In the space of four or five years, Sydney's PVT (ex-Pivot) have essentially gone from lugging a five-piece post-rock-prog ensemble around Australia, to touring the world as a lean, electronically tinged three-piece signed to the influential Warp Records.

Consisting of brothers Richard and Laurence Pike (though every member of the band is essentially a multi-instrumentalist, guitars/synth/vox and drums respectively) and Dave Miller (laptops/samples/keys/bleeps), the trio have recently released their newly sculpted LP Church With No Magic. It's the third album for the band, the second since their physical and aural reinvention (debut album Make Me Love You was released in 2005) for subsequent Warp Records release O Soundtrack My Heart (2008) and the first to feature Richard Pike's singing on nearly every track. It's also their first LP under a different name - just months before Church With No Magic was due on shelves, an (absolutely awful) American band also named Pivot demanded our heroes change it.

This they did, though as Laurence mentions when we spoke to him at length about the new album, it's not a favoured topic of discussion

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The first thing I should ask you is about the name change. Was that a bummer?

Yeah it's frustrating but I don't think it was really a bummer. I felt like we never had a huge attachment necessarily to the name. You know it was one of those things that just sort of stuck. And I think for us, emotionally, this album is taking a big step towards new things and new ground. And it felt - situation wise - that it was no big deal in some ways. It was just something that we needed to do to get on with it. It's not ideal though, it is stressful. Literally when you're on the eve of releasing a record and someone drops that stuff on you.

We were actually on tour in the States. We got a phone call from the label saying they'd received this cease and desist letter. And you know, we're in Texas having driven for ten hours (laughs). Having time to digest that. But I think we tried to be positive about it by just saying 'ok this has happened, let's not let it affect our momentum. We feel really good about the record and let's not get bogged down in this'.

It surprised me because I had a look at this other Pivot's MySpace page and they just seem like newish amateurs. Up against the Warp touring juggernaut. I would've thought there'd be a case to not acquiesce to that.

Yeah well, you know common sense isn't all that common I guess. But fuck it, I don't want to spend time - obviously it's a question everyone has to ask, it's a quite a notable thing - but I feel like I don't want to waste time talking about those guys. I feel like there's better things we could be talking about.

You must've wondered before O Soundtrack My Heart came out about detaching from your past then. That band is a far cry from when you started.

Yeah of course. In some ways there's probably a little bit of regret in that we did consider changing the name [then]. And we should've to be honest. But hey, what are you gonna do?

Rich is singing so much more on this new record. Is there a reason he didn't do that previously? He's a good singer.

I don't know. He's always done it. He's had training and he's [sung] since he was in high school. [But] just the way the band developed, he never really presented it. And it was something that we never wanted to force. That for us would've been a fairly bad mistake, to be the instrumental rock band and then suddenly have, 'featuring so and so on vocals'. I think that's really crass. We were always aware that it was an option and we were prepared to use it. But I think we wanted for it to present itself in a very organic way. And that's certainly what happened with this record.

He was singing a lot when we were jamming and a lot of the melodic ideas he was capturing using his voice in the studio. Improvising in the studio and stuff. And then we had hours of these jams and the best ones, and the most focused points, seemed to center around the vocals. We thought 'oh here's a new sound', like this was something that was happening [for us]. We didn't want really discuss anything beforehand, we didn't want to fight it or force it or anything. We thought 'well that's cool, let's roll with it, there's no reason why we should resist it'.

It is still very instrumental. I didn't come away from the album going 'oh that's the song where he sings about his girlfriend', or whatever. It's more textural.

We did want to feel like we were letting go a lot more on this record. We were aware of how much and how we used the vocals. In the same way we would be aware of how much we used a synthesiser. We were discerning about it. And I think Richard's approach vocally - and we all agreed upon - was to make things lyrically about imagery and colours rather than direct narratives. Make it more abstract. Because we thought that suited the sound of the music, the palette of the music a lot more.

I think we've done a good job in that regard and I think it really works. And it's not much of a leap for us because we've been working on it for two years. I think that if someone had only just heard ...Soundtrack and then put [Church With No Magic] on they'd be like 'fuck'. But there's a lot of similarities as well. For me it's a really good development from the last record. You cans still hear things from the last record.


PVT - 'Window' from Church With No Magic

It sounds to me like the songs are much clearer. Less dense than ...Soundtrack. And I don't know whether that's because Rich is singing and it gives it more of a "song' vibe or...

That was something that was important to us and really the only thing we discussed. I remember the first session just before we went to the UK. Two years ago. The only thing we really wanted to achieve was for things to be more propulsive and consistent. It felt like ...Soundtrack was a bit too stop start in some ways. So maybe that idea has carried through into the songs. We wanted the songs to be quite clear and centred as opposed to jumping around so much.

The arrangements seem more melodically bold.

I think it's a bold record. I don't want to blow our own trumpet or anything but I think it takes guts to make a record like this. I wish more people would put themselves out there, that's the music that excites me. People who are really willing to put themselves on the line, and I think that's the kind've music that we're trying to create. Hopefully this record has been successful in that record, that was our ambition.

Did the insane amount of touring and the amount of shows that you did influence the kind of record that you wanted to make?

