Discover up and coming bands in 10 questions…

11 June 2019

PEUK is one of Belgian‘s up and coming noise rock forces with an international potential, led by the young, clamorous and heftily howling frontwoman Nele. This crushing three-headed steamroller released their astonishing self-titled debut album earlier this year.
A barbed wire punk & grunge body of work. Enough reasons to find out more about the band via a short chat with Nele. Let’s start the encounter with one of their best cuts on
the new longplayer…

Hello and welcome, Nele…

1. What sparked the start of the band in the first place?
“I was looking for musicians after my previous band split up. Jacky and Dave were fans of my music and I knew them from previous gigs so I asked them if they would join me. And they did.”

2. The range of your voice is just phenomenal. When did you discover you could blow people away vocally and how does it feel to go up there on stage and scream your heart & soul out without being arrested?
“I never really discovered it. Can’t answer that right now, ask me again later.”

3. Are the debut LP’s influences (Nirvana, Hole, Sonic Youth) something you wanted to make sure people would really hear and experience or did the sound just came together naturally regardless of the outcome?
“We grew up with that kind of music so naturally, it influences how we make music a little bit, but it isn’t intentional, we just do our own thing. Any similarity to 90’s bands is kind of
a coincidence.”

4. The artwork of the album looks both scary and attractive like ‘The Beauty and The Beast’. Who designed it and what was is that the band wanted to express/visualize with the image?
“The artwork got designed by Viktor Froyen, it was a work he was doing on the side while
he was working on the actual cover for the album. When I saw it laying in a corner and thought it would fit the album. The monster on the cover gets seen as an external by people but does it need to be like that? Can it be a representation of an internal fear? Make up your own mind. The image doesn’t need to be taken literally, it’s open for interpretation.”

5. ‘Magpie’ is one of my favorite tracks. What’s the song
about and how did it come together in the studio?
“The song is about being no-one’s possession, it’s about people’s desires and how manipulative they can be just to fulfill those desires. Magpies are birds that get triggered by shiny objects, so yeah, metaphor. The song already existed before I met the guys, but the guys just made it a bit better, adding a bit more power and dynamics to it.”

.

6. The band’s live power is HUGE like a volcano in action.
What feelings trigger those eruptions?
“A combination between the power of the music and the mind, eh.”

7. Favorite band/artist that PEUK wants to go on a world tour with?
“I would have to feel comfortable with the artists that I go on tour with so even if I have some favorite bands I don’t know if I would feel comfortable with those people, so I dunno. Maybe Chan Marshall, she seems nice, maybe PJ Harvey or Patti Smith, I’d like to hear her stories.”

8. How easy or difficult is it to play in a small country as Belgium and
does the band has international ambitions?
“It’s not that hard, you can drive from one end of Belgium to the other in about 3 hours. It’s just that you see a lot of the same gas stations after a while. Some small tours in foreign countries would be nice.”

9. What movie would you pick to visualize your music
on a big screen while playing live?
“Preferably a David Lynch movie, but I’m not sure which one yet. A compilation of all the happy, sad and destructive scenes from his entire catalog.”

All things Lynch…

10. Next big step for PEUK?
“World domination and drown in it.”

Thanks for the interview, Nele.
May the road rise with PEUK!

Debut album in full here…

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PEUK: Facebook

(All concert pics by Turn Up The Volume!)