Pivot have been very quiet since releasing their lauded debut album Make Me Love You in 2005. Actually, they’ve been suspiciously quiet in that ‘door locked and mysterious sounds escaping from within’ kind of way. Of course, the boys have not been idly wasting their nights playing Wii. Not at all. Pivot have a new lineup with brothers Richard and Laurence Pike recruiting electro-guru Dave Miller. And importantly, they’ve been the first Australian group to sign with the iconic Warp Records label, home of Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Battles and Autechre.

Recently they’ve been solidly touring Europe and smashing it on the festival circuit. They’ve concocted a new album, and to share it with the chums they love the most (that’s us!) they’re heading back home for an Australian tour that includes supports for Iceland’s Sigur Ros. ITM spoke to Laurence, who at the time was living it up in France between festivals.

Your new album O Soundtrack My Heart will be released in Australia in August. Pivot has certainly evolved since your previous album, so what can we expect to hear this time?

Well, the sound has changed quite a lot. It’s a lot more developed, it’s heavier and it’s a bit darker and broader. It’s more synth driven probably, in a 70’s prog-synths sense rather than a ‘Sydney dance’ sense if you know what I mean.

Some of these ‘Sydney Dance’ acts have made it huge in the last 6 months. Any pressure to throw in some catchy vocal hooks and get in on it?

No, there’s no pressure. Vocals are something we’ve always dabbled with but it’s much more subtle, it’s more like using the vocal as an instrument. It’s funny though, the whole Australian invasion at the moment in Europe. We get asked a lot about “What’s going on in Sydney? Why are we suddenly getting all these pop-dance acts coming out of Sydney?” So they’ve obviously made quite a big impact.

You’ve been touring quite a lot in the UK and Europe. How are audiences responding to you?

Yeah really well. We basically came over here to do as many gigs as we could before we release the album on Warp, and we’ve had some really good reactions from audiences. We’ve even managed to get some of the UK press onside, which can be pretty notoriously difficult to crack.

You played Glastonbury too, which must have been really something!

Well, my Glastonbury experience was a little bit warped because I was only there for a day, instead of a traditional Glastonbury cosmic 5-day journey thing. And it was really sunny and hot which is very Un-Glastonbury, so we didn’t get the full mud experience. But everyone seemed to be really into it. It’s such an unfathomably large festival, it’s just impossible to explain how big it is when you haven’t been there. It’s kind of like the Big Day Out but about 5 times the size, where everybody camps, if you can imagine that! It’s a bit like Bartertown from Mad Max 3. They don’t have a Thunderdome thing where people fight each other to the death, but that could be the next step!

Recording your new album, Dave was in London, and you and Richard were in Sydney. How did that work?

Well Dave’s component in the band is largely electronic and so we did a lot of file-sharing basically. Tracks would either start with Richard and I recording or writing stuff, then sending it to Dave to add things. Or Dave would send us some electronic material that we would then develop in the studio. It’s different from being in the same room. In some ways you just take the material for what it is and you respond to it instantaneously. So some really interesting things happened. Now we’re back working together in the same room again. But we’re still always trying to find new ways of writing, it’s still largely an enigmatic process.

How about recording the live instruments?
We did do one session together in the studio initially, with all three of us in Sydney to track instruments like drums and guitars and bass and stuff like that. But then it was a lot of back and forth online to finalise stuff. We’re the sort of band that does quite a lot of things post the studio, all the chopping up and adding and subtracting. Adding colours.

The film clip for your single In the Blood looked like a load of fun. Was that you three in the chemical suits? And was that raspberry syrup?

I’m not sure exactly what the fake blood was. It actually looked really, really real! And it was kind of salty and a bit stingy on your skin. I have no idea what they put in it! But it was the real deal. Alex the director did the shoot literally in the courtyard of his block of apartments. I don’t know what his neighbors thought was going on, with all the little puppeteers running around [Laurence can’t stop laughing. I think this needs to be pointed out!) And we had to sit at the bottom of the stairs and get sprayed with blood for about an hour. It was quite fun actually. It took me about 2 weeks to get the blood stains off my hands and feet though. It really did, it really hung around!

You’re about to tour Australia to support the new album. What are we in for?

Last time we did gigs in Australia we threw in some old tracks, but we haven’t played them for so long. We might have to rehearse them up. But largely I think it will be the album. The songs have been developing and stretching out in strange ways the more and more we play them, so it’s not a cookie cutter experience. We try to make gigs as organic and interactive as possible and give a bit of the unexpected, more than people expect just from listening to the album.

And will there be blood?

I have drawn blood at a gig before, so I can’t say definitely that there won’t be! It can get pretty messy. Doing it for the cause!

Pivot will be touring to support their album O Soundtrack My Heart, in the shops on August 9.

Jul 31st – Alhambra Lounge, Brisbane
Aug 1st – Festival Hall, Melbourne (supporting Sigur Ros)
Aug 2nd – Hordern Pavilion, Sydney (supporting Sigur Ros)
Aug 7th – East Brunswick Club, Melbourne
Aug 8th – Oxford Art Factory, Sydney
Aug 9th – The Bakery, Perth