Back in 1999, Pitchshifter released a single titled “Un-United Kingdom,” which was essentially a sneering punk anthem that also channelled my 23-year-old anger. Halfway between the Prodigy and The Pistols, whom I was obsessed with at the time (their guitarist, Jim Davies, later joined the Prodigy), it remains a song I play regularly.
It hadn’t always been like that for the band, and this EP celebrates that.
Back in the early days, they were unlike anything I’d heard before. I can remember listening to The Peel Sessions with them on and not knowing what it was I was listening to.
Pioneers of the “Death industrial” movement with Godflesh and the like, it was heavy in a way I hadn’t heard before. These three songs (a taster for an EP only phyiscally available at their shows this winter) reflect that period.
“Gritter” is nasty, desolate, and barren—the musical equivalent of landing on a planet a million light-years away and trying to set up home. It’s not supposed to be enjoyable.
Which is precisely why it’s superb.
“Tendril” is a world away from what they became. Yet, somehow—a little like Paradise Lost or My Dying Bride, albeit in a different realm—it’s possible to spot the genesis of the band.
Certainly, by ’93, and the more punk riffs of “Deconstruction (Reconstruction),” there’s a sense of what they were to become.
It’s to their credit that they’ve always just made the music they wanted.
For some of us, this noise—and I mean that with respect—was seminal.
Rating: 8.5/10
REVIEW: PITCHSHIFTER – THE PEEL SESSIONS 91-93
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