releases would recognise the eclectic style as being me.”
“Like the videos, I created the artwork on Canva. I actually made four versions of it and got my Twitter followers to vote for the one that they liked best. I made some very small tweaks after that, but it’s basically the one that most people voted for. I wanted something that would look quite striking, but also that would indicate what the music’s about so the idea of turmoil and confusion is definitely in there. I think my followers made a good choice.”
