Peroxide Mocha are all about love. The love between a boy and a girl (but not in THAT way) and the love of that boy and that girl for music - love that has seen them through highschool, poor jobs, better jobs, military service, competition level video game playing, inter-state relocation, being cool, being uncool, being completely beyond caring what is cool or uncool any more and many, many other adventures that have got them to this, the eleventh year of their existence as a band. And through all of this, Pete and Rachel - for they are Peroxide Mocha - have created a series of home-made records that sound like nobody else, and which have winged their way around the world through post and internet and recommendation into the collection of a diverse and loving set of fans.
Pete and Rachel met in highschool in Sequim, Washington State, in 1997 and recorded their first EP that very same week; after rejecting names like Salmon-Cherry Casserole and Don’t Touch My Moustache, they decided on Peroxide Mocha, and a musical era began. Their creative gelling was total from the beginning and quickly led to the album Sit Down And Wait To Be Seated the following year. Vital Peroxide Mocha themes were mapped out there, including sex, drugs, sarcasm, Japanese confectionery and what it's like to think someone is neat - themes that were to be developed over a series of albums that would fall together over the next few years each time Pete and Rachel managed to simultaneously find time in their tangled-up lives to sit down for a short while, fire up the PC and let the songs pop out.
Though Pete's quirky beats and Rachel's nonchalant but moving and often gut-tuggingly funny lyrics were limited at first by the simple fact that neither had any idea whatsoever how a record should be made, people who heard the results of their work tended to love it, and to play it to yet more people. The duo discovered that there were kindred spirits all over the world - people who think pocky is important and recycling is funny; people who got such a collective crush on the music that each new Peroxide Mocha album has now become a keenly-anticipated event for that small but very lovely club of people who Know.
Which brings us to Making Out With Strangers. Now in their 11th year as a
band, Pete and Rachel are older, wiser and a bit more educated in how a record should be made - but they are still as nonchalant and natural as ever, and have managed to avoid building any desire to sound like anyone other than Peroxide Mocha. So while the sounds on this record might be a bit tougher, a bit slicker, the kind of thing that electro and eclectic DJs all over the world will find perfect for rocking a wide variety of dancefloors with, this is still the Peroxide Mocha we all love, the Peroxide Mocha who remind us that the tiny details of life can be stranger and more important than we'd imagined, that horrible things can be funny and funny things can be horrible, and that the word "frigidaire" deserves pride of place in the construction of popular songs. This is Peroxide Mocha, and they bring you love.
swiped from their CD Baby Write-up!
