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Just in time for the grand re-opening of Australia’s dance floors and festival stages, Peking Duk, the dance music duo made up of Canberra natives Adam Hyde and Reuben Styles, are back with brand new music that builds on their back catalogue of absolute bangers. 

With a discography that features platinum single after platinum single – from the ARIA Award-winning, four-times platinum single ‘High’ (2014), which was the #1 most played track on triple j that year while coming in at #2 in the Hottest 100, to the triple-platinum witching hour anthem ‘Stranger’ ft. Swedish artist Elliphant (2016), which won them another ARIA and has since racked up over 50 million Spotify streams, and ‘Fake Magic’ (2017), featuring vocals by Aussie songstress AlunaGeorge to ‘Fire’ (2018), the four-time platinum track that is, quite literally, pure fire – the Peking Duk boys have unabashedly earned themselves a reputation as Australia’s most beloved, most bonkers electronic music act. 

The bootleg remixes they cut their teeth producing as teens (they burst onto the scene with an American indietronica band Passion Pit’s hit single ‘Take A Walk’) have led the best mates to playing some of the biggest festival stages in Australia and around the world. But the best is yet to come: Their new music slaps just as hard as the hasty singles that caused us to fall in love with the Duks in the first place.  

This June will see Hyde and Styles drop ‘Chemicals’, a big, bold, atmospheric hit that combines all the signatures of a classic Duk hit: “It’s got the emotion, the euphoria and the party,” says Styles. “It’s really a quintessential Duk song and we’re excited to bring people some of that.” 

‘Chemicals’ is a tune about being in an abusive relationship. As the Duks explain,  the object of that relationship could be anything: A person, a substance, maybe even an unhealthy snack. But the track’s energy and electricity, which makes you want to listen to it again and again, belies its more sincere subject matter. 

Because the Duks like to work when inspiration strikes, rather than forcing it, the first draft of ‘Chemicals’ was written on a rainy day in Melbourne in under eight hours. Like most Duk tracks, it started out as one thing – a melancholic ballad – and ended up shape-shifting into this big, hard-hitting dance hall tune. 

‘Chemicals’ is an anthem Australia’s post-Covid festivals should be warned about, because, to use the preferred terminology of Reuben Styles himself, ‘hooley dooley’ it’s going to go off. And after a year of no dancing, we can’t imagine those crazy Peking Duk fans leaving anything on the floor. 

And that’s not even the end of it. The back end of 2021 is shaping up to be a large year for Peking Duk, with more tracks to follow and a live show that promises to be at least 20 percent better than their last (the mind boggles). And just like their fans, after being deprived of a sweaty band room for quite some time, the Duks are locked, loaded and ready to remind us what immersing ourselves in a true party anthem feels like. Buckle up.