Influences: Stephen Peeling of Codes In The Clouds

Soon to be releasing their self-titled third album with Hobbledehoy, Stephen Peeling of UK group Codes In The Clouds reflects on a few artists influencing the way he and the rest of the group has approached music.

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Rival Consoles

Above all artists Rival Consoles has easily had the biggest influence on us as a band. We worked together on the same label for years, occasionally collaborating on various projects. Although our paths have been very different, we’ve always been huge fans of everything he’s done.

He takes a very considered approach to his music and pays such critical attention to every minute detail. With each track he manages to explore a given sound concept while retaining a more instinctive impact and power. That’s why you can just as easily scratch your chin and dissect his material as you can lose yourself dancing to it.

The way he’s changed and matured his style over the years, as well as his super concise approach to creativity, is something we definitely aspire to. We’re so proud that he produced our new album and consider him an inspiring artist and friend.

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Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth were absolutely formative for at least a few of Codes. They’ve had such a varied output and a constantly evolving sound over the years. We’ve always been keen not to get trapped in a box creatively and we have a special level of admiration for those bands and artists, like Sonic Youth, Radiohead etc., who can venture into new territory and make something relevant and interesting.

Initially they taught us as emerging musicians that it was ok to turn everything up and use raw noise and chaos as the building blocks of a song. It was so irreverent and cool. Very enticing to a clueless kid with a guitar. Then as we grew into our own sound, we started to really appreciate the more subtle elements of what they were doing. They could tame and control that noise into a rigid song structure without killing its spirit like no-one else. We’ve always tried to do that.

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Efterklang

In terms of their aesthetic and energy, their togetherness, their spirit and their incredible live set, Efterklang have been our idols for a long time. They are so infectiously creative. You come away from a show or listening to an album bursting with ideas of your own. Their songs are full of the sort of little touches that we adore. In terms of production or dynamic and structure. Everything is so deep and textured but still totally catchy and accessible. They are extremely confident in the way they present themselves as a band and they appear totally at peace and coupled with their music. That results in the most succinct and tightly bound live performances around.

We’ve tried to learn from them, the importance of balancing the tiny flashes of flair in a song with its overall journey and message. Efterklang come to mind whenever you’re considering how to develop a song or inject a moment of beauty.

We also use them as our yard stick for measuring how good our own live show is. It’s not good enough until it’s Efterklang enough.

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Fuck Buttons

Fuck Buttons have been a massive influence on this album specifically. They have such an extreme and uncompromising approach to production. They’re not afraid to have every element operating at its most powerful in every second of a song. It could be that everything you can hear is overdriven and aggressive or that the same melody repeats throughout. Whatever it is in each case, they’re totally fearless.

We might, at times, choose to produce our songs differently. However, what we took from them was the attitude towards making those decisions. Always one hundred percent what we feel. Never toning down to try to please everyone.

More directly speaking, they gave us a sense of confidence to start properly exploring synths and how they could fit into our stuff.

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Colin Stetson

We were introduced to Colin Stetson shortly before the whole, incredibly long, process of writing and recording our album began. We heard his music before knowing the unbelievable way he was making it. Once we saw that, we were blown away. The sounds he got out of that saxophone made us look at our own instruments differently. We all started to push ourselves a bit further to try to find something new within ourselves.

His songs as a whole were so patient and haunting. That too has been a big influence on us. We’re now more confident to let the thing we’re creating play out in a way that feels natural. Stetson has developed us in those two ways on this album and will continue to do so moving forward.