Pivot @ Becks Music Box, Perth(18/02/2010)

Wed 24th Feb, 2010 in Gig Reviews

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Electronically arranged, malformed, and driven was the taste of the eve, with each act, including Sydney-based headliner Pivot, anchoring down heavily in the digital. If Beethoven had been there, transported in a time-warp to the front of stage, what would he have thought? Even the electric guitar would have been a source of intrigue for him, never mind the laptops. Somewhere in the first half of Pivot’s set, his composer’s wig would likely have flown off his head from the sheer thump of the bass speakers, and he would have gone home in a bluster, purchased a computer, cracked a copy of Ableton, and then cut together the best electronic album of the decade, as voted #1 by Pitchfork and labelled ‘pretentious and too complex’ by Rolling Stone.

So up first was Qua, a Melbourne duo packing dance punch, with one guy beating at an electronic drum pad, the other at the helm of laptop, midi controls and various other contraptions. They played two songs: the first a gorgeous, glimmering, loopy, over-driven dance track that evoked the sonic aroma of Carnivale (check it our via their Myspace, the song is Lapsang Souchong)

The second track was much longer and took a while to take off, with the levels on the processed guitar too low in the mix. When the guitar was cast aside and the beats taken over, however, sounds exploded. It’s hard to describe the ending of that song, but ‘massively huge bass-blown thunderstorm of rollicking snare death’ comes close (thank you, notebook)

After Qua came the much anticipated Pivot. The audience had built up a great deal by then, and it was good to see so much support from a usually oblivious Perth audience for a fairly obscure band like Pivot (obscure, at least, in the overall vista of the Australian music scene) The sound from their album, O Soundtrack My Heart, translated beautifully, in fact much better than even listening to it on a pair of fancy headphones. The bass was thicker, fatter, juicier, the guitar louder, the drums wilder and less perfectly robotic (an issue that comes with the polish of studio production)

A lot of new material came to the fore, as many of the songs they played that night featured vocals (which are almost entirely absent on their record) – bassist and guitarist Richard Pike was responsible for these vocal duties, and he served well. His voice brings an element of uplift and hope to their songs, which melds in a strangely affecting way with the dark, grimy and industrial feel of their instrumentals, like the soundtrack that would run over images of a robotic, Terminator-like future apocalypse, with one triumphant dude standing atop a heap of scrambled machinery singing his heart out to a gradually clearing sky. Indeed, the vocals sounded like they could become an 80s ballad at any minute, which isn’t a bad thing – but they were held back from reaching that point by their innate choppiness, like if you sat down to sing a Spandau Ballet song but only vocalised every third word in the lyrics.

Whether these descriptions are damaging or improving your perception of Pivot’s music, be assured, it sounded awesome, and their new record, planned for sometime in the middle of the year, will likely knock the wig off more than a few 18th century composers’ heads.

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