Work samples
About Peals
Peals is a music project consisting of William Cashion (Future Islands) and Bruce Willen (Double Dagger). The duo crafts meditative and exploratory headphone panoramas, incorporating elements of ambient, folk, krautrock, punk, and experimental music. Peals’ live performances strive to create an intimate atmosphere, embracing art galleries, living rooms, and back porches. They have performed in a number of unconventional spaces,… more
Bubble Bath
Bubble Bath can be experienced here: pealsmusic.com/bubble-bath
Based on a suite of 20 audio loops created by Peals, Bubble Bath allows listeners to build their own ambient musical arrangements or listen to soundscapes randomly generated by the app.
Using instruments as varied as walkie talkies, xylophones, guitars, synthesizers, bells, saxophones, and more, Peals recorded a diverse palette of textures and tones that can be used to generate endless versions of the piece. The interactive format makes each listener’s experience unique, as they select the sounds, volumes, loop combinations, and play times. Additional features let users play the piece for a specified length of time (for listening in bed while waiting to fall asleep) and auto-randomization, where the app itself creates dynamically changing compositions from practically endless combinations of the loops (roughly 2,432,902,008,176,640,000 + infinite volume variations).
The Bubble Bath app was created with new media artist Dina Kelberman, who programmed the app and designed the mesmerizing color shifting visuals as a meditative graphic complement to Peals’ audio.
Bubble Bath was originally conceived and recorded for the Fermata contemporary sound art exhibition at Artisphere in Arlington, VA, where it appeared as a 12-channel sound composition. Fermata was curated by Cynthia Connolly, Hays Holladay, and Ryan Holladay and featured new works by artists including Ryuichi Sakamoto, The Books, Jarboe, Richard Chartier, Annea Lockwood, and others.
Trillium
Working with filmmaker Albert Birney, we played “Trillium” for students at the Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School. We asked the class to write stories while listening to the song. There was only one constraint: each story begins with “The woman in the room…”
Trillium brings the kids’ stories to life. The woman in the room transforms into a dinosaur and chats with a wise talking pelican. Leather-jacket-wearing bad boys, “weird alien cat-things,” peaceful apples, and money-shooting water guns all make noteworthy appearances. The video includes scenes from 17 stories written by the students, along with footage of them writing in the classroom. To capture the 5th graders’ imaginative worlds, we took a purposefully lo-fi approach to the props and sets. Some costumes and props were modeled on students’ drawings, including the paper maché head of Moophette, the “weird alien cat thing.” Similarly, the visual effects were created mainly in-camera, using a mix of silent-movie-style jumpcuts and multi-layered projections. The interplay between multiple projections, minimal set design, and a black and white color palette sets a dreamlike stage for the video. Cricket Arrison plays the Woman in The Room in each of the 17 scenes. In successive shots, her characters range from a pizza-making rocker to a “beautiful” dancer to a 5th-place marathon runner — “...first place isn’t the only place.” And her energy and enthusiasm give life to the children’s stories. Throughout the video, drawings and handwriting scanned from the kids’ written stories are projected as animations and used as explanatory (often hilarious) super-titles.
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Peals - TrilliumWe played the song for 5th-graders. They wrote while listening. We filmed their stories. Director: Albert Birney Produced and conceived by Peals Camera: Dave Cooper Cast: Cricket Arrison, Valerie Orr, Students of Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School
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Stills from TrilliumStills from Trillium, with Cricket Arrison starring as The Woman in the Room.
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Kids writing the videoStudents at Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School writing stories that became the Trillium video.
Honey
- Recorded between late 2013 and early 2016 in Bruce Willen's living room & Chester Endersby Gwazda's studio
- Additional tracking at Dan Frome's studio and William Cashion’s home
- Mixed by Chester Endersby Gwazda
- James Iha plays electric and acoustic guitar, keyboard, bass, and contributes voice to “Punk Migration”
- Andy Abelow plays saxophone on “Pink Cloud”
- Phil Davis plays banjo and film loops on “New Year's Whale” (unlisted secret track)
- Album cover is a monoprint by Willen’s late grandmother, Janice B. Willen, made in 1983.
