PVT Return To Action With Nine-minute Song, Album Info & Tour Dates

It's been three years since their last studio album and they spent 2015 focusing on 10-year anniversary shows, so it's a pretty dang wonderful feeling to get so much fresh PVT news in a single day.

The veteran Sydney-London experimental trio have returned to the spotlight with their first new goods since the release of 2013 LP Homosapien, a nine-minute-long slow-burner of a comeback titled Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend.

It's not the most accessible thing the band have ever created, but we suspect that won't matter to listeners who've stuck with them over the years since 2005's debut LP Make Me Love You, especially considering how much PVT have changed in that time.

The hypnotic, undulating track — which comes complemented with a frankly pretty bleak but still great video clip — is the first song to be previewed from the band's forthcoming fifth studio full-length, New Spirit, and in many ways is broadly representative of the wider album, set to be released on Friday 17 February via stalwart label Create/Control. Make no mistake: Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend was definitely intended to make a statement.

"We thought releasing a nine-minute song would be kind of confrontational in some ways," the band said in a statement. "...[T]his track is the spiritual centrepiece of the record and it's a song that's kind of directly about the environment but touches on this idea of identity.

"We've always felt like as Australians the environment has a really strong connection to the Australian spirit, the Australian psyche, the Australian identity — whatever you want to call it." 

"The video is about reclaiming identity and reclaiming a sense of spirit," they continued. "It's quite a surreal video in a lot of ways, but it's transcending that and reclaiming that sense of spirit to become something far greater."

As is tradition, the trio will be hitting the road in celebration of the album from the week after its release, getting under way with a showing at Melbourne's National Gallery Of Victoria and heading on to shows in Brisbane (The Foundry) and Sydney (Oxford Art Factory).

Tickets for PVT's headline shows go on sale at 9am this coming Monday, 7 November. For dates, venues and booking details, see theGuide.

Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend is available to download or stream here.

New Spirit is available for pre-order now. Check out its cover, by ARIA-winning Australian artist Jonathan Zawada (Flume — Skin) and track list below.

PVT — New Spirit track list