Interview

Forging a close bond as two-thirds of international superstars, Foster the People, Sean Cimino and Isom Innis have embarked on a parallel life as Peel. Taking in influences both new and old, the pair’s debut LP Acid Star showcases the breadth of their unfettered sonic ambitions…

For most artists on the cusp of the release of their debut LP, a simultaneous learning experience takes place, as the mechanics of the industry are absorbed. The promotional responsibilities are often a surprise to artists who’ve spent the previous few years toiling away in solitude. Not so for Sean Cimino and Isom Innis, names recognisable to fans of Foster the People – an act that, since 2010’s viral mega-hit Pumped Up Kicks, have become a household name. For Cimino and Innis – who joined frontman Mark Foster initially as touring members back in 2010 – being plugged into the universe of promotional responsibilities is something they’re all too aware of.

However, the pair’s new side-venture finds the multi-instrumentalists exploring altogether more sonically diverse terrain, with their inaugural LP Acid Star, the duo – in the guise of Peel – juggle their gift for melody with alluring beats and lush synth ornamentation. We ask the pair where Acid Star’s ten tracks originated? “I think it first began late 2020, actually,” Sean tells us. “Isom and I were both in different places during that time. I was in Northern California, and Isom was in Austin. We had an EP called Rom-Com that came out during that time, but we were still feeling creative. I’d be writing where I was at, and Isom would be writing where he was at. We’d send each other stuff back and forth. In December 2020 we both met up in California, and went to my brother Nathan’s studio in Costa Mesa. We had a three-day session and came up with the foundational groundwork of the tracks that made up the album. All these grooves and melodic ideas.

It stemmed from there.”

Isom continues: “In those first three days, I feel like we opened up a channel. A lot of ideas flowed through. At that time, we didn’t know that we were working on an album, we were just doing it for fun and experimenting around. We left the studio with a bunch of different ideas.

Peel have a balanced love of hardware and software synths, namely Arturia’s Mini Vand Prophet-5 V

At that stage, a lot of it was built from drums and drum machines. We have a process of working, where we’ll improvise together where Sean is playing a drum machine, and I’m playing live drums – we’ll let those takes run for sometimes three minutes, but we just kind of improvise and move on to the next thing. By the time we left we had all these different rhythmic tracks. Then, the next process was listening back, and deciding which pieces we wanted to work on.”