Pitch Black ...space invaders go large.

(Published in Selector magazine, 2001) "It's all finished", sighs a relieved Mike Hodgson, one half of New Zealand's biggest electronic act Pitch Black. He's talking about their brand new album Electronomicon, out in the shops now. We're at a cafe, waiting for his musical cohort Paddy Free to appear. "Paddy's been asleep for the last two days", explains Mike. Paddy duly arrives, and Mike tells him he's looking good. "Yeah" Paddy replies, "it's amazing what 48 hours sleep can do for you!" Yep, these guys have one serious work ethic. Pitch Black spent the last five months locked away in the studio, recording their second album. Their debut Futureproof was the result of writing and playing live for 18 months prior to recording, whereas this album was written entirely in the studio. Now they are about to set off on tour, and discover just how these tracks will work live, stripping them down then rebuilding them, an exciting prospect. I get the feeling they're both happy just to have escaped the gloomy confines of their studio space, which is devoid of any natural light. The open road awaits! So, what's changed from the first album? "This one is a bit faster than the first one", says Paddy. "The tempos are faster," adds Mike, "which partly reflects the dance scene in general, the tempos that are currently around. This album is informed by working together for the last three years, I guess. We played four tracks off the new album live at Oonst (dance party) last month; the development to turn them from studio tracks into live tracks meant there was a whole lot more music developed, which helped form the final versions." They plan to look at getting remixes done from the new album, something they pursued with their last release, the Dub Obscura ep. "There's a full on ambient album in there, a full on dance album, a full on break beat album," says Mike. "There's all sorts of possibilities for offshoots from it, I find that really exciting." Has the nature of your collaboration changed, at all? "Well, we probably understand each other better!" says Mike, laughing. "Yeah, we have more fights", adds Paddy, tongue firmly in cheek. "I tend to handle the programming side of the music, and Mike handles the programming side of the video, but we both contribute ideas." Mike says "we both have incredibly staunch ideas about aesthetics. The evidence for us just how intense that is, is when both of us have played solo (Mike as Misled Convoy, Paddy as Paddy Free) how vastly different that solo work is from what we do together.Working creatively, we have a lot of discussions about the ideas we use, and I think that's exciting. Having never been in a band, I don't have any comprehension how four or more people keep it together! I don't think I could do any more than two." Paddy says Mike brings "a sonic aesthetic, about constructing objects out of mixing, whereas I'm more, construct the object first, and the mixing is a secondary thing, whereas Mike's studio techniques actually create new parts out of themselves." Mike elaborates; "We take lots of the offshoots of studio process and turn them into parts of the tracks. Paddy has been able to take things that blow me away sonically, and turn them into rhythms." Dub is the key element in their approach. "The biggest thing is that we don't have many vocals, we have words occasionally'" says Mike. "So, something has to exist in the songs to give them some melody. Normally, dub is done as a version of an existing song. With us, the song is the dub. It's really important to us that there's a vibe within the track, that makes it more than just a bunch of effects. It's emotional, it's connecting with people. In the mix, I'm constantly making things wetter (he means adding more studio effects, like delay), opening things up more and more, and Paddy tries and makes musical sense out of that, and then we find the point where the wetness and the dryness work." Paddy suggests that dub "does tell a lot of the story in our tracks; it's more of a hypnotic, foreground object, as opposed to being something that just happens occasionally for effect." This dynamic duo seem ideally suit to each others working methods; Paddy describes it in a nutshell, when he observes that, when playing live, "I like to do it FOR the crowd, Mike likes to do it TO the crowd". Mike quickly adds that "at the end of the day, I do really like people! I think that's our common goal; We've both got exactly the same reason to be doing music. I like to shift people slightly differently than Paddy does, and between us, we shift them even further than either of us could!" After their national tour to promote the album, Mike is heading off to the States for a holiday, then returning here for some gigs over summer, then carting Paddy and his musical toys away from our fair shores, off to base themselves in the UK for a while. The plan to get out and play live, release the album, and get some remixes done over there. It's an adventure both of them are very much looking forward to. Mike says that for him, it's his shot at seeing if he can make a living from doing music. After getting great responses on this year's Big Day Out shows around Australia, could the world be their oyster?