- Honey release formats: LP; CD; cassette; digital download; limited edition honey jar with submerged USB drive
- LP version includes poster featuring a collage by Willen and Cashion.
- 6 oz. honey jar by Oak Hill Honey with sealed, submerged USB drive containing album and bonus material. Limited and numbered edition of 75.
LIVE VIDEO PROJECTIONS
Watch clips of these videos full-screen while listening to tracks from Honey.
Time Is A Milk Bowl
We also recreated the piece at Pioneer Works in New York City and at Studio 1469 in Washington, DC.
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Time is A Milk Bowl (excerpt) Live at Studio 1469, Washington DC JAN 18, 2015
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Time Is A Milk Bowl montageVideo and animations by Zoe Friedman and excerpts from Peals' performance in the Bromo Seltzer Tower clock room.
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Time is a Milk Bowl performancePhoto by Sarah Templin
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Time is a Milk Bowl performancePhoto by Sarah Templin
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TIme Is A Milk Bowl live performanceFirst performance at the Bromo Seltzer Tower. April 19, 2013
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Zoe Friedman & PealsPhoto by Bruce Willen
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Bruce Willen & WIlliam Cashion of Peals in the Bromo Seltzer TowerPhoto by Bruce Willen
LIVE PERFORMANCES
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Peals "Koan 2" (Sofar Los Angeles, 2014)
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Peals performance (Windup Space, Baltimore, 2016)
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Peals "Believers" (Silent Barn, NYC, 2014)
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Peals at the Fermata exhibition, ArtispherePeals perform at Artisphere during the Fermata international sound art exhibition in July 2014.
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Peals setup at Clocktower Gallery in New York
Walking Field
The music that sprang from these sessions, simultaneously exultant and cerebral, took the duo into unexpected territory. While the emotional intensity of their other projects is on full display here, its more gentle, melancholic and often abstract expression recalls Robin Guthrie and minimalist recordings from the sonic pioneers of the 1970s German scene - all direct inspirations for Peals as the songs that would become Walking Field took shape.
Walking Field’s home-recorded sessions followed an analog approach, welcoming the happy accidents and unplanned moments that bring their music’s most organic qualities to the fore. With no bass guitars or drums present on the album—all percussion sounds were generated by contact with guitars and microphones—the emphasis here is placed on texture and feeling.
Songs flow one into the next, talking to each other as they take the listener on an intuitive journey to destinations unknown. The chiming guitars of “Tiptoes in the Parlor” flirt with the layered melodies and heroic peaks of Dustin Wong, while tracks like “Believers” venture into a more challenging electronic headspace. Throughout, hidden corners are illuminated with the incorporation of field recordings, the crackle of walkie-talkies, and unexpected bursts of feedback. On tracks "Pendelles" and "Koan 1," the addition of cello from Kate Barutha (member of Adam Lempel and the Heartbeats and Soft Cat; guest on recordings by Future Islands, Small Sur, and Weekends) adds a complex dimension of modern classical to the album’s sonic palette.
Peals’ live performances strive to create an intimate atmosphere, embracing art galleries and back porches in smaller towns off the usual tour circuit. Their expressive and exhilarating debut record reflects this shift in sensibility. Walking Field is headphone music for summer afternoons and cold winter nights; a soundtrack for deserted beaches and wooded campfires; the feeling of a sunrise alone, or a sunset with a close circle of friends. This is Peals: something wholly new and unexpected from the ever-fertile Baltimore scene."
-- Thrill Jockey Records
1. Floating Leaf
2. Blue Elvis
3. Belle Air
4. Pendelles
5. Tiptoes in the Parlor
6. Lonestar
7. Believers
8. Koan 1
Night Train to Tucson/Believers II
Released May 2013 on Thrill Jockey Records.