Last year saw Battles smash the system of genre pigeonholing with an album (Mirrored) and live show that demonstrated their ability to turn math rock into something exhilarating and unpredictable (read: something more than nerds avoiding contact with the audience to just grinding away at their instruments). Considering the level of difficulty needed to perform bascially anything in the Battles songbook, they don't seem like candidates to inspire too many out there. Let's face it, they're just too damn good. But hey, it appears their emotive robot rock is rubbing off some capable musicians, like this trio from Australia.
Based in Sydney, Pivot were wisely chosen as a support act for Battles's tour Down Under, which no doubt helped get them onto the Warp roster. It makes complete sense considering the collision between electronic tomfoolery and a fairly conventional set-up of instruments. Like Battles, they are open to so many reference points, and yet not very simple to narrow down. Some description online paints them as "Aphex Twin meets Arcade Fire," no doubt a combination someone constructed based on their MySpace-listed influences, but based on the songs they've made available, I feel that's far too lazy.
A 2005 album called Make Me Love You painted them more as an adventurous post-rock band, but their most recent output shows they're headed into far more challenging directions. Taken from their yet-to-be-titled debut album for Warp (expected later this year), "Didn't I Furious" is a blizzard of fragmented blips, scattered throughout a series of blazing guitar screeches and what can only be described as a drumming clinic on how to make rock music more riveting. The random bursts of frequency noise beginning and ending the track lead me to expect anything and everything when their album drops...
Pivot "Didn't I Furious"
Based in Sydney, Pivot were wisely chosen as a support act for Battles's tour Down Under, which no doubt helped get them onto the Warp roster. It makes complete sense considering the collision between electronic tomfoolery and a fairly conventional set-up of instruments. Like Battles, they are open to so many reference points, and yet not very simple to narrow down. Some description online paints them as "Aphex Twin meets Arcade Fire," no doubt a combination someone constructed based on their MySpace-listed influences, but based on the songs they've made available, I feel that's far too lazy.
A 2005 album called Make Me Love You painted them more as an adventurous post-rock band, but their most recent output shows they're headed into far more challenging directions. Taken from their yet-to-be-titled debut album for Warp (expected later this year), "Didn't I Furious" is a blizzard of fragmented blips, scattered throughout a series of blazing guitar screeches and what can only be described as a drumming clinic on how to make rock music more riveting. The random bursts of frequency noise beginning and ending the track lead me to expect anything and everything when their album drops...
Pivot "Didn't I Furious"
