MEDIA PUZZLE
- ballpointpressbne
- May 15
- 7 min read
Words/Interview: Aysha Swanson
Images: Alako Myles, @lost.perspective and Nic Munnelly
The Bundjalung country (Lismore) has a way of shaping its bands—rough around the edges, full of heart, and endlessly resourceful. media puzzle fits right in. The kind of place where a song might start because there’s nothing else to do and end before you’ve even bothered to check if the mics were on. Fronted by Tom Peter (lead vox/guitar), the band features Kellie Eden on synth and trumpet, Eden Yeigh on guitar, Oliver Clarke on drums, and Solomon Jones on bass. Together, they wrangle chaos into two-minute anthems that feel like shouting your feelings into a tin can just to hear them echo back.
Born in a dorm room and named after a Melbourne Cup winner, media puzzle is Tom’s sonic speedrun through egg punk, synth slap, and post-ironic sincerity. The songs are short, silly, and deceptively sharp—like kids’ music if the kids were chain-smoking and reading about climate collapse. There’s something scrappy and special in it all: a songwriting process that’s more about impulse than polish, a demo-is-the-final-mix philosophy. Influenced by Devo, Tee Vee Repairmann, and the weird brilliance of Lismore locals, the band builds songs the way you build a cubby house with whatever’s lying around. And somehow it holds.
AYSHA: Thanks so much for talking with me today Tom, I wanted to start off with how your project media puzzle came about. Tell me about this racehorse it’s named after?
TOM: So the project started out when I had a weekend free in my dorm bedroom at uni and I just decided to try and make an EP's worth of music in a day. I was listening to Itchy and the Nits a lot, they were a band from Sydney who were really cool. I just wanted to kind of do something like they were making, I didn't really know what the genre or anything was called, but I decided to use a drum machine and horrible sounding guitars and put it all together. That became the first EP for media puzzle. I didn't have a name, I didn't know if I was going to put it out or anything, but I just decided to.
AYSHA: Did you just set out like was just like a fun little writing exercise that you just wanted to do?
TOM: Yeah, yeah, I had nothing to do all day. So I just tried to write five songs that and they're all like 30 seconds long and that's the first EP which is called '14'. I wrote that in in in the span of a day, which is evident, its got about a 5 minute play time.
I think maybe the day after or the same day, I was looking at band name ideas. I really loved Vintage Crop, which is a band from Melbourne and their band name is also based off a racehorse. So I searched up trying to work out how they got that name. I ended up eventually just looking through the names of the horses that had won the Melbourne Cup over the years and Media Puzzle was there. I think it won in 2001 or something. Yeah, that's how I got the name.
AYSHA: So, you’ve already released three albums within the space of a year! How would you describe your writing process?
TOM: Yeah well it's a breath of fresh air for me - the writing process for media puzzle - because in other projects you can spend weeks and months, maybe even a year or two, trying to finish a song, just going at it to make it perfect in every single way. Pretty much every single media puzzle song is a demo. And that's it.
I'll put down a verse and a chorus and then just loop that and that's the song, which is really, really easy to get self done really quickly. Because it's not like, 'oh, how do I make this better?' I'm like, 'no, I just put the first couple ideas out', and that's what it is. The song is just that. So I'll start with the drums, and then the guitars and then bass and then think of something funny to just shout about, and yeah, easy.
AYSHA: Where do you get your inspiration from? Any bands or artists in particular?
TOM: I think in the whole egg punk/synth punk genre there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek. It feels like it's supposed to be silly and it's really fun and easy to write tongue-in-cheek stuff, whether that's political or just about people you know, or things that have happened. It's all just life experiences, but you know, sometimes squashed down into a really simple form that isn't taken straight up at face value, if that makes sense.
I think some inspirations would be a lot of Sydney bands, there's Gee Tee, 1-800 Mikey, Tee Vee Repairmann, and then you've got obviously Devo and stuff, and even as early back as Ramones and stuff is all obviously an influence to everyone that tries to make punk or rock and stuff like that.
