MTV News - Pitchshifter Unveils New Label Deal, Album

Two years and one major label mishap have passed since Pitchshifter launched its acclaimed "www.pitchshifter.com" into record stores, and the band will soon return with a fresh sampling of drum-and-bass-flavored metal. On May 23, Pitchshifter will deliver "Deviant" to stores, with the help of its new label home, MCA Records.

In 1998, the British band's major label debut caught the ear of numerous critics; however, that album came courtesy of Geffen Records' subsidiary DGC, which soon slashed its roster after Geffen's parent company, Universal Records, merged with Polygram Music. Pitchshifter was left label-less as a result, and the band was soon snatched up by MCA.

Next month's release of "Deviant" will not only mark the end of the group's label turmoil; it will also see Pitchshifter unveil a new lineup. The band's official Web site (www.pitchshifter.com) notes that rhythm guitarist and programmer Johnny Carter recently left the group, and drummer D soon followed. Pitchshifter's camp notes that the split was amicable, and has recruited Bivouac guitarist Matt Grundy and Stimulator drummer Jason Bowld to round out the group.

In addition to shuffling labels and lineups, Pitchshifter also had to change the cover art for "Deviant" when the Norman Rockwell-esque portrait the band commissioned turned out to be a bit too similar to the original. Artist William George lampooned Rockwell's famous Thanksgiving dinner portrait in the original cover art for "Deviant," putting together a scene in which an apple-cheeked family gathers round a giant hand grenade. Fearing potential legal action, the band opted for a different cover, so when the album arrives next month, fans will find the visage of the Pope morphing into the Queen of England.

Pitchshifter is already road testing its new material on the road in support of Static-X. Here's where you can catch them:

• 4/28 - Columbus, OH @ Al Rosa Villa
• 4/29 - Tampa, FL @ WXTB Radio Show
• 5/1 - Rochester, NY @ Harro East
• 5/3 - Old Bridge, NJ @ Birch Hill Nite Club
• 5/4 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
• 5/5 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Trocadero
• 5/6 - Hartford, CT @ Webster Theatre
• 5/7 - Providence, RI @ Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel
• 5/9 - Winston-Salem, NC @ Ziggy's
• 5/10 - Atlanta, GA @ Cotton Club
• 5/11 - San Antonio, TX @ Sunken Garden Amph.
• 5/12 - San Antonio, TX @ Sunken Garden Amph.
• 5/15 - El Paso, TX @ Club 101
• 5/16 - Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theatre
• 5/17 - Tucson, AZ @ The Rialto
• 5/18 - Mesa, AZ @ Nile Theatre
• 5/20 - Las Vegas, NV @ KXTE Radio Show
• 5/21 - Hollywood, CA @ The Palace

-- Robert Mancini

Pitchshifter Family Tree 2000

Biography 1999

JS Clayden - vocals, programming JA Carter - guitars, programming MD Clayden - bass D - live drums Jim Davies - live guitars

"Turn on, log in, drop out, www.pitchshifter.com"

As the rest of the world hurtles towards the millennium, Pitchshifter has already leap-frogged into the next century. The sound of their new album 'www.pitchshifter.com' is like nothing you have heard before - the sound of technology used to create maximum chaos. Welcome to the virtual reality of Pitchshifter.

Signing to cult label Earache, in 1992 Pitchshifter unleashed their 'Submit' mini-album onto an unsuspecting world. Their fierce and fiery combination of radical attitude and crushing, metallic aggression began to permeate the underground. The band's reputation seeped through by word of mouth on the back of ferocious live shows supporting everyone and anyone from Fugazi to Napalm Death. "We have to ask questions," says JS Clayden. "If you ask a question, you may be told a lie. A lie is evidence. If the question is never asked, the evidence is never presented..."

Pitchshifter is not just about their aggressive, compulsive music. "Pitchshifter is about making people think," says frontman JS Clayden, "think about the world around them, about how they perceive music, about themselves. About not sitting there and being spoon-fed their news any more - about hunting down the truth for themselves."

