peaking lights: the fifth state of consciousness

Peaking Lights' fifth album, titled The Fifth State Of Consciousness, was produced in their Dreamfuzz studio over two years. It's both a departure from the new and a return to the old with a whole new twist on the psychedelic dub-pop they've become known for. Sonically the album shifts through many states from beginning to end, resonating deep, like a drive through foreign landscapes where you're glued to the window, as everything slowly changes around you. The flow and pacing of songs has a sense of wonderment, and each time you play it, there's a whole new batch of lovely sounds and eccentricities within each of the players. While bringing together their love of psychedelic music, house, electronic, and reggae, each song manages to live its own life and yet still there is some magical thread that binds them together. Produced by Aaron Coyes, the whole creative process was filled with nerdy gadgetry, playful experimentation, and deep alchemical soul searching for a musical medicine. Aaron describes Dreamfuzz as "a small junkyard with many happy mistakes." Using tape machines, writing melodies backwards then playing them in reverse, layering sound upon sound to create "pads", literally breaking electronics to get sounds, and a strict motto of "anything goes, pure creativity." Most sounds were run through Peaking Lights' 1976 16/8 Soundcraft Series Two mixing console (the same type of board used by Lee "Scratch" Perry at Black Ark, and at the infamous Cargo Studios where many of the early Factory Records bands were recorded) to add some "mojo". It's an album that is sure to be a creeper, even if you don't fall in love on the first date.