AYSHA: You are in a couple other bands, Liminal and PUFF, each with very different genres. Do you have a favourite genre of music to play/write?
TOM: I don't think I have a favourite genre to play necessarily. They're all kind of, to me, incomparable. It's really easy to play media puzzle stuff. It's all major chords and they're all really short and fast.
And same with Puff, it's really fun to just let loose and play the songs and have them be what they are, and it's loud and fun. You're playing with your friends. Then the same with Liminal. It's loud and fun. You're playing with your friends, but it's definitely a lot harder, I really enjoy the challenge.
So I think definitely my favourite genre to write in would be media puzzle. It's almost like children's music, really. I don't know if I like one more than the other. It's like parents trying to talk about their kids.
AYSHA: Where did your relationship with music begin?
TOM: Music's been around me my whole life, but I never really got into it until year 10 when my friends in high school wanted a bass player for their band and I never played bass. So I just gave it a go and I was horrible, but that was where it started and I was playing Queens of the Stone Age and stuff. But going back to saying media puzzle's kind of children's music, it almost feels ingrained because my dad is a children's music composer.
Yeah, so it's always been around, dad's always playing music. I actually funnily enough grew up on a lot of musical theatre and a bit of a bit of rock. So you combine the two and I guess that's kind of close to me.
AYSHA: The scenes of Lismore really come through in your songs, ‘Keen Street’ for instance, what influence would you say Lismore has on your music?
TOM: It's definitely such a vibrant town that it's hard to not write about. I feel like it's definitely a very different town than what it used to be - having only moved up here like four years ago. I've heard many stories about how crazy it used to be because it's kind of dead now after the floods - parts of it at least. There's multiple songs in the media puzzle discography that are about Lismore people and Lismore things that have happened while I've lived here. I think it's also when I have nothing else to write about, I just think of something or someone who lives in Lismore, that's my subject. Give it a go. I think coming from Sydney, it's very foreign, a lot of the things up here, so it's all really interesting to me.
AYSHA: What is the Lismore/Northern Rivers music scene like?
TOM: It's a really amazing scene full of beautiful, talented, and amazing people. I think it's definitely struggling at the moment with the lack of a proper music venue, other than The Northern in Byron Bay. There's people around, amazing bookers, Soph from Flaming Hearts and Ally from The Messy Fuzz that are booking shows and really, really trying to keep the scene going.
There are so many cool bands. Everyone kind of plays in the same bands too, but it's really hard to keep it going around here. I think like it's not it's not definitely not going anywhere. People aren't gonna not play music. Yeah, I think there's definitely less gigs happening in Lismore as, you know, compared to last year and the year before that and the year before that.
AYSHA: You have an awesome music video for your cover of ‘Sports’ by Viagra Boys up on YouTube, tell me about it!
TOM: Yeah, we filmed that at the old Italo, like I-T-A-L-O sports club in North Lismore. They used to do gigs there, but now it is very much abandoned.
We didn't have any plan. We just thought we'd play around on a field for a couple of hours. So Alako came down, for those who don't know, he's in Liminal. So we filmed that just in the span of an afternoon with a few friends. Yeah, Alako just went home and edited it that night. And we had the video done in a day, which was awesome.
Yeah, it was so much fun. We were just messing around on a field for a couple of hours.
AYSHA: Are you currently working on any new music? Anything you would like our readers to know about?
TOM: Yes, so we've got an EP finished and it's coming out in about six weeks as of today. Just finalising stuff. We've done a music video for one of the songs and then we'll be touring at late June which will be fun. Very exciting. Coming out all the major cities...except most of them. Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne should be fun!
AYSHA: Sick. Big things coming.
TOM: Big things coming, that's it, can't say it enough.
[Both Laugh]
MEDIA PUZZLE
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