Yeah definitely. We felt like we became a much better band in a lot of ways. And I think also playing together a lot more has changed the sound of the band and [so] the record sounds a lot more live. We wanted it to capture more of the energy of the live shows. Be more about us playing in a room. But also be less controlling, being more accepting of a warts and all [approach] - having mistakes and having chance things happen. But I think also when you do a lot of touring and you spend a lot of time away from home, you become a lot more focussed on what actually matters to you. It sounds kind of corny but - musically - you start to assess the reasons why you do things. And what you actually want to achieve. 'Cause it's like 'fuck if we're actually going to spend the next year playing this, we want it to mean something'. We want to enjoy it and we want it to be for the right reasons.

Can you verbalise what some of those reasons are?

(Long pause) ...mmm tough. I hadn't really thought about that, or in such a different way. (Pause). Sorry I've just kind've gone blank and lost my train of thought entirely.

Maybe those pointers are fairly subconscious by the time you get to recording?

Yeah. (Pause). I think we're just happy with how the record's turned out. Like at times it's hard to tell where it's going and that's when it's really easy to start to second guess yourself. And I think that largely we're really happy with being able to resist that temptation to second guess ourselves.

After such a long period of touring perhaps you lean towards your strengths subconsciously.

I think uh...there's a thought here that I'm trying to put into words but I can't seem to fashion it together in my head. It's really frustrating me because it's kind of the core of what I feel about the record and I just can't seem to put it into words. It's tricky.

With the kind've music that you play and with Dave's electronic involvement, there must be a temptation to lock it to the grid and really process it and make your music in the box. I'm curious about the reality of recording the record, was it three guys in a room or is it sitting on the computer chopping up bits?

A lot of it was [live]. Our process is a bit weird, we have various stages. Like we did some recording and it was just jamming and Dave had lines into everything and was doing live sampling. So we kind of went into the studio with a dozen ideas, which could be anything from a five minute sequence to just a loop. We'd basically jam and some of them would be twenty-five minutes long and within there would be four or five songs. It was quite unique in some ways the process I think. Because we would be playing and suddenly you would start hearing fucked up samples of something that you played five minutes ago. Or Dave would re-inject it immediately, you'd play something and Dave would throw it back at you. So it was quite interactive and weird. I hope we have the audio from all the sessions because there would be some really weird shit in there that might be worth assessing in a couple of years (laughs). Maybe releasing it in another form because some of it is quite bizarre music. Some of it's really weird.

So there was that and then basically we started touring [...Soundtrack] and whenever we had time - I remember we had a couple of weeks off when we went to my Uncle's place which is a cool old place in Paris . It was great. We basically set up a recording suite in his old music room which has my Grandmother's old piano in it - set up synthesisers on this 100 year old piano (laughs). And we trawled through all this stuff and started chopping them down to more concise ideas. We ended up recording about twenty tracks, or mixing twenty tracks I think.

The album only goes for 37 minutes.

Is that all?!

37.9 minutes according to the wonders of iTunes.

Fuck (laughs). I didn't realise that. For us that's pretty express.

You were saying you feel comfortable doing some weird stuff, is being under the Warp banner an encouraging factor?

Well I think we'd be doing it anyway. I think it's nice to know that creatively we're in a position where the label's not going to shut anyone down. Generally the people they sign, they encourage them to push themselves. I remember during the sessions at one stage in London, I was having a beer with some of the guys from the label and one of them asked how the record was going. And I said 'yeah it's really interesting'. And I made a comment about how I think the record's going to have a bit of a different feel about it, which may appeal to a different audience, something like that. That it was taking on a different character that might have some different consequences for our audience. And he basically said to me - which is great coming from someone from a label - 'that's not your concern' (laughs). 'I just want you to make a good record, I don't want you to be thinking about what people are going to be thinking about it'. And I was like, 'no no no that's not what I was saying' (laughs).

And at the same time, we finished what we thought was the record and took it to the label, and Steve the boss was like 'I think these tracks are the direction that we should be heading in', and that we should do some more work. At the time we were like 'really?'. 'Cause we thought we were getting towards something we were really happy with. So we went back and did another four or five tracks and it hugely benefitted from that.

That's a weird thing for them to do because it gives you an idea of the consequences that they're thinking about. Or do you think he was coming at it from the perspective of just a fan of the band?

It wasn't a commercial consideration. The thing about Steve is that when we deal with him we only talk about creative things. That's what he really cares about, that's really his gig. And what he wanted to hear was a record that sounded like ours. That had our sound. He felt like we were going for this new thing and he was really into it and encouraged that. He felt like we were really hitting it on a number of tracks and some of the others were obviously more processed - or us heading towards that. And I think he was bang on in the end. I listened to the leftovers and I think 'yeah I definitely hear that now'.


PVT - 'O Soundtrack My Heart' from O Soundtrack My Heart

One of the things I was really excited by when I first saw you playing the ...Soundtrack stuff - and I don't know if this necessarily ties into what he was saying - is, how I mentioned before, a tendency for this kind of music to be quite processed, dudes on laptops or whatever. It was exciting seeing it being  performed so physically and with such force. That is a strength of your band I think, that you can play the music you do but pull it off in an almost 'rock' setting.

Yeah. I don't think we consider ourselves an electronic group or anything. We're just a band that uses some technology, to achieve our goals. I know what you mean, like it can be a real drag watching some bands [do that]. Bands can get it really wrong in terms of technology making what they do really sterile. Or lacking any humanity about it. I think being fans of electronic music and having grown up making it and seeing it, that it's something that we dislike about it. And always wanted to avoid.

Marcus

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PVT's new album Church With No Magic is out July 17th.

myspace.com/pvt