Peaches is Merrill Nisker, the Toronto-born, Berlin-based electroclash provocateur — a former schoolteacher who became one of electronic music's most confrontational performers. The Teaches of Peaches (2000) is the foundational document; Rub (2015) proves the edge never dulled. Dig into Peaches vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Merrill Beth Nisker, performing as Peaches, was born in Toronto, Ontario on November 11, 1966. She was a former elementary school teacher before launching her musical career in the late 1990s. She relocated to Berlin in 2000, where she has been based since. Her 2000 debut The Teaches of Peaches - featuring the single Fuck the Pain Away - became a cult classic and is widely cited as one of the foundational electroclash documents alongside contemporaries like Fischerspooner, Miss Kittin & The Hacker, and Chicks on Speed. She has parallel work as a queer identity politics activist, performer, and theatrical artist. Her 2010 one-woman opera Peaches Christ Superstar reimagined Jesus Christ Superstar as a one-woman performance.
Peaches's sound combines electroclash, electronic, electropunk, dance-punk, electronic body music, and electropop with her distinctive vocal delivery (use of sexually-explicit and confrontational lyrical content), DIY production approaches, and arrangements drawing on classic 1980s electronic body music and electroclash alongside contemporary electronic music influences.
Kitty-Yo, XL Recordings, and self-released pressings of the Peaches catalog have been issued in color variant editions.
Listeners new to Peaches typically start with The Teaches of Peaches (2000) or Rub (2015).
