Gig Review: Pitch Black, San Fran, Wellington, 16 March 2018

Last Friday night, local electro dub fiends Pitch Black checked into Wellington’s San Fran venue for the second leg of the duo’s three-date Sonic Portal tour. It was a long overdue return to the capital for Mike Hodgson and Paddy Free, after Wellington missed out on the late 2016/early 2017 - mostly festival - dates that passed for the Filtered Senses (album release) tour.

A Sandwiches (club) gig in the capital of roughly a decade ago is still spoken about in glowing terms by all who attended (yours truly included), so it was little surprise to discover the San Fran venue almost full upon my relatively early 9.30pm arrival. Wellington dubheads and dance music aficionados clearly have long memories … though, of course, the short-term stuff may be more of a challenge. Whatever the case, this one carried the secondary billing of being a 21st party, with Pitch Black celebrating 21 years of being at the cutting edge of the local dub and electronica scene, and a cursory glance around the venue confirmed that it would just as likely have been years, if not a decade or two, since the last occasion many of these early doors punters had attended any kind of 21st celebration (that of their own children notwithstanding).

Free & Hodgson, dub fiends ...

Pitch Black had been playing around half an hour before I arrived, easing the crowd into the night with what they called their “downbeat set”, which meant a lot of gentle swaying and head bobbing, as our dynamic duo filled the room with layer upon layer of ethereal texture and languid bass-driven technicolour soundscapes. That continued for another half hour or so before we had the pleasure of Wellington’s own DJ Ludus (aka Emma Bernard) for company while our party hosts took a well-earned refreshment break.

Ludus was a perfect fit for this gig, and a swelling of the dancefloor during her mostly minimal ambient set – is minimal ambient a thing in genre-speak? – suggests she bought her own rather large following with her. It would certainly account for the injection of a few younger faces into the crowd, many of whom would scarcely have been out of nappies when Pitch Black unleashed its debut album, Futureproof, on an unsuspecting world 20-odd years ago.

When Pitch Black returned an hour later, the bpm factor and energy levels were upped significantly as they launched into what they call their “pumping set” with all the vigour of men half their age. It was around this point I realised it was going to be virtually impossible to review this (or any other) Pitch Black gig in any orthodox kind of way. The duo’s modus operandi is to continually fuck with the heads of their audience by blending and mashing together various tracks from different albums all at the same time. At no one point can it be said “oh, this is ‘The Gatherer’ …” or “this is from Rude Mechanicals”, because at no one single point are we being exposed to one single track. It’s a method that serves them well at giant outdoor festivals across the globe, and it is one that served them equally well at San Fran last Friday night.

Suffice to say Messrs Hodgson and Free covered a fair portion of their illustrious back catalogue as the night progressed into the wee small hours and we zig-zagged back and forth between albums. And they did so with some gusto. If they bypassed Wellington last time around, they were clearly keen to make it up to us, something they achieved with ease, and more …

If I have a complaint, and it’s probably more of an observation given the limitations of the venue, it’s that the visual feast I’ve always associated Pitch Black gigs with in the past simply wasn’t there this time. There was a backdrop with a multitude of FX and far-out visuals etc, but the lighting was relatively ineffective and the whole thing (visually) just failed to hit the heights I’ve come to expect. Having said that, San Fran can’t be faulted for its sound, which was crisp and clear, and there was a moment during the second set when I swear that bass was travelling straight through my chest.

I can’t wait for the next one, just don’t make us wait so long next time, eh fellas?

Here’s something I wrote about Pitch Black for NZ Musician some 18 months ago …

http://nzmusician.co.nz/features/pitch-black-futures-knocking/

Invisible Circuits

When I spoke with Pitch Black’s Paddy Free late last year, just as Filtered Senses was being released, we talked a little bit about the legacy significance of remix albums, and the notion that each of the duo’s full-length releases to date has been given something akin to a second life.

Six months on, and it’s the turn of Filtered Senses to reveal its makeover in the form of Invisible Circuits, a 10-track album, set for release on 7 July 2017. This, from the Pitch Black Bandcamp page, is a summary of what we can expect:

It has long been a Pitch Black tradition to follow up their studio offerings with a complementary remix collection. So 'Futureproof' was followed by 'Dub Obscura', 'Electronomicon' by 'Electric Earth and Other Stories', 'Ape to Angel' by 'Frequencies Fall' and 'Rude Mechanicals' by 'Rhythm, Sound & Movement'.

What makes these collections stand out is the depth and breadth of their co-conspirators and the unlikely avenues they take the originals down: Keretta's math rock mix of 'Bird Soul', Tom Cosm epic version of 'Sonic Colonic' or Youth's psychedelic trance take on 'Melt' come to mind. '

Invisible Circuits' is in a similar league, with collaborators from across the globe and across genres. There are turns from regular remixers dubmeister International Observer and minimal's Simon Flower, techno legend Radioactive Man, cult American downtemple act Kaminanda, Rinse & Sub FM regular Crises, sonic whizzkid Tom Cosm, progressive house's Tripswitch, Berlin basshead Beam Up, new kids on the block Digital Playground and UK dub royalty, Alpha Steppa.