'www.pitchshifter.com' , the band's debut album for the DGC label, showcases a band utilising all their creative powers to entertain, to question and to break new musical ground. But the roots of Pitchshifter extend right back to the early 1990s, and the burgeoning industrial metal underground... By 1993, the underground was more than ready for 'Desensitised', a landmark industrial album which took Pitchshifter on the road for two years, and brought them to the attention of America for the first time. Pitchshifter's innovative use of live slide shows and onstage programming, combined with the wave of fearsome excitement which their live shows created, spread their reputation across the US. Venues were shaken to their foundations, agit-propaganda flyers unleashed.

But Pitchshifter soon out grew the industrial machine they had created. They began to explore new areas. to calculate how they could spread their message to the mainstream, to utilise the new computerised technology with which they had become fascinated into their songs of protest. The result was 1996's 'Infotainment?' another supremely innovative collection of heavy weight songs, political protests and technological agitation. Pitchshifter, always in favour of their increasing audience interacting directly with the band's message, even placed free samples at the end of this CD, encouraging their fans to 'steal' them to create their own musical reality. Their live shows, always compulsive, now bordered on the dangerous, stage invasions huge and frequent, exploding PA's not unheard of. Their videos for tracks like 'Underachiever' became MTV staples in Europe, and the likes of Korn, Tool, Ministry, Biohazard and Girls Against Boys took their lives in their hands by inviting Pitchshifter to support them at their shows. A mysterious crop circle in the shaped of the infamous PSI 'eye' logo even appeared in a field next to the phoenix Festival in 1995, shortly before a mid-song riot during the band's daylight set short-circuited the main stage....

While 'Infotainment?' brought Pitchshifter to the attention of the mainstream for the first time, the band were already in heavy demand from their musical contempories. 'Pitchshifter Vs... The Remix Wars' (1995) found fellow musicians and fans of the band queuing up to remix Pitchshifter's inflammatory material and mould it to their own individual styles. Programming terrorists JS Clayden and JA Carter also expanded their horizons to encompass a series of radical remixes for other European outfits, from mainstream metal acts like Clawfinger and Misery Loves Co to contemporaries of the underground from which they had originally sprung.

For Pitchshifter, it was now time to make a musical quantum leap. It was just a question of whether the rest of the world was ready for what the band had planned...

'www.pitchshifter.com' is that quantum leap, a 13 track set of radical outpourings in which Pitchshifter trailblaze a hybrid musical genre. "we discovered that we all like two thing", says JS Clayden "Breakbeats and punk". So we welded them together to see what would happen. We have a punk mentality, and drum 'n' bass is the punk of the late '90's. It just seemed natural to make these rhythms the backbone of our ideas." Using their innovative website to further spread the PSI conspiracy, and with the addition of wunderkind live guitarist and notorious techno wizard Jim Davies, the creation of the monster that is "www.pitchshifter.com" commended. This is anew breed of guitar and sample music", admits Clayden. "Calls it what you will. It could be 'strum 'n' bass' - it could be whatever you want." Whatever it was, it was a genre which had never before been explored. In early 1997, Pitchshifter signed to DGC Records in order to put their plans into action, and selected rising producer machine to translate their ideas in the studio. "In my first ever phone conversation with JS Clayden," says Machine, "he said to me: lets make the sickest, most ultimate guitar/dance music crossover record imaginable. And that is exactly what we did".

www.pitchshifter.com' is power and aggression on a massive global scale, with every aspect of new technologies contributing to making a totally virtual record. "There was nothing but inspiration across the board," machine admits, "Pitchshifter are awesome programmers, and what we did was just bring all their live guitars and live drums into that environment. Once that shit hit the hard drive, there was no stopping us from making and manipulating the sonic boom that this record is. I am serious when I say that this album is like no other album that has gone before...." The bands new single "Genius" is set to storm the States as its the title track from the smash No1 Box office hit "MORTAL KOMBAT", the single will be released on the 16th February in the UK. The album www.pitchshifter.com which is also the website address.

01/08/98 - Water Street Music Hall. Rochester, NY.

