Galápagos Vol. I (2019) is a concept album by the nine‑member collective The PepTides, blending pop, funk, soul, gospel, and new wave into a bold, theatrical musical journey. Built on multi‑layered vocals, eclectic instrumentation, and playful yet pointed lyricism, the album explores narrative themes loosely inspired by Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut — including survival, evolution, humour, and human absurdity.

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​MarQuis recommended the novel to the band when they asked what to record next. It was a natural fit. Vonnegut's central obsession — that the human brain is too big, too dangerous, and ultimately the cause of our own undoing — was territory MarQuis had been mapping in his lyrics for years before he ever read the book. The album is not an adaptation so much as a recognition: two artists, decades apart, arriving at the same dark joke about the same species.

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"Invaders" — winner of Video of the Year at the 2021 Capital Music Awards — opens the album's argument without flinching. The human man is a weapon, a sentient assailant, a phallic metallic barbarian. Two

hundred thousand earth revolutions and we are no nearer to knowing why we are. It carries the same cosmic congregation energy as Aquarius from Hair — except this time the age of enlightenment never arrived.

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"Money Is Paper" transformed in the recording process as a rocker — raw, propulsive, and laced with MarQuis's signature layered wordplay. Money is a sleaze. A 1980s STD. A Catholic priest. An airborne disease. The song's central image — big brains burning with memories, regrets, at the El Dorado Hotel — draws directly from Vonnegut's novel, where the hotel serves as a last outpost of human luxury as the world ends around it. The connection is deliberate: same hotel, same species, same spectacular failure of intelligence.

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"Sooner or Later" is the album's great deception — a funky, irresistible pop song about romantic pursuit that reveals itself, on closer listen, to be narrated by the Grim Reaper. When the world around gets too much / I'm the man to ease your pain. The seduction is real. So is the destination.

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The album closes with "Fisherfolk"— and it closes on Vonnegut's own terms. In the novel, the fisherfolk are what humanity eventually becomes after evolution strips away the oversized brain: seal-like creatures with flippers and small skulls, living simply in the Galápagos, content. MarQuis's lyric honours that vision without sentimentality. Fisherfolk lie in the sun. Fisherfolk glide in the ocean. No nine to five grind. God is inconsequential. 

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The album also marks a major turning point in the band's history. Every previous PepTides release began as a solo home recording by Claude MarQuis — written, produced, and completed alone before the band ever heard a note. The 2016 EP was the first time the group recorded together in a studio. Galápagos Vol. I became the first full album created collectively, recorded at Metropolitan Studios in Ottawa with producer and engineer Jason Jaknunas. Nine musicians in one room, making a record together — and the difference is audible.

Notably, The PepTides are mentioned by name in the Wikipedia entry for Vonnegut's novel — a rare honour that speaks to the album's fidelity to its source.