The first Australian band to sign to Warp
Originally formed in late nineties Australia, Pivot have until recently remained hidden from the international radar. With their first album released in 2005 (the locally acclaimed 'Make Me Love You') multi-instrumentalist brothers Laurenz and Richard Pike sensed it was time for new things. The addition of Perth born/London-based Dave Miller in 2006, and the subsequent departure of the original line up, sparked a period of intense creative activity, resulting in a new band, a new album and dreams of the beyond….
Before long, word of this young antipodean trio with something to say reached the office and ears of Warp records, who upon hearing their demonstration cassette, and being gifted an ornamental hotdog, immediately signed them up for a 16 album deal…
With an average age of 28, Pivot are still young, but no strangers to musical endeavour, its members having recorded and performed in collaboration with the likes of Prefuse73, Flanger, Savath & Savalas, Qua, Jan Jelinek, Burnt Friedman and Damo Suzuki, along with several international releases of their own side projects, past and present (Roam the Hello Clouds, Triosk, Dave Miller's minimal techno for Background records and Laurenz Pike's solo drum explorations).
Pivot are a rare combination of the emotive and cerebral, harnessing the raw garage energy of three explosive musicians along side intensive studio production. Part prog-warrior, part slacker-geek, their music and approach provide something much needed in a world of nowhere music (being listened to in nowhere bars), Equally influenced by synthesizer luminaries Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, Warp label mates Autechre and the post-punk new wave of Talking Heads, Pivot's sound exudes an omnipresent sense of melodrama and what can only be described as a sort of 'apocalyptic joy'.
Show some added love by visiting their myspace page
http://www.myspace.com/pivotpivot
And Visit Warp Records
http://warprecords.com/
And warp mart to buy official Pivot releases
http://warpmart.com/browse/label/Warp
And warp mart to buy official Pivot releases
http://warpmart.com/browse/label/Warp
Pivot-'IN THE BLOOD' directed by ALEX SMITH
Notes from the Director
I’ve always liked the idea of making a shark attack film. There was one film in particular that inspired me “L’Ultimo Squalo”, which is an Italian rip-off of Jaws. The story is the same as Jaws, but in the spirit of Italian exploitation cinema, everything’s amped up, there’s three times as much gore. I’ve always been interested in Sharks- I went shark cage diving in South Africa, which was amazing.
I was shooting a documentary about Depeche Mode in Sao Paolo and I got caught in a sudden rain storm. I went into the nearest café to wait it out. I had nothing to read, and I had a rush of blood to the head - if I was to make a shark film, what would happen? How would it be different to the others? So I thought I’d write a fantasy shark movie. I wrote some key scenes, imagined how I’d shoot it, and then forgot about it. Then I got asked by Pivot to make a video for “In The Blood”, and the bass line, the title, and the general mood of the song spoke Shark to me.
My cousin Ralph showed me a film about the sculptor Alexander Calder, “Le Cirque de Calder”. Calder shows us puppets of circus performers, about four inches tall, lion tamers, trapeze artists, knife throwers - all made out of wire, cork and scraps of material. Calder is seen the whole time, nudging the puppets along with his hands - there are no strings or rods attached - just Calder’s hands. What I took from it, was that seeing the puppeteer didn’t matter at all, and that you can read emotions into a piece of cork with a couple of eyes drawn onto it.
I met up with my sculptor friend Astrid to discuss making this, and we spent a lot of time talking about materials. We knew we weren’t going to try and make something realistic, but there needed to be something in the materials that people could connect with. Astrid insisted on real broken glass for the shark’s teeth, because broken glass is scary regardless. Real human glass eyes from WWII were used for the mannequins eyes, old messed up human hair wigs and elastoplasts for their hands all helped give the puppets a human quality.
I wanted to shoot the video in my back yard. It’s been filling up with rubbish for over a year, and I liked the idea of just stretching a plastic sheet over the whole lot to “clean it up”, almost like suppressing something in the back of your mind, like the “if you can’t see it, you don’t have to deal with it” mentality. Astrid and I talked a lot about how much you can get away with, along with whether seeing the puppeteers would spoil the illusion, and we looked to Calder’s film to reassure ourselves.
I got friends to help out with the puppeteering, it was a steep learning curve for some. My flatmate would turn up drunk late at night, we’d still be shooting, and I’d rope him into dressing up in the overalls, goggles and gloves to do some shark wrangling. My sister helped out with the blood (we needed a lot) she became obsessed with getting it right, sometimes refusing to let us use it until she’d got the consistency and colour perfect. We tried to make some ourselves when she was unavailable, but we just couldn’t figure out her secret recipe.
It was all shot on my dad’s digital camera, over 7000 stills got used in the final version. Technically, it is animation, it’s Pixelation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixilation). It was the best way to create some of the effects, and it creates a world different look to real-time, which fit the music. Scenes of attack and blood splashing were shot with a flash- we all had to stand around frozen in position waiting for the flash to re-charge in-between shots. That was probably the most laborious part of the shoot.
It took around five days to shoot, all in my flat and backyard. The flat was turned upside down, there was blood everywhere, nobody slept much and I fell down the stairs and fractured my shoulder. But it was worth it!
Visit Alex Smith
http://www.boomerangproductions.com/alex_smith.htm
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