A Pitch Black remix album wouldn’t be a Pitch Black remix album without an offering from International Observer (he holds the ranking record of 4 for 5) and for ‘Invisible Circuits’ he brings his light and playful touch to the deep groove of ‘It’s the Future Knocking’.

Cult American downtemple act Kaminanda’s remix of ‘Invisible Chatter’ is in a similarly dubbish vein, but with a fuzzy psychedelic edge and an added squelch or three plus a radical sonic switch later in the track.

A chance meeting at a vinyl night led to Radioactive Man (of Two Lone Swordsmen fame) not only supporting them at their London show in 2016 but also his stripped back acid techno version of ‘Circuit Bent’.

Pitch Black met Brian May back in the ‘90s when they toured Australia with Salmonella Dub and his then act High Pass Filter were the local support. Now based in Berlin, he has provided a cheeky tabla infused rerub of ‘Filtered Senses’ under his Beam Up alter ego.

Next up is Rinse and Sub FM regular DJ Crises who has gone back to the deep dubstep flavours he used to play on his show, ‘Sunshine ina bag’, for his remix of ‘Pixel Dust’.

Minimal technoman Simon Flower (Poker Flat, Nurture, Moonyard) is another serial Pitch Black remixer, and for his remix of ‘A Great Silence is Spreading’, under his peak_shift moniker, he’s gone deep and long, adding skittering beats and bass to the original ambient track.

Sonic whizzkid Tom Cosm took it upon himself to remix of ‘Without the Trees’ live on the internet, via Twich.tv, allowing his viewers to make real time suggestions to the process. 42 hours and countless webchats later, he has created a slow and steady grower of a track that builds to an ecstatic climax.

Moving on to Section Records head Nick Tripswitch, who came to fame with his 'Circuit Breaker' album for Liquid Sound Design back in '05. Pitch Black kept on bumping into him at festivals across Europe over the years and they finally have the pleasure of adding his sonic perspective, via his progressive house remix of ‘Dub Smoke’, to one of their releases.

The penultimate track is a stripped out drum & bass retweek of ‘Invisible Chatter’ by Digital Playground. They are a relatively new electronic act on the Kiwi music scene and have just supported Pitch Black on some dates of their recent New Zealand tour.

Finally. ‘Invisible Circuits’ ends where it started, with another remix of ‘It’s the Future Knocking’, this time by dub royalty in the form of Alpha Steppa. The son and nephew of scene stalwarts Alpha and Omega, his UK steppers style version is set to wobble you firmly onto the dancefloor.

The Festive Dozen 2016: Pitch Black - Circuit Bent

Pitch Black occupy a relatively unique place in the wider pantheon of New Zealand electronic music production. Nobody else comes close to matching the duo’s heady brand of electro dub across five flawless albums, and the same can be said about their extraordinary longevity within a genre that tends to date music a hell of a lot quicker than just about any other. 2016 saw Mike Hodgson and Paddy Free celebrate 20 years of working together, and part of that – upcoming extensive tour notwithstanding – was to release yet another state-of-the-art masterpiece in the form of (album) Filtered Senses. The advance single release from that work was the rather aptly-titled ‘Circuit Bent’, which was a firm favourite long before I finally got to hear the whole set.  

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

 

Future's Knocking

I was lucky enough to interview one of my musical heroes, Pitch Black’s Paddy Free, for the October/November edition of NZ Musician magazine. Having followed the duo’s work for something close to 20 years, it’s fair to say I may have been in fanboy mode at the time ...

Click on the link below to read Future’s Knocking: 

http://nzmusician.co.nz/features/pitch-black-futures-knocking/

Album Review: Pitch Black - Filtered Senses (2016)

Here's my review of Pitch Black's Filtered Senses for NZ Musician magazine. I also interviewed Paddy Free for the mag and will link to that at a later date. What a great album this is ...

Filtered Senses is studio album number five for the pioneering flag bearers of Aotearoa’s rapidly evolving electronica scene, Pitch Black. It’s the duo’s first full-length release for nine years, made primarily by sending sound files back and forth across the globe while its protagonists got on with life in different parts of the world. Eventually Mike Hodgson (London) and Paddy Free (Piha, New York) got together to add the spit and polish final touches at Hodgson’s home studio, with the requisite trademark attention to detail which ensures the end product doesn’t disappoint. More than that, it works as a timely reminder of just how much Hodgson and Free still have to offer, and just how cutting edge the pair’s work has been across two full decades of working together. If anything, Filtered Senses takes things to a different level; while Pitch Black’s signature dubby dancefloor textures remain firmly intact, this feels somewhat darker and denser than anything they’ve done in the past. There’s a claustrophobic, paranoid, almost post-apocalyptic energy buried somewhere deep in this mix, and the 8-track album is all the better for the way it rather perfectly represents the worrying state of our planet as we approach the end of 2016. Looking forward to the remix version already – if we make it far, that is.

http://nzmusician.co.nz/music/pitch-black-filtered-senses/