Before the show I meet a girl who can't get into the gig. She has her birth
certificate, credit cards and a driving permit but no driving licence so
they won't let her in. I feel really sorry for her. I give her some free
Pitchshifter stuff, it's not much but it's all I can do. She's driven for
three hours to get here and bought a ticket but she gets nothing and no
refund. What the fuck is wrong with this country? I have this incredible
idea, listen up y'all, it may be unorthodox but here goes:

WHY DON'T YOU LOWER THE LEGAL DRINKING AGE TO 18 LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD?

Can't you guys get it together for a revolution or something? I mean I don't
really have the right to say that coming from a country that never rebelled
against anything but it just kills me to see people drive hours to support
live music, only to get snubbed at the door because some stiff white
republican arses in congress don't want people to have fun with booze. Vote
for me, Jon Clayden's 'Booze for the Under 21's campaign': 'WIN OR LOSE
WE'LL HAVE SOME BOOZE'. . . Can I say that?

The show is good. The crowd barrier is a carpeted rail like a gymnastics
beam from a school gym. It makes an excellent object to run along and stage
dive from and we do. During the show I watch a guy spit at me from the
crowd. It hits my arm. Nice. I tell the tough guy that he could at least
get his diseased phlegm in my mouth if he's going to spit at me. He has a
few more tries but fails. I spit one big greeny right back at him and he
doesn't look happy. This guy is a prick. I can hear him talking to the girls
tomorrow now:

"Yeah I spat on the singer from Pitchshifter from the safety of the crowd.
I'm a real tough guy. Wanna do me?"

After the show we get driven to a club by a mother and daughter team. Why
the hell anyone's mother would want to be at one of our gigs I don't know.
Maybe it's a Gravity Kills thing. Like the fast food chains 'Kids eat free'
deals, only in reverse. The club is very odd. It's a gothic/industrial night
and there are ten people inside. Approaching the bar, I ask the barman what
kind of beers they have or any specials on wells (spirits).
"You must be the two guys from Pitchshifter who played at the Water street
tonight. Chris said I should look after you, anything you want gentlemen, on
the house."
Shit. The kiss of death. 'Anything you want free'. Doomed. I feel like Jack
Nicholson in The Shining all over again. "But you've always been the janitor
Mr. Clayden." Needless to say Jim and I get totally wankered. A few hours
and one new friend later and we manage to convince a pretty young lady to
drive us back to the bus. I can't remember how we met her but she's very
accommodating and her car is fast. Back on the bus we freak her out by
watching 'Aeroplane' for the millionth time as Jim staggers around with a
two litre bottle of red wine pre-quoting the movie. Good night Rochester.


The pictures? D made a chair sculpture in the dressing room after a few ales
and the other one is the aforementioned mother . . . headbanging. (Where
will it all end?)

31/07/98 - Day Off. Rochester, NY.

I wake up in the afternoon and head out of the dolphin to Greg's room to use his shower.

"Man that's some big assed bus you got there. You guys in a band?"

America is obsessed by ass. A continual stream of ass. Stupid ass, wild ass, crazy ass, lame ass, big ass, I'll kick your ass, kiss my ass. Ass this, ass that. Everyone's ass mad. I find this surprising as it's one of the most openly homophobic countries I've been to. Why is everyone so obsessed with ass? Answers on a postcard to 'Why America is obsessed with Ass competition', PO Box 59, Nottingham, NG2 4BQ. All entries must arrive before December 1st and all winners will be notified by post.

Day off. Ass. Here we are in Rochester. The lack of blood around Greg's lips suggests that doesn't appear to have had an aneurysm this morning, and so I'm assuming he made that date with the Canadian consulate while I slumbered like a babe in my bunk. Like it or lump it kids - Pitchshifter are coming to Canada.

As I finished my Chinese meal today (for breakfast - thank you) I started to realise that fortune cookies are beginning to take a hold of this tour. As we don't have a stove, we eat out a lot. We are all vegetarian and so the choices are limited in the great melting pot (of meat). There's usually a Chinese restaurant in most towns and they usually have a few death free noodle dishes, and miraculously they fully understand the art of cooking without cheese (please take note Denny's Wendy's etc.). So we hit the Chinese a lot. The problem is they always give you a fortune cookie. Times that by the nine people in our crew and it only takes a few visits to the Chinese a week and suddenly you have a pile of fortunes. They're supposed to be fun, but they always seem to be so ominous. Today's offering read:

