Last we heard of Australian three-piece PVT, they were exploring the outer reaches of electronic rock with their 2010 album 'Church With No Magic'. The Australian trio have made a distinguished career out of making genre-bending guitar music, carving themselves a reputation as sonic innovators, and in 2008 becoming the first band from their homeland to sign to iconic UK label Warp. All of which makes their new album 'Homosapien' — their fourth studio album and Felte debut — a startling listening. The album tracks 'Nightfall' and 'Shiver' are available for stream, with the former available for a limited time download.<br /><br />The difference is apparent from the instant you hit play on 'Homosapien': Richard Pike is singing. PVT's records have featured vocals in the past of course, but this is the first release that's placed Pike front and centre as a bona fide frontman. The change provides his band's sound with a focal point that allows Homosapien to be more open, more intimate and yet also more direct than its predecessors. This is the document of a band as close as ever to defining ‘their sound’: a seamless collage of instruments, electronics, old keyboards and machines, and Pike's voice.<br /><br />To create the sounds that became 'Homosapien', the three members of PVT spent a month in complete isolation in a quiet, remote, rural corner of Australia. They set themselves up inside a cavernous, 120-year-old mansion, well beyond the reach of modernity, and set to work. With the band producing once again, the recording of 'Homosapien' was overseen at that remote location by young engineer Ivan Vizintin, and then mixed in London by Ben Hillier (Depeche Mode, Blur).
