Press release
NYC electronic music collective P.E. return with their third and final album Oh!, due October 3rd on Wharf Cat Records. With the news, they drop the lead single “Color Coordinator” featuring Eleanor Friedberger of The Fiery Furnaces on lead vocals.
The track was written by P.E.’s Jonny Campolo and Eleanor, utilizing a typically P.E. creative method. Here’s what they both have to say about it.
Eleanor Friedberger:
“I asked Jonny Campolo for some thematic direction and he replied with a series of 10 images, some VHS stills and some photos with captions— including a picture of plastic, colored water bottles with the title “Color Coordinator,” which I ran with, and imagined as a cult-like leader. This is the first time I’ve written lyrics from visual prompts; a great way to unstick if you’re feeling stuck!”
Jonny Campolo:
“‘Color Coordinator’ was written over an exquisite corpse correspondence between myself and Eleanor Friedberger. Sending inspiring images back and forth to each other, we began to weave them together into a narrative, describing them verbatim. What ensued was a story combined from memory and moodboard. Eleanor has this gift for imbuing lyrics with a psychedelic trust in the listener; stream of consciousness storytelling told from a narrator that maybe wasn’t even there. Trusting in hearsay, a game of telephone became a song.”
About the Oh! LP
Oh! Is the sound of a startled exclamation punctuating an exit, and the embodiment of the music within: fun and fluorescent, fluid and flirty, dirty and a little dangerous.
From their conception in 2017 through the NOPE Tape series, P.E. existed as an experiment in co-conspirited collaboration. Oh! continues to cast a wide net, featuring an expanded lineup from their original formation, including Eleanor Friedberger of The Fiery Furnaces on the lead single “Color Coordinator.”
The resulting music ranges wide as ever, from the jubilant grooves of the title track and “Color Coordinator” to “The Fiction Writer” – a tender duet between Veronica Torres and Jonny Campolo – through the city pop sounds of “(Do You Like) So So” and “Purple On Time,” and into the abstracted beyond.
This isn’t a goodbye, but a “see you around.” A tear falls down the cheek of a stranger, dancing as they catch your smile in the reflection of a glass building. Ceremoniously, serendipitously, they sidewalk surf away, stepping on something sharp “Oh!“ leaving a teardrop on the city pavement
