There’s a particular kind of electricity that happens when a band reunites after years apart. Sometimes it’s cautious, sometimes nostalgic, but sometimes, like tonight at Muthers Studios in Digbeth, it hits like a jolt of familiar voltage: instant, loud, chaotic, and unmistakably them.
It has been eight years, ten by &U&I’s own cheerful approximation, since the Birmingham math-rock trio last shared a stage. Yet here they are again in a packed, sweaty rehearsal space in the heart of Digbeth, their trademark intensity intact. After their blistering return show, I sat down with Tom Peckett (vocals/guitar), Wiz (drums), and Rich (bass) to talk about how this comeback came together, how it feels to be back in the room, and what might be next for the band who never fully closed the door.
&U&I @ Muthers Studio
“Why now?” Reunions rarely happen without a catalyst. For &U&I, that spark came courtesy of long-time friends and tourmates Maybe She Will.”
– Tom: “Some friends of ours who we used to tour with a long time ago called Maybe She Will are doing like a 20th anniversary celebration gig in Hackney. Me and Wiz went to London to watch a band called Bear vs Shark, and we met John from Maybe She Will there. He said, ‘Oh, would you do this London gig with us?’ because we used to do some shows with them a long time ago. And we were like, ‘Yeah, definitely. When is it? Book us in for it.’”
A beat passes before the band collectively cracks a grin.
– Tom: “We forgot about it.”
– Wiz: “Rich went back to Laos, and then we got a message from John going, ‘You still good for that gig?’ So we had to message Rich and go, ‘Can you get back to England for the 29th?’”
– Rich: “And I very kindly managed to get myself sorted and come back over.”
So tonight, the band took the opportunity to shake off any rust in front of a live audience, though from the outside, there was barely a flicker of hesitation.
– Tom: “We thought tonight would be a good chance to kind of practice before that gig.”
Old Shoes, Same Fit
Playing together for the first time in years, that should come with nerves. But if the three musicians felt any, that tension dissolved almost instantly.
– Rich: “I was pretty nervous, if I’m honest. Not actually before tonight, it was just coming back.”
– Wiz (laughing): “I was nervous about the amount of beers you’ve had.”
– Rich: “Come on, I kept it… I didn’t want to ruin it.”
But the transition back felt almost alarmingly natural.
– Tom: “When Rich came back, that’s when it really started to click. Me and Peckett were practicing by ourselves, and it was good, but it just wasn’t completely right. It didn’t feel like we were ready.”
– Wiz: “It was the first practice last Wednesday when you came back. We played the set twice, on the second time it was like, ‘I wonder if we could get away with it.’ It’s amazing how much it comes back. Muscle memory did a lot of lifting.”
The moment they reunited in the room, everything snapped into place.
– Tom: “We just went straight into one of the songs and it just went great, like to the point where we were like, we could have done that on stage straight off. Like you said, old shoes. It very much felt like, no, this was… it’s like we haven’t left.”
“We thought people didn’t really care anymore.”
There’s humility in every answer the band gives about tonight’s packed room.
– Tom: “I mentioned on stage that we didn’t expect that, not to insult anybody who turned up, like, ‘Oh, what are you doing here?’ It was like… we thought people didn’t really care anymore. So it was really nice that there was a lot when we were posting about the gigs, and lots of people actually turned up.”
It wasn’t just nostalgia. The room felt charged, renewed, not remembered. And that energy didn’t go unnoticed.
– Tom: “I think it’s reignited our kind of love for playing &U&I.”
– Rich: “If we make enough money to pay for my airfares, then I’ll come back.”
He laughs, but there’s heart behind it.
Balancing Projects, Geography, and Life
All three members now juggle full-time jobs, other musical projects, and in Rich’s case, life in Southeast Asia. But none of that rules out continuing &U&I.
– Wiz: “We’re not inundated with gigs with the other projects. Me and Tom are in a band called To The Wall and we’re about to release an EP. But it’s not like we’re going to be on tour forever with another band that we can’t commit to this.”
– Tom: “We’re in a good situation, if Rich is back in Laos, we can do the other things we’re working on. And as soon as Rich comes back, we can find time. We don’t have to say, ‘We can’t do that because we’re on a six-week tour of Europe,’ because that’s logistically impossible.”
They grin at the idea. They’ve been there before.
Festivals? 2000Trees? ArcTanGent? When I ask if they could see themselves playing festivals again, 2000 Trees, ArcTanGent, or anything similar, the reaction is instant and mischievous.
– Rich: “James Scarlett. We’re doing 2000 Trees next year. You heard it here first.”
– Tom: “Or ACG. Or both.”
As the laughter dies down, they add:
– Tom: “It’s on the horizon. As good as booked.”
&U&I @ Muthers Studio
Math Rock, Not Math Rock, and Everything In Between.
Online, &U&I are often labelled as a “complex math-rock band” something they only partly relate to.
– Tom: “My bass player from my function band came tonight and he messaged me saying, ‘Really enjoyed tonight, great to see you rocking out. Very complicated songs.’”
– Tom: “There’s definitely an appeal to a certain group of people. We tend to get that math-rock badge very often. But some of the later stuff we wrote, on Mercy especially, was a bit more straightforward.”
– Wiz: “We’ve never written music to fit into anything. Not in a pretentious way, just we never thought about it that much.”
– Tom: “We used to spend ages making things really complicated. Then sometimes a song would just fall out of us in twenty minutes.”
That mixture, meticulous intricacy meets spontaneous catharsis, is precisely what gives their music its distinctive texture.
Writing Again? Don’t Rule It Out When the idea of new material comes up, there’s no hesitation.
– Rich: “I write all the songs anyway, so I guess I could just do them from Southeast Asia.”
– Wiz: “He’d send over instructions like: ‘Hit this drum, this drum, how hard to hit that drum.’”
– Tom: “I don’t think we could write it off.”
– Wiz: “If we did get booked for some festivals… we could tee up maybe some new music.”
– Rich: “Yeah. We can’t just be doing the same old, same old. So we’ll do a festival and knock out a couple of tracks for it.”
He looks at me and grins.
– Tom: “You happy now?”
So… what is next? The final question hangs in the air: is this a one-off? A spark? Or a full return?
– Tom: “I don’t think we could ever go, ‘Well, that’s the end of this band.’”
– Wiz: “Whenever anyone’s back, if anything crops up, festivals, one-off shows, we’re always going to do it because it’s just good fun.”
– Rich: “Any gigs in Laos? You guys going over there? Math rock is absolutely massive in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos.”
The room breaks into laughter, but the sentiment underneath is sincere: this reunion has reminded them of something they didn’t realise they’d missed.
– Tom: “We’ve all been best mates since school and we’ve been doing this since we were like 12 years old. It’s just a laugh, really, isn’t it?”
Walking Away, For Now
As the interview winds down, the band are buzzing, tired, loud, and loose in the way only musicians riding the high of a triumphant return can be. Tonight wasn’t a victory lap. It wasn’t nostalgia. It wasn’t “one for the old days.” It was three musicians rediscovering a shared identity they’d put down but never abandoned. And if this show is anything to go by, &U&I aren’t done. Not even close. Rockshot Magazine will be there when the next chapter lands, whether it’s in Digbeth, Hackney, or, impossibly, Laos.
&U&I @ Muthers Studio
Interview with &U&I @ Muthers Studios, Birmingham, by Henry Finnegan on 15th November 2025. Instagram: @finneganfoto | Facebook: @finneganfoto
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