As the world prepares itself for the millenium, Pitchshifter have already leap-frogged into the next century. The sound of their new album 'www.pitchshifter.com' is a new sound - the sound of technology used to create maximum chaos.
While the rest of Europe meandered along in a mire of mediocrity in the early 1990s, at home in Nottingham, England, Pitchshifter were planning a new wave of technological insurrection. Signing to cult label 'Earache Records' in 1992, they unleashed their 'Submit' mini-LP onto an unsuspecting scene. The fierce and firey combination of radical attitude and intense beats began to permiate the underground. The band's reputation seeped through by word of mouth on the back of energetic (and often deranged) live shows supporting everyone from the likes of Fugazi to Theraapy?, Neurosis to Girls Against Boys and No Means No to Napalm Death.
By '93 the underground was more than ready for 'Desentized' a landmark LP of it's genre which took Pitchshifter on the road for two whole years and brought them to the attention of America for the first time. Pitchshifter's innovative use at that time of live slide shows and programming combined with their energetic on stage antics helped to seal their reputation as excellent live performers. Some venues had never seen the like, agit-propaganda flyers hurled into an unsuspecting crowd, stage diving a must. Numerous other bands began to follow in this new style of music and ideas which PSI had set.
But Pitchshifter is not just about their aggressive, compulsive music. "Pitchshifter is about making people think," says front man J.S.Clayden, "think about the world around them, about how they perceive music, about how they perceive themselves. Pitchshifter is about not sitting there and being spoon-fed 'their' news any more - we've got to get out there and hunt the truth down for ourselves."
And so just as other groups began to catch up with the PSI bandwagon, the band outgrew the technological machine they had created. Pitchshifter began to explore new areas, to calculate how they could spread their message to the mainstream, to utilise the new computerized technology with which they had become fascinated into their songs of protest. The result of all this was the 1996 'Infotainment?' LP, another innovative collection of heavyweight songs, personal and political questioning and technological agitation. Pitchshifter, always in favour of their increasing audience interacting directly with the band's message, even place free samples at the end this CD, encouraging fans to steal them and create music for themselves.
Pitchshifter's live show are always compulsive (and some times dangerous), stage invasions huge and frequent, exploding sound systems and the odd broken limb not unheard of. The band's video for tracks like 'Underachiever' became MTV satples in Europe, and the likes of Korn, Tool, Ministry, Biohazard and Girls Against Boys paid their respects by inviting PSI to support them at key shows. A mysterious crop circle formation in the shape of the infamous Pitchshifter 'Eye' logo even appeared in a field near the Phoenix Festival in 1995, shortly before a mid-song stage invasion during the band's daylight set short circuited the main stage . . .
While 'Infotainment?' brought Pitchshifter to the attention of the mainstream for the first time, the band were already in heavy demand from their musical comtemporaries. 'The Remix Wars, (1995) was the first CD of it's kind: fellow musicians queued up to remix PSI's inflammatory material and mould it to their own individual styles - a trend now routinely followed by all. Programming terrorists Johnny Carter and J.S.Clayden also expanded their horizons to encompass a series of remixes for other European outfits from more mainstream acts like Clawfinger and Misery Loves Co to contemporaries of the underground from which they had originally sprung.
For Pitchshifter, it was now time to make another musical quantum leap. 'www.pitchshifter.com' is that leap, a 13-track set of radical outpourings in which Pitchshifter tribalize yet another hybrid musical genre. "We realised that we all like two things," says J.S.Clayden. "Breakbeats and punk. So we welded them together to see what would happen. We have a punk mentality, and Drum & Bass is the punk of the '90s. It just seemed natural to make these rhythms the backbone of our ideas." Using their website to further spread the PSI conspiracy, and with the addition of wunderkind live guitarist and notorious techno wizard Jim Davies (the man who wrote the licks for the Prodigy's 'Firestarter' and 'Breath') the creation of the monster LP that is 'www.pitchshifter.com' commenced.
"This is a new breed of guitar and sample music," admits Clayden. "Call it what you will. It could be 'Strum & Bass'? You decide." Whatever it is, it's a genre which has never before been fully explored. So Pitchshifter began the search for a record label that would understand their aims and ideas, and a producer who could translate them with the required style in the studio. DGC was the label which comprehended the enormity of the PSI concept, and rising studio star 'Machine' the only producer whom the band felt could seal their attitude to tape.
"In my first ever phone conversation with J.S.Clayden," says Machine, "he said to me: 'Let's make the sickest, most ultimate guitar/dance music crossover record imaginable.' And that's exactly what we did." 'www.pitchshifter.com' is agression and flavour on a global scale, with every aspect of new and old technologies contributing to making a combination digital and analogue record. Let's call it 'Digilogue'. "There was nothing but inspiration across the board," Machine tells us. "Pitchshifter are awesome programmers, and what we did was just bring all their live guitars and drums into that environment. Once that shit hit the hard drive, there was no stopping us from making and manipulating the sonic boom that this record became. I am serious when I say that this album is like no other album that has gone before. If we do the next record together, I fear for what it will be . . ." 'www.pitchshifter.com' - coming soon.
