No Peeling

Formed in 2025 as a studio project by five friends in the fertile Nottingham DIY underground, No Peeling have rapidly expanded way beyond their initial brief. September 2025’s self-titled EP was the perfect introduction to the No Peeling universe. Bandcamp Daily picked it as an Essential Release, calling it “a clanging collection of get-in-get-out egg punk that doesn’t ask for more than 10 minutes of your time and overdelivers on every front”. It managed to cram a lifetime of idea-nuggets into seven songs that rarely exceeded the minute mark. A blast of enthusiasm and hyperactivity, the EP was the audio equivalent of a barrage firework: exhilarating and energising (although slightly confusing unless experienced from a distance).

Whilst the first EP was completed before the band had played live; EP2 hits a little differently. Written in preparation for their first UK tour and recorded just after, No Peeling’s new-found live energy pushes the results to somewhere new again. EP2 has the garage punk clatter and sparkly efficiency of their debut but is somehow faster and weirder. The guitar and synth seem to be engaged in a constant (playful) fight, tumbling further and further away from the song structure being held together (and propelled) by one of the tightest rhythm sections around. The scrawl and skronk might occasionally recall No Wave but those grooves are locked down.

This all provides the perfect foundation for the wry, dry observations of Sophie Diver. From pasta post and fluff-clad delinquents to clingfilm catastrophes and poor working conditions, all modern life’s bases (good and bad) are covered and emerge miraculously from a magic-eye explosion of clangs, thwacks and bloops. And just when everything finally comes into focus it’s over and done with. Flip it back to side A, play it again.