South London Duo Arliston talk through their love of Peep Show, how the new single took many shapes, and more!
The folk duo Arliston who hail from South London have come bearing gifts in the form of their most recent single ‘Monks of Lindisfarne’, and yes, that is a Peep Show reference. After getting our ears tickled we wanted to know more about this duo, their love for Peep Show, and much more.
Kieran: How’s your 2024 been treating you so far? Any highlights?
Arliston: We’ve just come off the back of LeeStock festival and great show at the Camden Club, and are really enjoying finally getting this album out into people’s headphones. Even though it been pretty quick by our standards (written in Nov of 2023), it’s been torture to have to wait until now for it to be released.
Kieran: You recently shared your latest single ‘Monks Of Lindisfarne’, can you please talk us through this release and what it means to you?
Arliston: Of course! Monks was written at a time when I had a total, blinding infatuation with someone and tried to let them know how I felt by writing this long, long winding message. Looking back at it now, I was so worried about saying the wrong thing that I basically said nothing at all, I just rambled on about the Monks of Lindisfarne. It must have been a very confusing message to receive.
Listen/watch ‘Monks Of Lindisfarne’ here:
Kieran: What was the writing and recording process around this release like?
Arliston: By our standards, LIGHTSPEED. We usually agonise over every little detail of a song and it has sometimes taken us months just to finish a single song. This time (perhaps because there was emotional urgency), we wrote 37 songs in four weeks. We then went through a process of chipping away at the block, and whittling down which songs would be on the album. There are still some of the 37 that didn’t make it that I’d love to see released someday.
Kieran: I know the song had gone through a lot of changes before release. Do you feel happy with the final product?
Arliston: I actually think that that is one of the big lessons we’ve learned from doing an album this way: speed is good. When you get into the tinkering mindspace, you rarely every reach a place when you’re happy with the track, and counterintuitively, the less we tinkered with these tracks the more we have been able to accept them (and their many flaws).
Kieran: Is there anything you would do differently?
Arliston: I probably wouldn’t write QUITE so autobiographically next time haha. Next time maybe just a thin sliver of metaphor between me and the truth would make these songs a little easier to stomach. But then again, it was a wonderful cathartic experience to be able to capture what I was feeling in music, so actually on second thought, no I wouldn’t do that differently. What we definitely would do differently is play the songs live earlier, playing them live has allowed them to come into this fully evolved state which I don’t think they could ever have reached in the studio alone.
Kieran: As Peep Show enthusiasts we want to to know what your favourite episodes are and how the show influenced this release?
Arliston: Ahh, there are so many favourite episodes. The one that I keep coming back to is the one that the song steals from. Where Jez confesses his love for Mark’s girlfriend so Mark tries to stigmatise him as being mentally unstable, and later Jez rips apart a pork pie with his bare hands looking for a wedding ring. Comedy gold. The part of this episode that comes up in the song is the bit on the train, where Mark says (in response to Jeremy’s ‘honourable’ love confession) “No! an honourable man would have cut his nuts off and gone to Morocco or become a monk” (I’m sure that’s not an exact quote btw). And that was what I was referencing in my long and winding message to this person, that they shouldn’t worry if they don’t feel the same way because I could just go off and become a monk of Lindisfarne (if such an occupation still exists).
Kieran: If you could release a Peep Show influenced album what would you call it and how would it sound?
Arliston: Very uncomfortable. Obviously there would be a refrain of “this is outrageous, this is contagious” going throughout the whole album, in the background of every track. It would be called ‘Curse these Metal Hands’, and I’m sure it would break every conceivable streaming record.
Kieran: Lastly, what can we expect from you in 2024?
Arliston: More live shows! As we release more and more of the album in 2024, we’ll be playing more. Our next scheduled gig is in Katzspace in London on the 18th of September, playing a lovely festival called Under the Drum in Northern Ireland, then we’re supporting Molteno on October 24th at Colours Hoxton. Can’t wait.