South London’s artists have long drawn inspiration from what’s happening around them – from UK garage to David Bowie, the music coming from beyond the river is often a stylistic mix of its different communities and cultures. In recent years, a fertile and loosely-labelled ‘guitar’ scene (bleugh) has followed suit – the fact that you will likely find them at The Windmill being just about the only way to lump them into one.
One such band is PVA; having just released their debut EP, ‘Toner‘ sounds nothing alike the other bands in the circuit – with PVA (made up of Josh Baxter, Ella Harris, and Louis Satchell) blending elements of techno, no-wave and disco to create something ecstatic yet completely cool. Think: the ethos of the South London punk zine, ‘Sniffin Glue‘ paired with you, sniffin glue, at a Deptford squat rave.
“The inception of the band was based on us going to gigs in South London and getting excited about the live community here,” Josh Baxter begins on a Zoom call. The fact that the multi-instrumentalist is speaking from inside his sunlit room and not some venue’s smoking area is indicative of how lockdown has paused the lives of such a community.
No live shows seemed especially cruel for PVA, however; for a while, with only half a demo online, the three-piece were making their name as an electrifying and enigmatic live band: “If you wanted to listen to us then it was just this short snippet so you could get a general idea. It meant that you had to come and see us for the full picture. Maybe it’s cool that you’d heard lots about us but there wasn’t anything online.”
It is pretty cool, I’d say. It’s certainly an unconventional approach for a band to take in this super-accessible age of streaming. The songs were written, nevertheless – many of which had been evolving for some time (the introduction of drummer, Louis helped this, as did performing them live) – but translating something that has only ever existed in between the joyous, sweaty walls of a venue to a recording was proving difficult.
“Dan Carey (Speedy Wunderground) got in contact with us and said he wanted to do the single which was great because we’d been having a lot of trouble.” With Carey and Speedy Wunderground’s status as the beating heart of the very same South London scene, the release of ‘Divine Intervention‘ not only captured the mystery and energy of PVA’s live sets, but put their expansive sound out beyond the venues in which they had made their name.
It would be daft to call PVA a guitar band, just because they use a guitar. As would it be to call them a dance band, just because they can work a sequencer. Instead, they occupy a liberating middle ground from which they can draw on the diverse musical makeup of South London, as Baxter explains: “Dotting around and taking loads of inspiration from different genres was a way to keep us excited. It’s hard not to draw from all these different places when there’s so many different kinds of music because of streaming and the internet.”
“Some of my earliest memories of dance music was going to warehouse parties; the energy there was so exciting. I had a desire to create electronic and dance music but I was surrounded by a band-y environment,” he continues, pointing out that he and Louis were in a band prior to this. “It was about drawing the bits we liked from being in a club or rave with loads of people and seeing live music on a stage.”
As of late, a series of online performances has been the closest PVA have been to a return to those famed live shows – but for a band that struggled for so long with recording, the process has been daunting: “We played a virtual Fred Perry show and we hadn’t rehearsed in ages. I was super concerned about playing everything right because it was all recorded – I feel like I kind of forgot to have fun.”
Having honed their live set without any music online, the return to gigging with a body of work as exciting as Toner will surely excite both the band and their fans. Josh takes a swig of his water and smiles: “When you’re on stage it’s all about enjoying yourself. We want to have fun.”
Not long now…
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