The name "The Peach Tree" came about when the project was in its early stages as the beginnings of a band. Angus began writing songs with school friend Michael Cooney under his peach tree in his yard. They agreed it would be a good name for a band, symbolising the potential for life yet also recognising the rotting aspect of fallen fruit. The name stuck and has since carried over to become Angus's solo project name after the band dispersed.

I do not play live at the moment but I'd sure love to if I could get my hands on a nice laptop.

The internet is amazing and is revolutionising the way we think about music. There is no middle-man anymore. Artists can connect directly to their fans on their own terms and have 100% creative control over their material. It is a million times easier for fans to find music that they really really will like, rather than being told what they should like. No one's making money anymore but that's not what it's about: music should be free, if artists want to make some money they should be satisfied working in some boring job and stoked that when they get home their guitar/keyboard and computer are sitting there ready to love. Music is more than fun, it's divine, and if people think they should be making money off that then they might as well say they should make money off meditation. And for all the people in record companies that will lose their jobs because of the internet revolution, well: it is a revolution, and if we want to overthrow the bigwigs then some people will have to cop it. However, for the people that are at the heart of music: the fans and artists, the internet revolution is incredible, and we should all embrace it. :)

F no.

It began circa 2003 as school friends Angus Maiden and Michael Cooney's concept of a band; a band that would break genre barriers and reach across the music spectrum to touch a whole host of different individuals. The duo began writing songs together after they finished school and practised sporadically, but the dream of being up there on stage delivering their message always seemed faraway. Although both Cooney and Gus had their own songs that they brought to the table and also had songs that they wrote together, they never got around to recording anything together. Meanwhile a fire burned in Gus for their music to be heard, and in the next few years he actively recorded new material that he had written solo, and began to put it up on the net. But Cooney was skeptical of putting stuff out there that was frankly unrefined and amateurish. Gus, not wanting to filter what he felt was good, raw, plaintive material, put up the music he had written and recorded across a range of sites almost as soon as they occured.

From 2003 to 2006 the two kept their dream that they would form a "proper" band and start delivering their songs to local audiences. They continued to jam and officialy recruited new members, but never fully coalesced into a cohesive entity. Members of the "band" at one point reached 5 members: Cooney (guitar, vocals), Gus (guitar, vocals), Erin (bass), Sarah (synth, piano) and Bourkey (drums), but as people do, they all led busy lives and slowly, they dispersed. Angus kept at it, though, as his dream of forming a band morphed into the pure pleasure of writing and recording music, and releasing it for free on the net.

Since its humble beginnings The Peach Tree's sound has improved drastically, as has the level of sound production in the recordings. And things are only gonna get even better.

I have always been surrounded by music from a huge range of different styles, and my influences over the years would be a list as long as Santa's.

To boil it down to three major influences though I would say Radiohead, Opeth, and Infected Mushroom. Three very different bands with very different sounds but that have touched me equally. Before I go further: if you saw "Radiohead" and cringed, get the hell off my page. I don't care how popular they've become, they are still absolute legends. I have never been a fan of people who pick and choose their music based on how popular they are (on either end of the spectrum).

I love Radiohead for the pure aesthetics of the music as well as their incredible musicality, it's been a long time since they settled for simple power chord riffs, and it seems every new album they put out is new, exciting, fresh and different.

As for Opeth, I absolutely love their dynamics, their ability to go from soft to hard in a heartbeat and totally throw your equilibrium around: it's a hell of a ride and I try to incorporate that sort of chopping and changing in my own music.

Infected Mushroom are just awesome, they were the first psy-trance artist I ever heard and I have since fallen in love with the genre. Some people think they are tacky but I just love them.

To boil the long list down to a few other majorly important influences: Pavement, Cradle of Filth, Talkshow Boy, Muse, Queens Of The Stone Age, System Of A Down, Nine Inch Nails, The Beatles, The Pixies, Blur, Oasis

Mont Martre in Paris, where I had the best steak of my life. Next to that, anywhere in my beautiful home city, Melbourne.

Propellerhead Reason
Cort Acoustic Guitar
Cakewalk Homestudio
Roland VA-5 Synth
Yamaha EG112 Electric Guitar
Roland Cube30 Amp
Yamaha MG12/4 Mixer
A rusty computer

Taoism forever.

The Peach Tree by
Angus Maiden is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.