After offering two delicious tastes of their forthcoming LP, the Sydney-via-London electro-experimental trio PVT have confirmed the full details of their fourth studio album.
Entitled Homosapien, PVT’s new album is set for release in Australian on Feburary 8, 2013 through Create/Control records and was self produced by the band themselves, with recording sessions overseen by engineer Ivan Vizintin and mixed in London by Ben Hillier (who’s worked on Blur and Depeche Mode).
As its title suggests, Homosapien adds a more intimate, human element to the group’s intelligent ability to synergise swelling electronic textures and dark, textural grooves. Homosapien is the follow-up to 2010’s Light Up Bright Fires which helped capitulate interest in the Australian bred trio, getting them noticed by tastemakers such as NME in the UK, and Stereogum in the US.
Opening track ‘Shiver’ (released last September) demonstrated PVT’s new found beauty, featuring multi-instrumentalist vocalist Richard Pike’s shimmering, processed vocal lapping gently against the throbbing pulse of drummer/percussionist brother Laurence Pike, and the arpeggiated synths and treated sounds of fellow bandmate Dave Miller.
Lead single ‘Nightfall’ offered further insight into the band’s new direction, honing and sculpting their sound – a blend of organic and electronic instruments, and a a bevy of electronic toys and keys – into a seamless, more organic whole.
Gliding on a robotic march and prodding textures, ‘Nightfall’ finds Pike channels his inner soul singer as he slyly coos: “You want me/ I’m yours.” A microcosm for the new studio album as Homosapien places Pike front and centre as a bona fide frontman.
If their most recent Australians shows – including an appearance at this year’s Sydney VIVID Live festival and a warm-up show in Melbourne preceding it – are anything to go by, other potential highlights of the tracklist are the sinister loping bass of “Electric”, the illuminated digital fourishes of “Cold Romance” and slinky new jam, “Vertigo;” the latter performed as a duet between Pike and neo-chanteuse Sophia Brous.As its title suggests, Homosapien
adds a more intimate, human element to the group’s intelligent ability to synergise swelling electronic textures and dark, textural grooves.
Furthering the theme of the human condition, the painted artwork of Homosapien is provided by up-and-coming Brooklyn artist Winston Chmielinski. Known for his paintings of the human body in stark yet colourful renditions, Chmielinski was an obvious choice, says the band’s Laurence Pike, when selecting how to visually represent their latest recording.
“We’d been collating images for a few weeks for references for the artwork; classical Greek sculpture, Brutalist architecture, Aztec burial masks,” says Pike, “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.”
Set to feature the band’s most song-driven yet spacious record to date, adding to their renewed sense of humanity and identity, Homosapien is due for release on February 8, 2013 through Create/Control in Australia and New Zealand and is available for pre-order now from iTunes (with bonus tracks) or from Create/Control.
You can take a listen to lead single ‘Nightfall’, opening track ‘Shiver’, and view the artwork and tracklisting below:
Homosapien Tracklist:
01. Shiver
02. Evolution
03. Electric
04. Cold Romance
05. Love & Defeat
06. Homosapien
07. Vertigo
08. Nightfall
09. New Morning
10. Casual Success
11. Ziggurat
