Many of our regular readers will know Ben Forrester from his work with Bad Grammar and, more recently, with math rock ‘supergroup’ Gug; alongside Dan from Cleft and Tom from Alpha Male Tea Party.
Happy Medium is his third EP under the Peaks moniker and was recorded and produced by the aforementioned Mr Peters on cold weekend in January at his home studio in Clitheroe. This is Ben’s first EP in over a year, with previous effort Hollowhead sneaking out at the end of 2016. Although there are nods to his alternative rock routes with references to post-rock, emo and twiddle-pop, this is very much Ben’s widescreen pop moment. It still carries the emotion and atmosphere of earlier material but with crisper, bigger production bringing the hooks right to the front.
Speaking of the EP, Ben had this to say; “I’ve always said from the start that Peaks could go anywhere and I feel that this record is very much the start of more experimentation for me as a musician. I wanted to develop the sound of my last EP and just exaggerate and expand it further. My live show has gotten a lot more energetic and bigger sounding in the past year with my pedal collection growing more and more. So, I knew going into this studio that sonically this had to sound huge and Tom got that straight away and helped propel these songs into the stratosphere. Lyrically, it’s very much a continuation on the themes of Hollowhead but it’s probably more personal and direct than before. It’s about dealing with anxiety and trying to appreciate both the negative and positive in order to restore a good balance”.
The EP is out next week (30th March) and can be pre-ordered here but ahead of that you can listen to it in full below.
