This Irish duo that pack a big punch with a heavy and sparse minimalistic sound.
You might see Thread Pulls – the Irish partnership of Gavin Duffy and Peter Maybury – in the present day as a tight and precise two-piece outfit. But it hasn’t always been this way and drums and bass were not the duo’s first instruments.
“It started off as a pretty regular three-piece,” explains drummer Peter. “Gavin was playing guitar and singing and I was playing bass and Ed [original drummer] was playing drums. We put out four EPs before Ed left and I just said, ‘Well okay, I’ll take drums’.”
Thread Pulls V2.0 is definitely a band that offers something different. Their debut album, ‘New Thoughts’, is full of sparse dynamics – near cymbal-less drums that are strong and intense and full of hypnotic and tribal tendencies mixed with a striking and prominent bass dominating throughout. It is also hundreds of miles away from their original incarnation.
“As the sound developed I started introducing electronic sounds and synthesizers,” Peter describes, “and then towards the end I was adding extra drum parts and Gavin was playing percussion and the sound gradually drifted away from normal three-piece into more abstract territory. It was practical because there were just the two of us and we thought ‘we’ll see how this goes’, because there’s a really good bit of energy between the two of us musically.”
It’s taken a few years of starting again from scratch but Gavin and Peter have created something far more interesting than your average rock three-piece.
Words by Max Raymond
Where: Dublin, Ireland
What: A hypnotic combination of drums and bass.
Get 3 songs: ‘Weight’, ‘How To Talk’, ‘These New Thoughts’
Unique fact: They are the only band from Ireland to have played ATP to date.