'YOU WILL PASS A DIFFICULT TEST THAT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPIER'

(Accompanied by two 'smiley' acid house faces.) I don't like it. That sounds evil. What's the test going to be? Cavity search test? No, I don't like it. Then I got to thinking. How cool it would be to produce the cookies. Think of all the minds you could warp if you had a control over the fortune papers. I could try and get people to actually think. It could revolutionise dining:

'YOU WILL REALISE THAT BLACK PEOPLE ARE NO DIFFERENT ON THE INSIDE' 'YOU WILL SEE THAT NOT EVERYTHING ON THE NEWS IS NECESSARILY TRUE'
'ONLY BY READING BOOKS BY BURROUGHS AND THOMPSON WILL YOU LIVE LONG AND PROSPER '

What the fuck am I thinking? It'll never work. Not enough meat dishes. If you could stain those slogans right into the veins of red meat straight from the cow's back . . . now you're talking. You could hit all the fast food joints too. There's no way they could escape you. Propaganda laden Blackpool rock meat. I like it. The picture: I wanted to show you the glamorous life we lead on the tour bus. This is one of those luxurious bunks on the dolphin I keep mentioning. Please note the ceiling height, yes it does take you a few days to remember to duck when you wake up.

30/07/98 - Intersection. Grand Rapids, MI.

Grand rapids is a weird place. It's Thursday afternoon and everything is closed. I guess people here don't get hungry on Thursdays. Me? I'm bloody starving and I've been confined to consuming the despair of a Subway. Lord have mercy.
So tonight I get the full story about Sam the drummer from Cold. Last night their driver pulled over to re-fuel while everyone was asleep. Sam got out to take a dump, and the driver, who thought everyone was still asleep (and didn't get a note from Sam) left after filling up. So there our boy is, no shoes, no T-shirt, wearing only shorts, sitting at a truckstop in Iowa. One dollar in his pocket, 500 miles from the rest of his band. He had to beg for cash to eat and someone gave him a pair of boots. Cowboy boots. The band didn't realise he was gone until they got to the gig. Our boy had to hitch hike in shorts and cowboy boots with no socks or T-shirt. A trucker took him most of the way. The trucker had his delivery to make at the steel mill and so our boy had to sit there and wait somewhere in Iowa while the trucker strapped steel girders to the wagon. It took Sam 23 hours to get back with his crew. The poor bastard. He looks visibly weakened.

My arm hurts like hell from the burn (see pic) but he gig is great. I have a great gig simply because I can clearly hear my voice perfectly clearly in the monitors. A rare occurrence. The tone is perfect and the level is great. It might have sounded awful out front, but on stage it sounded amazing.

"I went to see Pitchshifter last night."
"Yeah? What were they like?"
"They sounded great on stage."

After the show we have to drive to Buffalo. We have to get to the Canadian embassy. We didn't find out that we were going to play the Canadian gig until four weeks ago. It takes six weeks to process an entry request to play in Canada. We couldn't obviously couldn't get it done in the allotted time. Now we have to physically bring our passports to the nearest Canadian embassy, which happens to be in Buffalo. It's 500 miles from Grand Rapids to Buffalo. They embassy gave us a window from 8.30 am to 11.30 am to get there and process the passports. The lady said it would probably take a few hours and so it's best for us to get there at 8.30 am. We pack up fast and leave the gig at 1.30 am. That's gives us 7 hours to drive 500 miles. By my calculation we have to drive at 71 miles an hour continually for seven hours to get there. One mile over the speed limit all the way for seven hours. It doesn't look good does it? I'll let you know what happens tomorrow. If we miss the Canadian embassy we can't play in Canada. Wish us luck.

Just before I crash out in my bunk I hear Bo the driver calling me from the front seat.

"Jon! Jon c'mere!"
"What?"
"I'm sick of listening to these assholes talk shit on the CB. Give 'em some of that crazy stuff you talk. I wanna make their heads hurt."

