The Peach Tree
The Peach Tree is the independent artistry of musician/writer/producer Angus Maiden, from Melbourne, Australia. All his work is released for free under a Creative Commons license. For the highest quality files, The Peach Tree's latest and remastered works can be found at The Peach Tree's page on Bandcamp, and a hefty back catalogue can be found at The Internet Archive. The official website is www.musicofthepeachtree.com.
The latest album is titled "The Taint Of Saidin" and can be found at a number of places, most notably Bandcamp.
The Peach Tree's work is always arranged as complete albums designed to be listened to holistically, with an underlying theme or concept, however on 14th February 2012, Angus selected what he considered the best tracks of his career up until that date, plucked them from their individual albums and made a compilation entitled "21 Of The Peach Tree's Best Tracks"
The Peach Tree began circa 2003 as school friends Angus Maiden and Michael Cooney's concept of a band; a band that would break genre barriers and reach across the music spectrum to touch a whole host of different individuals. From '03 to '06 the two jammed sporadically and officialy recruited new members (Members of the "band" at one point reached 5 members: Cooney and Gus on guitar and vocals, Erin on bass, Sarah on piano/synth and Bourkey on drums) but never got around to recording anything, and the band never really coalesced as a cohesive entity.
Thus as the members dispersed, The Peach Tree slowly morphed into Angus's solo project, whilst keeping the mentality that started the band: originality and diversity. He has released ten albums and four EPs under the name. His sound derives from the massive range of influences he is exposed to, and includes everything from pop melodies to dance tracks, death metal epics, and rockin' blues tracks.
The first album by The Peach Tree, released in 2005, was titled "The Gus Sessions" because it was the first album to be written, recorded and played by Gus entirely at his home studio, while there was still some semblance of a "band". It leaps about from slow moody pop to dance to techno and then back to some more moodiness, making it inaccessable for some but a delight for many.
In 2006 he released a 6 track EP entitled "The Dichalcitryde EP", a made up word that has a meaning similar to "running through the night sky tiptoe-ing on clouds whilst being persued by a pack of wolves playing nintendos who's half-arsed attempts at biting you in the bottom leave you falling about in rapturous laughter whilst gazing at the moon waning at the speed of light." No further explanation of this EP is needed.
Also in 2006, Angus released an EP titled "The Vases EP". He cites reasons for this name as: "It sounds cool; The bass on some of the tracks will break all the vases in your house if you turn it up loud enough; Like a vase, each track is beautiful and formidably tangible, yet so fragile it feels like it will crumble at more than the slightest touch; Like a collection of vases, these tracks may be seen as tacky by some but a work of genius by others"
Later in the same year he released "Fabric", a full length album that swings from sweet synth-pop to metal to bluesy rock. The idea behind the name is that the album is like a fabric tapestry, each different style weaving in and out in a pattern to make a beautiful piece of artwork. The Peach Tree's demo "Metal Epic", which later was fleshed out into a single from Fabric, "Mind Soul Dark Light", has been described as "a graphic dirge ... that borrows from the leaders of the early doom metal movement" by Metal webzine Harm.us.
In October, 2007, Angus released the tantalising techno-frenzy that is "Psychosis". The hard hitting, fresh and eccentric album delves into the darkest corners of a disturbed mind, finding in it plenty of emotion, power, soul, and even fun and silliness.
The first album off the slate in 2008 was titled "A Darker Shade Of Tao". It's an epic journey exploring the balance between the forces of Light and Darkness, of Yang and Yin. Tao is the Chinese philosophical concept of "The Way", the unification of these two opposing yet intertwining forces. "A Darker Shade" recognises that one can never truly see both sides of the coin at any one time, and thus the album falls on the darker side, all the while exploring these intermingling, juxtaposed forces and the myriad of themes that spring from the dance of Yin and Yang.
