PVT
Church With No Magic
WARP198
Warp Records 2010
10 Tracks. 37mins58secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

A word of warning: Pivot (or PVT as they now call themselves) have gone a bit Animal Collective on us. Well, not quite, but the Australian threesome have made a leap from the textured sound of their previous output, the rather enchanting O Soundtrack My Heart, released over two years ago on Warp to something which may still bear occasional tints of the old, but has become an essentially much more song-based form, with multi-instrumentist Richard Pike assuming a new full time role as singer within the band. The sound has also evolved into a more electronically-fuelled affair, quite a radical departure, this despite often heavy live drums and occasional outburst of guitars spotted throughout. This is made very clear right from the short opener, Community, with its ethereal choral chords drowned in electronic arpeggios which could have been stolen from a sixties sci-fi soundtrack experiment. Continue Reading »

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Warp20 (Box Set) / Warp20 (Recreated) / Warp20 (Chosen)
WARP20.0 / WARP201 / WARP 202
Warp Records 2009
– / 21 Tracks / 24 Tracks. – / 99mins13secs / 127mins18secs

Warp20 (Box Set)
Boomkat: BX

Warp20 (Recreated)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

Warp20 (Chosen)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

LFO. Three metallic blue letters, straddled by a ghostly shape, set on a black background. Three letters that changed things forever. The year was 1991, I was browsing through the new arrivals in my local records store, and the Designers Republic artwork of LFO’s Frequencies was standing out from the blur, calling out for my attention. An hour or so later, I was left baffled by a record which I was struggling to understand. On one side, the lush flow and shattering bass of LFO or Simon From Sydney irresistibly titillated my appetite for crisp evocative electronics, on the other, I had never experienced anything quite as bare as Mentok 1 or We Are Back. This album bore its influences on its sleeve, literally, and it took a few listens to ‘get it’. But ‘get it’ I did. More than I could have ever wished for. I was hooked. Not only on LFO, but also on Warp.

The brainchild of Steve Beckett and the late Rob Mitchell, who founded the label twenty years ago in the former metallurgic city of Sheffield, Warp found itself at a crossroad between the dying acid scene and the nascent UK techno/electronica movements Continue Reading »