I take charge of the CB, my best late Fifties English newsreader voice in full force:

"ROLL UP, ROLL UP: SINGLE CELL ORGANISMS TO THE FRONT! HORSES TO THE WALL! YOUR SNICKERS AND COKE WILL LANCE THE KAISER'S CYST AS THE WEASEL OF THE APOCALYPSE STALKS US IN THIS FIELD OF DESPAIR! THROW YOURSELVES INTO THE AFFRAY! THE FINAL HARVEST IS COMINGGGGGG!"
"Thanks Jon that should do it."
"Good night Bo."
"G'night Jon."

29/07/98 - Emerson Theatre. Indianapolis, IN.

When I wake up in the afternoon I discover that the bandage has slipped off my arm and onto the bus floor. My duvet is by my feet and the tape tape that was holding the bandage to my arm has managed to attach itself to my penis. What the hell do I do in my sleep? Don't answer that. There's a trickle of green cream cheese running from my arm. The burn has gone septic. Yummy. I clean it up and head for the gig. 'Cold' who have recently joined the tour can't play tonight. Not because of 'Injury Day' or anything, they seem immune to all that. They can't play because they lost the drummer. I don't how they lost him, something to do with a truck stop, but they lost him all the same. Very odd. We've been playing together for nine years and we've never lost each other. We lost our soundman once but never the band, etiquette forbids. The show itself is good (sick of hearing that yet?). The crowd seem to like Pitchshifter and all is well. We've sold a few records here and it's nice to know that people are prepared to support the music live too. I stick a bandage on my arm to keep it clean while we play. The damn thing burns like hell all the way through. It's the sweat. It keeps running into it. Apparently 'chics dig scars' and so I'm going to be OK from now on. Dinner dates coming out of my ears and a full dance card. Better cancel my computer dating membership tomorrow.

After the show I meet a very large doctor. At first I thought she was a transvestite. Not because she's overtly ugly or anything, but because she's taller than me and she looks harder than me. She is in fact a woman, and a doctor at that. Doc Morrison takes a look at my burnt arm. She tells me it's a second degree burn and I should take care to keep it clean.

"Tell me straight Doc, how long have I got?"
"You'll live."
(I had to ask her, it was bigger than me, I just want to say the words once before I die.)

The picture? It's a picture of myself and the Butler boys: James and Biff. They're really nice lads and they both dig Pitchshifter. Their Mum is a very nice lady and their Dad is one of the Lords of Heavy Rock. Functional Heavy Metal family - I like it!

28/07/98 - Safari Club. Des Moines, IA.

Injury day has become Injury Week. As we pull up to the Safari Club I am greeted by Doug from Gravity Kills. Two sentences into our conversation he tells me about Chris (Gravity Kills stage tech). Chris has damaged his back lifting the equipment, he can hardly walk properly. Chris is a nice guy. I feel bad for him. I hope he can finish the tour. Another winner for Injury week:

"Chris, do you stick with your damaged spine or gamble the lot for a much worse and potentialy fatal injury? . . . I'm going to have to hurry you Chris . . . injury week can't last forever!"

The gig is one of the hottest shows we have ever played. The place is rammed (although sadly I see no pith helmets) and there's no air conditioning. The only AC is coming from the two fans we have on stage to cool ourselves down. We die up there. We slash songs out of the set every other song. It's just too hot to play properly. During the show a kid pulls me down as I try to get back on stage after a stage dive. I get away from him but my hand starts to really hurt me. I guess I twisted it. We play hard and fast and exit through the crowd. Not bad for no sound check. I guess we still have the juice, major label or no change in our pockets.

After the show my hand starts to really hurt. Burning. It looks all fucked up. I remember what happened now. I got pulled onto one of the halogen stage lights standing on the floor. I stuck my hand into the light to save my face and now it's all burnt. There's a blister on the side of my hand and a section of my skin missing from the wrist. Very nice. Injury week strolls ever onward. To recap: the soundman has broken his big toe, Johnny has cracked his head, Chris has fucked his back and now I've singed my hand. Get a hold of George Cloony will ya?! It's an episode of ER. The Gravity Kills and Pitchshifter Emergency Room Show. Come one, come all, only ten American dollars to see the travelling hospital Freak Show. All ages welcome. Book early to avoid disappointment. Also available for children's parties. Very reasonable rates.

27/07/98 - Day off. Minneapolis, MN.

