PITCHSHIFTER Guitarist Talks About Band's Return

RockMidgets.com recently conducted an interview with PITCHSHIFTER guitarist Dan Rayner. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

RockMidgets.com: Obvious question, but why have PITCHSHIFTER got back together now?

Dan: Well, we never really broke up. If you read the small print, it says "indefinite hiatus." And I don't know, I guess that's a cover-all clause, but PITCHSHIFTER has evolved into something really quite interesting now. Obviously musically, we were always an interesting, progressive band, but as a group of individuals now, it's kind of a really nice network of people with divergent sorts of tastes and talents. We've all got a lot of other stuff going on. There's no label pressure because we are the label and there's no 18 months touring or recording schedule and people forcing us to do stuff we don't want to do. It means now that we're completely hegemonic and we can do whatever we want.

When we feel the time is right, we all put gaps in our schedules and we all come back together and that's what happens. We don't sort of sit down and have a strategy meeting. We don't all like fly in like Thunderbirds, but after a while it just starts to feel right and I'll have a conversation with Jase or John to see what's going on, and it just comes together like that.

RockMidgets.com: But you've not all been quiet have you? Members of PITCHSHIFTER have been in various bands...

Dan: Yeah, sure. John's (J.S. Clayden, vocals) over in L.A. He's doing a lot of management for people but he's also spending most of his time running PSI Records. As well as being a regular record label for PITCHSHIFTER they also released THIS IS MENACE stuff, which is Mark (Clayden, bass) and Jason's (Bowlds, drums) massive side project that's sort of taken over the rock world, with every singer you can think of appearing on their groups of albums. They're recording a new album as we speak. I heard some of it the other day, it sounds amazing. Then me and my brother (Tim),we're in DRAWBACKS, which is a sort of production thing, couple of producers that we are, and occasionally getting time to go out and do gigs and put an EP out. We've got a new EP called "I-Bomb" coming out, but we spend most of our time remixing other people, like 'MENACE for instance, and doing production for people, and production music. John pushes our music into film and stuff in L.A., that's how we hook up, still working within the PITCHSHIFTER family when we're not PITCHSHIFTER.

RockMidgets.com: PITCHSHIFTER have got a very original sound. Have you come back to fill a gap in the music industry for your style of music?

Dan: There's no strategy. It's not like, you know, a corporate mission, like, now is a good time to really push the band into the next stage. It's not like that.

PITCHSHIFTER were one of the first bands to have a really strong online presence. No other bands are really getting online the way PITCHSHIFTER is. We're a forward-thinking band. We are always looking for new avenues to move into. And so we interface directly with the fans online all the time with forums and people can get in touch with us directly and you can go to Drawbacks.net or ThisIsMenance.com and speak straight to us, so we have a pretty good dialogue with our fans and what they want. And at the same time, because PITCHSHIFTER is quite a broad church, from techno to metal and some in between, the fans also follow the other parts of the PITCHSHIFTER family, DRAWBACKS or THIS IS MENACE. THIS IS MENACE is incredibly heavy, and DRAWBACKS' like really, really heavy electronic, but PITCHSHIFTER sort fuses all those elements. The kids that come and see us, and some aren't kids anymore, they're pretty broad and open minded, so it's seems that the more diverse we can make our activities, the happier they are. A lot of fans just want their band like MOTÖRHEAD to keep making the same album over and over again. Some people may want Dot Com over and over again, but luckily most people are happy to find something new and will be interested in what we're doing."

Read the entire interview at RockMidgets.com.