You’ll need a metal mixing bowl. A metal one, mind. Chuck in a big hunk of Kraftwerk and a dash of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Aphex Twin, before sprinkling in a couple of shakes of Do Say Make Think. Now get an electric mixer and combine that all until chunks form. Then turn out the lights. All done? That humming in the air you should be hearing now is Pivot.

 

The first ever Aussie act to be signed to UK label Warp Records (in whose trophy room you’d find the busts of Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Autechre), following their 2005 debut Make Me Love You and a few line-up changes Pivot have been quietly but diligently plugging away, impressing enough to have appeared alongside Prefuse 73 and Caribou, to name a couple. O Soundtrack My Heart is their latest offering, a carefully-crafted, brooding epic of electronica and crescendo rock that manages to be as painfully and paradoxically expressive as only all-instrumental albums can.

 

 

Underlined by a dirty electronic hum, the first single ‘In The Blood’ gives you an idea of how the rest of the album will play out: an intense mash-up of jams, hammering beats and barely-discernable instruments crashing and swooping into one another towards even dirtier and crashier climaxes. The titular ‘O Soundtrack My Heart’ follows, wheeled out with a whining synth that sounds like it’s just almost telling you something before kicking into an insistent beat to carry you through a jam session laced with a whiff of the Black Mages. (If you didn’t catch that reference, just praise Bhudda that you aren’t a terrible geek and move on.)

 

Also impressive are ‘Sweet Memory’, which begins like a broken stereo eventually joined by a catchy hook, and the drum machine-driven ‘Fool in the Rain’, itself a mini odyssey of jingling blips and warm pulses. Closer ‘My Heart Like Marching’ is a sweet, reflective track that recalls Brian Eno’s ambient adventures to the lunar surface a few decades back. There’s no doubt that the album does capture a very specific atmosphere, with the flipside of this that it all does sound rather samey upon the first few rotations – persevere, however, and it is ultimately a rewarding album within its confines.

 

If the imagery at the beginning of this review was laid on a little thick, it’s because Pivot conjure up so much of it. Listening to O Soundtrack My Heart suggests something dark and yet mesmerising, like a derelict warehouse at twilight. It’s not somewhere that everyone would want to explore, but once you’re inside it is difficult not to get a little carried away.