pecq – Amnesia’s Ritual (EP)

“Amnesia’s Ritual” is the latest EP from British electronic duo pecq. The work consists of 4 tracks and was released on May 9, 2023 on Upcycled Sounds Records.

It’s their most personal and powerful record yet, emerging from the experience of losing several friends before their time. pecq have always excelled at making intelligent, introspective music, but Amnesia’s Ritual exists in a different world. Over four tracks, they make legible something that is almost impossible to understand. Like all of pecq’s best music, It’s still pop. It’s still their signature blend of analogue synths, found sounds and homemade instruments, but it also speaks to something beyond their previous work. Amnesia’s Ritual is music-as-therapy, created out of a shared personal necessity to move forward, accept and externalise. In the process pecq have made something very beautiful, and it belongs as much to you and I as it does to them.

Formed in 2020 after isolating in their small studio, pecq is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist duo Nicholas (Nikò) O’Brien and Hannah (Jakes) Jacobs. Having built a name for themselves as producers, composers, songwriters, and DIY record label owners, the pandemic turned the duo’s creativity inward and they began making music on their own terms. The project was quick to turn heads, garnering support from the likes of 6music, Radio 1 and 2, BBC introducing, Notion, DUMMY, David Dean Burkhart and Bandcamp editorial, as well as securing an early release on boutique French label Kitsune Music.

About the EP, Nikò says:

“There’s a unique kind of grief from losing friends so young. It overshadows everything but is chaotic and non-linear. Your perception of time goes crazy and you can’t process things moving forward with someone’s absence. Every milestone becomes a new loss and you feel like you’re living multiple detached realities. These songs surprised us, coming from bursts of emotions, some that we didn’t even realise we were processing – guilt, rage, PTSD, panic, denial, oblivion, acceptance. Some took years, some took hours. All involved crying. At the time we didn’t know it but making these songs seems to have been a turning point in our grief – externalising, sharing and creating starts weaving those fractured realities back together again. It’s a raw record but it’s helped us and we hope it helps someone else“.