Toasted MIDI dreams: Plastic Hacks’ ‘Fabulously Melancholy’ debut

Plastic Hacks might just be the perfect soundtrack for your next daydream. Imagine twin brothers Brandon and Bryan Peach—separated by life’s twists for nearly twenty years—finally reuniting over a toasted MIDI cable. One of them dives into beat programming and synth wizardry, while the other weaves melodies and pens lyrics. The result? Something that feels both familiar and slightly askew: part bedroom pop, part post-punk residue, all shimmering with warm pads, glitchy textures, and harmonies that nudge you out of sync just enough to keep things interesting. Picture New Order running through sidechain compression into a fuzzy bassline, or LCD Soundsystem after a steady diet of AOL chats and youth-group confessions. It’s pop music that remembers what it’s like to be human.

Their debut LP, ‘Fabulously Melancholy,’ arrived via Friend Club Records, and it drifts in like a half-forgotten memory you can’t stop replaying. Across ten tracks, Plastic Hacks layer glitchy rhythms and harmonized vocals warped by circuitry over melodies that twist and turn without ever quite resolving. There’s warmth here, but it’s the kind you feel standing in front of an old CRT TV—dark room, low hum, all your attention locked onto that glowing screen. Songs like Medicine Cabinet offer a pill-counting self-interrogation, while Get It Together! feels like a pep talk trapped in an infinite loop, and Meet You in Chelsea reads like a postcard from someone too heartbreakingly lovely to ever reply.

Nothing on ‘Fabulously Melancholy’ bows to neat conclusions. These tracks flicker, repeat, and occasionally fray at the edges—just like when you find yourself staring at that “seen” receipt a little too long and calling it introspection.

If you’re curious, catch the premiere of Eight Straight Days of Fresh Hell over at New Noise Magazine—trust me, you’ll want to hear that bass groove first thing in the morning.

Bryan Peach takes us behind the scenes of that song: “My process usually starts with synthesis and programming, but one morning I woke up with this exact bouncing, round bass line in my head—Roland Juno-6 and all—so I ran with it. We layered cello and violin strings that sound almost too joyful at first, then let them turn a bit dishonest as the story unfolds. The glass-like sequence in the first half takes a darker turn into the relative minor, pulling the listener from a sunny beach day into something a little more uncertain. That lingering fade-out? It doesn’t answer anything—it just asks everything.”

Ready to get fabulously, gloriously melancholy? Let Plastic Hacks guide you through the glow and the grit of their debut.