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.