With members scattered across the globe, though with roots firmly planted in Sydney, electro mavericks Pivot create lush, onimous, and beautifully porous music that seeps through your soul, steals your heart, and renders you immobile. For a good ten minutes at least, as their latest album, O Soundtrack My Heart, proves.
Jean Michel Jarre / Oxygene IV [Richard Pike]
This was a record a particularly cultured school teacher of mine played to a class when I was ten years old. I never owned it but the image of the cover and the sound of the record stayed with me for years. I only finally bought it a few years ago and loved it. I knew he was considered cheesy and associated with new age, but I didn’t care, it’s awesome. Still.
Talking Heads / Cities [Richard Pike]
I only really re-discovered this band the last few years, too. It’s one band that all three of us in Pivot love equally and we’ll never argue when it’s put on the stereo. They seem to have the perfect blend of everything. Weirdness versus popness, funk versus solid rock. David Byrne knows how to push the boundaries of vocal eccentricities, and sing a tune, too.
Igor Stravinsky / The Augurs Of Spring [Richard Pike]
This is an early influence of mine. I studied it, and its sense of scope and grandeur has always stuck with me. It’s a ballet about a pagan dance ritual and is essentially about renewal. Our new record is generally about the same thing: blood-letting, catharsis, renewal.
Police / Regatta De Blanc [Richard Pike]
They’re still my favourite stadium rock band, and I got to see them for the first time a few months ago. Sting’s voice just cuts through everything still — over a crowd of maybe 20,000 people — and it just soared. But here’s one of their sort-of-instrumentals with no lyrics, just Sting singing yo-yo-yos.
John Lee Hooker / Tupelo [Richard Pike]
This song is like the core of the blues, in it’s rawest form. It’s just John Lee with one repeated riff on an acoustic, softly talking about the flood in Tupelo, Mississippi. Nick Cave also wrote a song called Tupelo Blues about the flood, and I assume he knows this track. John Lee Hooker’s gold is hidden away on cut price compilations like this, not on pop duet albums with Santana or whatever he did in the 80s.
Kitaro / Moro Rism [Laurence Pike]
I discovered the Kitaro album Oasis on cassette in the glove box of my ex-girlfriend’s father’s 1970s BMW. This is the stand out track, and for me, the catalyst for the direction that would result in our album O Soundtrack My Heart. I remember playing this to friends over and over telling them how amazing it was, and they clearly thought i was insane.
Bob Dylan / The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll [Laurence Pike]
I think this is the saddest song ever written. Dylan is THE motherfucker, no question.
Lightning Bolt / 2 Towers [Laurence Pike]
This track made my year when i first heard it. I was simultaneously relieved that this song existed, and disappointed that i wasn’t involved. Best to be listened to at extreme volume.
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