PVT Premiere ‘Vertigo’ Video On SPIN, New Album Out Now

Last we heard of Australian three-piece PVT, they were exploring the outer reaches of electronic rock with their 2010 album ‘Church With No Magic’. The Australian trio have made a distinguished career out of making genre-bending guitar music, carving themselves a reputation as sonic innovators, and in 2008 becoming the first band from their homeland to sign to iconic label Warp. All of which makes their new album ‘Homosapien – and Felte debut — a startling listen.

The difference is apparent from the instant you hit play on ‘Homosapien’: Richard Pike is singing. PVT’s records have featured vocals in the past of course, but this is the first release that’s placed Pike front and centre as a bona fide frontman. The change provides his band’s sound with a focal point that allows Homosapien to be more open, more intimate and yet also more direct than its predecessors. This is the document of a band as close as ever to defining ‘their sound’: a seamless collage of instruments, electronics, old keyboards and machines, and Pike’s voice.

Stream PVT’s fourth album ‘Homosapien’ in all its crossover glory at Dazed now, described as their most human and accessible record to date: www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/15563/1/pvt-homosapien

Watch the suitably disorientating 3D video for ‘Vertigo’ here (NB – please don your red and blue specs first):

To create the sounds that became ‘Homosapien’, the three members of PVT spent a month in complete isolation in a quiet, remote, rural corner of Australia. They set themselves up inside a cavernous, 120-year-old mansion, well beyond the reach of modernity, and set to work. With the band producing once again, the recording of ‘Homosapien’ was overseen at that remote location by young engineer Ivan Vizintin, and then mixed in London by Ben Hillier (Depeche Mode, Blur).

PVT’s sound has already been described as a “futuristic INXS”, a sonic collision of machine and man, and indeed, ‘Homosapien’ does sound like pop music from some distant future where song craft is as important as glitz and glamour. That’s not to say that PVT have abandoned the spirit of sonic adventure that’s characterized their back catalogue — Homosapien is as full of nuance and texture as anything the band have ever recorded, from floating opener ‘Shiver’, to the gothic, cathedral-like jigsaw of ‘Electric’, 3-D love song ‘Vertigo’, or the throbbing vintage drum machines and found-sound samples of ‘Evolution’ and ‘Nightfall’.

The artwork of ‘Homosapien’ features the work of Winston Chmielinski. A Brooklyn based artist known for his paintings of the human body, that are always slightly obscured but are in stark contrast to the bold and vivid colours used. “We’d been collating images for a few weeks for references for the artwork; classical Greek sculpture, Brutalist architecture, Aztec burial masks, when we came across Winston Chmielinski’s paintings quite by chance. I was immediately drawn to the cover image. It seemed to encapsulate all of the things we were looking for to visually represent the music on this album; colour, primitivism, raw emotion, and the human form. It immediately seemed like we had our record cover,” says Laurence Pike from the band.

But their sound is more focused than ever, making this the most song-driven and spacious record they’ve ever made. Along with space and a renewed sense of identity, it would appear that in ‘Homosapien’, PVT have also found their humanity.

Watch the captivating video for ‘Shiver’ as directed by feted Australian filmmaker Tex Crick:

Watch the dystopian video for album track ‘Nightfall’ as directed by Jennifer Juniper Stratford and previously premiered by Noisey.com:

Buy ‘Homosapien’ at Felte’s website.

PVT’s ‘Homosapien’ is out now worldwide on Felte, Modulor in France and in Australia/New Zealand on Create

http://pvtpvt.net/
www.feltesounds.com

“… terrific… a coiling gothica sci-fi soundtrack that cocoons Richard Pike’s echo-soaked vocal amid pulsing, binary-code electronics. 8/10.” NME

“some truly sparkling moments” Rolling Stone

“The sound of Vangelis clubbing with Talking Heads in 1982, and it sounds fresh… PVT are still rvting.” The Fly

“‘Homosapien’ is evolution at its finest point, with sonic combinations that can stop you dead in your tracks to ponder the production…” The Line Of Best Fit

“Assured and subtle work form Australia’s premiere pop experimentalists.” The Brag, Album Of The Week, 4 Stars

“PVT have made an album that honourably drifts away from their cosmic soundscapes for something more sharp and immediate – a 21st Century appropriation of guitar rock and computer love.” Beat Magazine, Album Of The Week

Sydney’s finest,PVT, release their new album ‘Homosapien’ this week and to mark the occasion the band have premiered their latest video over on SPIN.com.