Next up was one of The Peach Tree's deservedly best received efforts, released in May '08. "the ghost of muses past" was recorded in an intense two week period of reflection on Angus' life over the past few years. Thus the title reflects the theme: burning ghost-fires of passion and feelings from long ago rekindled by the spark of sober contemplation and clarity.
The last album of '08, "revel", saw The Peach Tree's see-sawing, genre blurring approach to albums solidify into a more distinctive style, yet still retaining the chaotic and unexpected twists that have become a trademark of his projects.
The first project to be completed in 2009 was "fur bunni3", five short pieces of classical music, inspired by and written for The Peach Tree's no. 1 fan, bunni3burn.
Soon after, also in 2009, The Peach Tree sought permission from people he had been collaborating with to release, for free, the 20-track electronica project "we are god and computers are our children", featuring a multitude of talented artists and vocalists: remixes of The Peach Tree's work, remixes by The Peach Tree of others', and mutual creations between various net-aquaintances. An explanation of the title can be found at the page here on Last.FM
Next up was the "filler" of reject tracks that didn't fit into a thematic album Angus was working on, which he lumped together and dubbed "leave emos alone right now! (my online diary)". By referencing Chris Crocker, the "Leave Britney Alone" kid, and adding the suffix "My Online Diary", Angus is attempting to put a humorous spin on this collection of tracks that are, admittedly, pretty emo. Furthermore, the album explores the notion of the word emo, accepts how it has changed in meaning, and develops a loose theme based on the general craze-trend of tagging everything (for better or worse). This album is intended to be light-hearted and fun, with under-currents of "actual emoness".
In may 2009, The Peach Tree released the ambitious "lift the black veil", a concept album about vampires.
The last album of 2009 was the epic EP "magick", that takes the listener on a journey from the opening track "dark" to the closing track "light".
Angus' first album of 2010 was simply called "the peach tree", a kind of statement that the genre-blurring and lyrical themes you hear are definitively The Peach Tree's distinct sound and ethos. The album originally had a price tag but Angus couldn't resist rejoining the "Copyleft Movement" and embracing Free Culture, so the album is now completely free to download, as will be all future albums.
In mid-2010 Angus released the epitome of self-gratifying Art layered in Sound layered in Art, an enigma from inside to out. Critically acclaimed, the album reigned in a number of new fans for The Peach Tree. Titled failure playing art in the dress rehearsal for the apocalypse, the album explores the notions of Art, Trying, Failing, and The Human Condition. There is a full description on the album page.
Released in the first half of 2011, is the ambitiously titled "children of cain, night-loving creatures, prepare thyselves for 2012" is a concept album that maintains Angus' knack for changing moods and genres, with complex themes and subject matter. The title is expressed thus to attract people of a Dark or slightly "off-kilter" cadre. It is, of course, free; yet at the download site at Bandcamp there is a pay-as-you-wish, no-minimum system in place.
For a while in early 2011 The Peach Tree was doing an ongoing LastFM-based project called requests in which he completed songs tailor-made for an individual or group, based on their specific requests for genre, style, lyrical content, etc. The influx of requests has now stopped so Angus has called a wrap on the project.
The last album of 2011 was titled a scrapbook for glue junkies. Why? Well apart from sounding cool, it's recognising what has become a signature of The Peach Tree sound: disparate styles and genres seemingly "pasted into a scrapbook" of an album. Normally as Angus gets close to completing an album a theme begins to take shape from the lyrics. "A Scrapbook" (recorded and released at 96Khz, 24bit audio, close to the best you can get digitally) contains a theme about theming albums that sound like scrapbooks. Available (again, for FREE) here.
In mid 2012 an album titled "Inverted Fall Into Delusional Rockstar Dementia" was released. The album is a morass of sentimental poetry and twitchy songwriting that deals with the idea of being an internet celebrity in only the author's eyes, whilst often a joke in others'.
All of The Peach Tree's work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License, which basically means you are free to download and share the music (including remixing or adaptation/modification) as long as its use is non-commercial and credit is given.
The Peach Tree releases his material under his own net-label Tribal Dancing Kid. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
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