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What the hell is happening in Prague and Vienna these days? What combination of events transpired to create such a crackling musical euphoroia? It’s near impossible to put a finger on exactly what PITVA sounds like but it lands somewhere between militaristic Eastern Bloc post punk with brittle early black metal production and Einstürzende Neubauten’s approach to “music” with all the appropriate banging and noisewash. Add in a couple Peter Murphy style howls and you’re starting to get there. Maybe… All that is happening and this beast still drives like a hardcore punk record. Makes sense since this is people from Heavy Metal, Rosa Nebel, Privat, Sick Horse, Parasite Dreams, Smuteční Slavnost, Bobby Would etc.
Do not sleep on this! ( Jensen Ward / Iron Lung Records )
Do not sleep on this! ( Jensen Ward / Iron Lung Records )
Our take: I spent the first several listens to this Pitva record just trying to wrap my ears around it, figuring out what was going on. Really, I’m still in that stage… what is this strange record? The easiest way to describe Pitva might be to say that they live at the intersection of hardcore and noise music, but that can mean so many things. Pitva isn’t hardcore with noise elements laid on top like Bad Breeding (whom I also love), and they aren’t noise music with a hardcore pulse. Maybe they’re not hardcore or noise music at all, as Pitva seems to arrive at their sound by some kind of weird alchemy. The one record in my collection that Pitva reminds me of is the first Iceage LP, another record that had me wondering, “is this hardcore? and if not, then what is it?” Perhaps, like Iceage, Pitva will abandon the chaotic and abrasive elements of their sound and focus on the icy atmospheres and ghostly hooks, but it’s hard to image that based just on this record… the abrasiveness is too baked in. Despite having spent a lot of time listening to Pitva since this record landed at Sorry State, I feel like I’m still not really hearing the music, because I’m still staring agog at the turntable, wondering how they arrived at this sound. Where most music seems to be built up by a gradual accretion of rhythms, melodies, lyrics, and other musical elements, Pitva sounds like they started with a block of white noise and chipped away at it with chisels, axes, hammers, hydrochloric acid, and other caustic agents. This isn’t music you dance to or sing along with, it’s music that inspires wonder, that transports you to a place that’s strange and uncanny.