Headphone Highlights

Pivot

Warp Records, Sydney, Perth, London

Before word of this young antipodean trio with something to say reached the office and ears of Warp Records, which upon hearing their demonstration cassette, and being gifted an ornamental hotdog, immediately signed them up for a 16 album deal, Pivot have remained hidden from the international radar. With their first album released in 2005 (the locally acclaimed 'Make Me Love You') multi-instrumentalist brothers Laurence and Richard Pike sensed it was time for new things. The addition of Perth born/London-based Dave Miller in 2006, and the subsequent departure of the original line up, sparked a period of intense creative activity, resulting in a new band, a new album and dreams of the beyond. With an average age of 28, Pivot are still young, but no strangers to musical endeavour, its members having recorded and performed in collaboration with the likes of Prefuse73, Flanger, Savath & Savalas, Qua, Jan Jelinek, Burnt Friedman and Damo Suzuki, along with several international releases of their own side projects, past and present (Roam the Hello Clouds, Triosk, Dave Miller's Minimal Techno for Background Records and Laurenz Pike's solo drum explorations). They are a rare combination of the emotive and cerebral, harnessing the raw garage energy of three explosive musicians along side intensive studio production. Part prog-warrior, part slacker-geek, their music and approach provide something much needed in a world of nowhere music (being listened to in nowhere bars), Equally influenced by synthesizer luminaries Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, Warp label mates Autechre and the Post-Punk New Wave of Talking Heads, Pivot's sound exudes an omnipresent sense of melodrama and what can only be described as a sort of 'apocalyptic joy'. Enjoy a special radio show selected by Pivot's Laurence Pike.