Peter’s first solo venture since 2008’s The Week That Was and follows collaborative albums with Paul Smith (on 2014’s Frozen By Sight) and Sarah Hayes (on 2019’s You Tell Me). The album was recorded over the last year at the Field Music studio in Sunderland, and features contributions from Peter’s brother David, Sarah Hayes and Peter’s son Alexander.

The mostly-instrumental album takes cues from the knowing exotica of Yellow Magic Orchestra, the quizzical tunefulness of Thelonious Monk and the pastoral abstractions of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. It also has more than a touch of the hyperactive fizz of 8-bit game soundtracks. And like Kraftwerk’s records of the mid and late-70s, this is synthesizer music as art music rather than dance music. But where Kraftwerk took the melodic purity of Schubert and gave it a chilly formality, on Blowdry Colossus, Peter takes the same elevation of melody and plunges it into a kind of playful chaos, heavy with rhythmic ingenuity.

“I wanted to make something where the music was the focus.” says Peter, “With songs, the lyrics tend to carry the meaning: ‘This song is about...'. I wanted the music to be the meaning - the melodies, harmonies, sounds, structures.”

Released October 6, 2023