Black Peaks Dig Into Their Influences

Ahead of this weekend's Download...

So far, Black Peaks have unleashed two terrific albums of progressive, euphoric post-rock.

On debut ‘Statues’ and follow-up, ‘All That Divides’, they’ve taken the mind-bending beauty of Tool, masterful savagery of Mastodon and eclectic thrills of Arcane Roots to create a sound of their own.

As the Brighton rockers gear up to play Download this weekend, Clash caught up with frontman Will Gardner to discuss their key influences from the worlds of TV, music and film.

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Tool – ‘10,000 Days’

It was a huge, and massive influence on us musically. Before that album I really hated Tool and didn’t get it at all. Then that record came out and I was like, “Wow these musicians can really play.” By the fourth listen I was like, “Oh my God, this band is the best band in the world, how have I missed this entirely?”

I think their attention to detail, their ethos and the mystery surrounding the band and how they do their artwork is very inspiring. Musically we take a hell of a lot from them; both rhythmically and with the artwork concepts that we try to go for.

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Jurassic Park

Even some of our gear is now Jurassic Park themed and Dave [Larkin, bassist] can recite the entire script from the front to the back. If you make a good suggestion or do something well, someone in the band will say, “Clever girl”.

It’s a cool film, it’s inspired a lot of us and I think it’s been part of our journey as human beings. I don’t feel like Hollywood has made something on that scale, with animatronics and building sets, since really.

That amount of attention to detail is something we strive to but we just haven’t got the budget!

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A Perfect Circle – ‘Eat The Elephant’

The coolest thing about that record is that it just gets better and better and live, it just slammed, just epic. It was impressive that a band from that long ago could feel so relevant. We got to tour with them last year and every song, every bit of the set was perfectly structured and put together.

It was phenomenal, really moving and felt like a big step up for us. It was also a challenge, it was really tough making that work, we didn’t have any help or any crew. We did it all on our own.

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Black Mirror

We’re all into the idea of future concepts and it was a massive influence on me on our first record. On the second record, I still always thought about Charlie Brooker’s terrifying presentations of the future.

Our first record was a crazy story about the fall of society due to government. That was massively inspired by Black Mirror, the way it looks at the future and says, “Hey guys, let’s be careful and think about what we’re doing.”

It really inspired the second record as well. Songs like ‘Fate’ ask, can we stop being so selfish and look after each other a little more? Talk to each other rather than fighting and rebuild some of these bridges we’ve destroyed.

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Black Peaks play Download Festival, on the Avalanche Stage on Sunday (June 16th).

Words: Danni Leivers

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