Peel EP by Peel

Peel is the musical partnership of Sean Cimino and Isom Innis; both multi-instrumentalists, as well as a visual artist and producer respectively. The project was born from a month-long recording session between the two artists within Innis’s concrete loft, above the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. Naturally, the cavernous space served as an industrial incubator for musical experimentation: where fleets of sewing machines once reverberated in the 1930s with metallic rhythms, now echoed the sounds of drums, amps, and modular synthesizers.


From the very beginning, a creative process was developed. Cimino would loop guitar and synths while Innis introduced drums and additional synthetic textures: “It was important for us to play everything without edits, limiting ourselves to a few selected elements. We are obsessed with records like Second Edition [Public Image Ltd.] and The Pleasure Principle [Gary Numan]; records where spirit and improvisation guided expression. We wanted to create a ‘wall-of-sound’ between the two of us...” says Innis.

After the two were satisfied with an instrumental take, a vocal performance was captured with a Shure SM7 microphone, often with lyrics deriving from a stream-of consciousness, as in the duo’s first single ROM-COM—a chaotic and cyclical information spiral, finding its existential footing in the modern age. “For me, when I listen to percussive music, the groove becomes hypnotic and it’s an ego-killer in the best way. It takes me out of my head and into a moment...” says Cimino.

Peel is as much a visual project as it is a sonic one. Enlisting the aid of graphic designer and art director Taylor Giali, the duo is documented through arrays of photographs and hazy analogue-video; manufacturing a familiar yet distinct visual language. “Similar to [Andy Warhol’s] ‘The Factory’ or Claes Oldenburg’s ‘Store’, we agreed early on to question the traditional ideas of production and consumption while leaving plenty of room for ideas to develop, pivot, or even end up in the garbage bin to be fished out later...” says Giali