Pivot
Oxford Art Factory, Sydney

Pivot, you disappointed me tonight. It’s a hard emotion to come to grips with, and even now I want to blame it on something other than the band, but it was a flat show. I can’t even employ the usual scapegoat, the sound guy. The ebullience that was once in abundance for Pivot has been replaced by a clinical proficiency that turned the performance cold and impersonal. It didn’t help that Richard Pike wrestled with his guitar tone, rather than wrestling with the guitar itself. It didn’t help that the crowd were particularly nonchalant, an uber-chic crew preferring to nod their heads in appreciation rather than dance to Lawrence Pike’s aberrant but infectious beats. The sold-out crowd was a hostile bunch. I had fights raging beside and behind me.

It’s not that the trio don’t have quality material to work with either. O Soundtrack My Heart is a fitting title for their new album: a masterpiece of krautrock and industrial coalescence. It’s the sound of Sydney’s battle of creativity vs legislation. New York avant-garde meets proto-industrial electronica in fluid harmony.

Under strobing LED lights, Pivot’s set consisted mainly of material off the aforementioned album. After all, it was said disc’s album launch. The serpentine synth line of ‘In the Blood’ slithered out of the Oxford Art Factory’s PA while Lawrence abused the toms on his drum kit. Richard attempted some off-key vocals for the Cornelius-esque ‘Sing, You Sinners’, replete with hand-claps. Pivot’s ode to Blade Runner, ‘O Soundtrack My Heart’, finished the set in spectacular fashion. A stop-start New Wave-infused thumper, it was the highlight of a lukewarm set that was all soundtrack but no heart.

by Dom Alessio