The tour itinerary shouldn't read 'Day Off', it should read 'Injury Day'. Two of us are down. Michael Caine is telling the Zulu's to stop chucking their bloody spears at him in 'Zulu' the movie playing on the bus satellite TV. The dolphin has become a rolling hospital. An omen? Are we to expect more? Johnny woke up with a cut on his forehead (see pic) and he feels [sic] 'weird'. Shirt (the soundman) looks like he's broken his big toe (see pic). It's all purple and horrible looking and to top it off he's twisted his knee on the same leg. He has to hobble to the toilet and back like the wounded soldiers in Zulu. I don't ask either of them how it happened. A man's injuries are his own affair, like his French fries. Never eat another man's French fries. People like to suffer on their own.

During the day we take the dolphin to Universal records and say hello to the people from the Minneapolis office. They are all friendly types and I leave with a good enough selection of jazz and blues to annoy the rest of the boys with for the remainder of the tour. (The bloody heathens.)

At night I take a jaunt with Greg to see Siouxie and the Creatures at a local venue. John Cale(who was the original guitarist in the Velvet Underground) was on first, then Siouxie came out and strutted her stuff. And where did it all go my friends? Right over my head, or rather I should say right through me. It all washed completely through me and I left after 15 minutes. From what I can remember both of these artists started off punk and now they've become the total antithesis of that; endless rambling lyrics and overly dramatic synth music. It's just my point of view. I don't want to bea critic. I'm just telling it like I saw it. They were not my people.

Injury day rolls on. On the overnight ride to Des Moines my brother tells me that Jim and he saw a woman get run over in the street today. A bus hit her in the head. She was lying in the street not moving with her eyes open as the shoppers filed by. On the local news I saw that three people got shot in Minneapolis today. On the national news I see that a rack of scaffolding has fallen off the side of a building in New York City and killed another three people. 'Injury Day' spreads over into a national holiday. The whole block has been cordoned off for safety reasons. The weird bit? Both our tour agent and our travel agent are housed in that block. Neither of them can get into their offices. We can t find out anything about the upcoming hotels or gigs. We are effectively blind. Tooling around the country in a blind dolphin looking for gigs. What are the odds of that happening? A million to one? You've got to laugh. As long as I am safely housed in the belly of the dolphin and I have food money I don't concern myself with all that. What will be will be, me losing my hair over it won't change a thing. Onward to Des Moines!

26/07/98 - Mall of America. Minneapolis, MN.

Today is technically a day off. We don't have a gig but we have something to do. We have to go to the Mall of America. None of us have any concept of what the Mall of America is and so we unsuspectingly await the arrival of the record company representative for Minneapolis. He's a nice guy and he wouldn't steer us wrong. The Mall of America must be OK.

CLANG! The Mall of America is a giant puss filled dripping sore on the face of the Earth. Forget the Ribfest, that's small potatoes next to this baby. The Mall of America is the new epicentre of evil for the Mid West. Let me explain: the Mall of America is a mall, obviously, except that this fucker is as big a town. There are thousands of completely normal people . . . shopping. The sickness is endless. There's even a theme park inside the mall (see pic). Ferris wheels, a roller coaster, rides, stalls, hot-dogs, trees? It's a fucking nightmare, some twisted combination of 'Stepford Wives' and 'They Live'. We (of course) are the Antichrist in this environment. Jim got totally drunk last night and let some lesbians die his hair luminous green. Mark's dreadlocks are sticking straight up and Greg's full 'rude boy' ska attire and his 'Made in England' neck tattoo go down a treat with the white trash. God help us. They're going to lynch us.

Our mission in this gateway to the underworld is to sign a few autographs and say hello to the folks at an alternative store deep in the heart of the Mall. The folks in the stall are very friendly and they are 'one of us'. An alternative oasis in a sea of shit. We gladly sign a few posters and CDs and generally mill around and look useful. How they survive being encircled by the relentless, pointless, consumer hell I'll never know. My hat goes off to you all. The second we can leave the Mall of America we run out of there. I actually have a headache. I haven't had one for ages. This safe haven for endless ineffectuality has damaged my mind.

Lynch/Kafka - 1, Pitchshifter - 0.