What are the origins of Human Intrusion? Where did it start?
Lockdown 2020! Lewis had been playing bass in shoegaze band Kodiak Galaxy and was coming up with new music ideas and considering putting a new music project together. I (Penny) offered to help facilitate it any way I could, and he called my bluff and asked me to just write all the words if I could please. When we started making songs together, it was really clunky and awkward, we were shy about showing each other our ideas, but over time we’ve honed our craft and now have a really good flow and understanding.
In our early live band days, we were a three piece on stage. We had Jess Maio drumming for us until she ran off to play with Hot Machine and be a rock star (we don’t blame her!)
So we got an old Yamaha RX5 drum machine that we nickname Jeff. We leaned into industrial drum machine sounds that became the scaffold for us to build songs upon.

Tell us a bit about the new single ‘Ultraviolet’. What does it mean to you?
The initial music idea for UV felt warm and sunny. It reminded me of our trip to Stonehenge in the English summer, golden and a bit magical. I knew it had to become something special. I took my song writing book out onto our balcony and sat in the sun among my plants, I thought about the warmth of the song.
This song took shape around words about the sun – the chorus is about accidentally staring at the sun, and you get that weird light retention on your retinas. It came together with phrases that borrow from physics, like the ionising nature of ultraviolet radiation, and a smidge of rainbow-flecked psychedelia. The sun’s UV radiation, it is thought among biologists and physicists, is the source of genetic mutation that gave rise to all the different species on Earth. The sun gives life as well as damages it.

Are there any inspirations you look to beyond music when writing or performing?
I’m (Penny) often inspired by scenes from movies and retro nostalgia. We’re both also really interested in science; at bed time, we often read a pop science book about quantum physics or such. We got our band name from a documentary about long term nuclear waste storage.
I’m also a visual artist and I really enjoy working rich imagery into our lyrics.
For our recent batch of new songs, we made a visual mood board full of images of crystals, atoms, particles, wavefunctions, modernist paintings, and images borrowed from physics labs. I let these images wash over my brain to inspire songs. I’m also interested in concepts of embodiment – imagine your body being something else; crystal, fire, an electron, a spectre from another dimension, whatever.

Name the five songs that have informed your song writing more than any others.

Enjoy the Silence – Depeche Mode
Already Yours – Curve
Teardrop – Massive Attack
Ava Adore – Smashing Pumpkins
Watching You Without Me – Kate Bush

What Australian artists are you listening to at the moment?
We really love anything Simona Castricum does. We’ve been listening to Blanco Tranco’s new tracks, they’re also the nicest people. I’m really inspired by the vocalist from Bitumen and I think about what she would do vocally when I’m in the studio. And Julia Jacklin is always on high rotation on various playlists.

How do you hope your music might impact listeners?
When I’m playing on stage, I want to take the audience somewhere else. (Lewis jokes that the somewhere else is another pub down the road).
Lewis once took me to an ancient stone circle in the Lake District, in Northern England, with the most incredible views and the feeling was just breathtaking and on the cusp of something magical.
I want to make people feel something a bit like that; I want to take them out of their everyday to feel transported somewhere, to feel something a bit mysterious, to be moved just a little bit.
I want our listeners to dance and head bang to our industrial-flecked drums and heavy guitars, and to also feel something tender and perhaps even ethereal.

A Quick Chat with Human Intrusion