Name 3 Songs: You released your debut album, How to Make a Master Peace, earlier this year, and you’re about to follow it up with another EP. You said that on previous EPs, you felt like you played it safe in terms of your sound, and that with this album, you really wanted to push the boundaries of what you were doing. In what ways were you able to really challenge yourself with this album?

Master Peace: In London at the time when I was writing this album, everybody saw indie music as just straight guitar music. And that wound me up a little bit because I listened to a lot of electroclash. 

So you see how Block Party could get guitar music and electronic music and merge it together and make it a song. And I felt like nobody had kind of done that [more recently]. So I was just like, okay, cool. If I’m gonna try something new, I might as well head in that direction. 

But at the time nobody was seeing where it was. I wasn’t really aware that there was like a new name for that type of music – “indie sleaze”. So obviously I’m making this music and loads of people are telling me this is indie sleaze. I was like, sick. But I’m thinking electroclash. Do you know what mean? That’s in my head.

This is prior to everything that has happened in recent times. I got into writing my debut album at the beginning of 2023. And we just made all these tunes, and in my head, I was like, I got to push the boat out. Like indie music isn’t only guitars. I wanted to have an electronic feel and a dancey feel, where people can move, you know?

I remember sitting down with my producer, Julian, and he’s produced and written for that new Sabrina Carpenter album. I remember sitting down with him and he was like, do you know what your problem is? And I was like, what? And he was like, you need to get the girls to dance.

You’re making music for the guys, which is cool, but you need the girls to dance too. And if you can get the guys and the girls dancing and merge it together, do know what I mean?

I love this. This is the whole mission of our lives. Sara can write a thesis with you on this.

Exactly. Exactly. So obviously when he said that, I didn’t understand it. It didn’t really make sense to me. But I’d already made a song on the album that was like a dancey indie early 2000 type song. And then I played it for him and he was like, that’s what I mean. As in like, get them to dance. And that just changed my whole mindset. It was like a flip in my head to kind of push that boundary and push it out.

Yeah. I love that so much. That’s why I loved Block Party when I was a teenager, because it was the perfect merge of what I loved about pop music and what I loved about rock music. But that’s so interesting that you thought of it as electroclash. And then with indie sleaze, we’ve repurposed it because in that era we just called them hipsters. Now we’ve made them seem cool because they’re club rats.

Yeah, no, it definitely feels that way. Not even on a blow my own trumpet thing, but I was quite ahead. Do you know why it’s so mad? I remember being in the studio with this producer called Zach Fogarty and he was like, what music are you liking at the moment?

And this was like 2022. I said, I like the stuff that I’m making, I’m not really checking for anyone. He said, do know who you should work with? And I was like, who? And he was like, I’m gonna play the kid who’s name is called The Dare. So at the time my brain is all like, I thought I was the only person, in the UK anyway, that knew this thing.

“Girls” just came out, it was probably on 100K at the time. And I remember just being like, wow, this is actually really good. And then reaching out and being like, yo, this song is mental. And he was like, thank you so much. And like, we were talking about getting together and collaborating and whatnot. And then it was just one of those ones where just timings and schedules just didn’t really match.

But it’s just so mad now that it’s like, “Girls” is quite popular now. But when I heard that song, I remember going into my label and being like, guys, you need to sign this. Because I honestly thought he was on the money. I thought he was on the money at that time.