pecq

pecq’s 3rd EP is their most personal and powerful yet, written in the aftermath of losing 3 friends. Lovingly crafted but emotionally raw, the songs pay tribute to those missed and look unflinchingly at the conflict and chaos of grieving and the vastness of loss.

‘There’s a unique kind of grief from losing friends so, so long before their time. 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 are cathartic bursts of different feelings when we’ve felt able to write about them - 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 was a turning point in our grief - externalising, sharing and creating starts weaving those fractured realities back together again. It’s a heavy record but it’s helped us and we hope it helps someone else.’

Amnesia’s Ritual is an exercise in using music to understand grief. Born out of a need to process the deaths of close friends, the third EP from London art-pop duo pecq is an unflinching portrayal of loss and the incomprehensible array of emotions that accompany it.

Formed in 2020 after isolating in their small studio, pecq is the artistic 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 forced the duo to turn their creativity inward and begin making music on their own terms. The project was quick to turn heads, garnering support from the likes of 6music, Radio 1, BBC introducing, Notion, DUMMY, David Dean Burkhart and Bandcamp editorial, as well as securing an early release on boutique French label Kitsune Music.

A unique combination of creative approaches and styles, pecq has grown into a project that’s much more than the sum of its parts. A classically trained pianist, Jakes began experimenting with vocals, production and songwriting from an early age, using music as escapism from a challenging immune condition. Nikò is the perfect complement to Jakes’ brooding songwriting: a talented producer, engineer and multi-instrumentalist with an energetic musical language that pairs his multi-national heritage with a love of sound design and circuit bending.

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.

Thematic Quote:

‘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.’