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Artist Interviews
Q&A: PVT
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 21 September 2010
Hailing from Sydney, Australia, the band released their debut album ‘Make Me Love You’ in 2005. Their mix of post-rock and electronica caught the attention of legendary UK label Warp Records, to which the band signed in 2008. Later that year they released follow-up ‘O Soundtrack My Heart’ and only a month after its completion the three members were back in the studio working with engineer Burke Reid. Juggling recording between studios in Sydney, London and Paris, those efforts eventually became ‘Church With No Magic’, their new LP released this month via Warp. With the album out, and with a performance at the Reeperbahn Festival this Friday, we put the Same Six to drummer Laurence Pike.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
I started when I was ten. I wanted a drum kit so badly, but my mother wanted me to play guitar like my brother, I assume she didn’t want the noise. I begged her for months and she finally bought me a beaten up old kit. I played it every day for a couple of hours and after about a year I think her and the neighbours realised I was really serious.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
All sorts of things. This album was very much about intuition, and letting go. I think we wanted to make something we felt represented where the three of us were at as band and as people, especially after eighteen months of touring and developing our dynamic as a group. Our inspiration was to take a leap into our unconscious and see where we landed. I’m guessing our next album will be about the opposite of that. What matters most is doing our own thing, and keeping one eye on the door.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
It can vary, some of the tracks on this album started as a demo between a couple of us then we bounced them back and forth quickly between each other. Others kind of just appeared from improvising in the studio. We tend to use jamming on tape quite often as a creative spark, starting with something as simple as a tempo or a sound or sample and fleshing it out. We might take a 25 min improv thing and then find 4 min that we felt was worth developing, either by re-recording or expanding again through overdubbing. Then it’s usually a matter of fine tuning and trying to find the heart of the matter. Mix, master, have a drink.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
We are all pretty avid listeners, to all sorts of stuff, and we’re always recommending things to each other. Although the artists that seem to be common favourites between all three of us tend to be from the mid-late 70s. Brian Eno, David Bowie, Suicide, Talking Heads, Cluster, Iggy Pop, Caberet Voltiare, that sort of stuff. But really, there were tracks in the sessions that I would say were influenced by everything from Roy Orbison to Ricardo Villa Lobos.
As far as contemporary artists that we’re into… hmm… John Maus comes to mind immediately. We’re mindful of not just imitating people or wearing our influences on our sleeves though, that seems to happen a lot in indie music, with pretty predictable results. I think we’re influenced by the prospect of finding something new to say, or new ways of doing things.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Close your eyes, breathe real heavy-like, let the sound wash over you like a giant warm spongebob. You are the most beautiful and powerful person in the room.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
It would be nice if in a year’s time we are still enjoying playing the tracks and feel like the album continues to have it’s own life and grow outside of our direct control, let it make some new friends, see the world, that sort of thing.
The future is a weird one. I guess I’d like to be able to continue to be in a position where we can focus on making records and touring them. We’re already thinking about the next album creatively. There’s an amount of uncertainty that you have to learn to except as an artist, because the nature of your work is personally all encompassing, but at the same time seasonal, and then determined by both your efforts and the subjectivity and whims of complete strangers. It doesn’t make any sense at all, you’ve just got to put your head down and get on with it sometimes.
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