BLUSH

Product Information

BLUSH is the stunning debut album from South London band PVA. The beating pulse of electronic music with the raw energy of a life-affirming gig and reveals more about the trio than they’ve ever previously shared.

Despite its bright, euphoric veneer, much of ‘Blush’ is filled with the sensation of feeling slightly trapped and trying to break free – it teeters on a knife edge between celebration and summoning up the bravery to celebrate yourself in the first place. This is no more clear than on ‘Transit’; an uneasy cacophony of wailing train-horn vocals and its repetitive manta: “the space between, the space between, the space between…” On ‘Hero Man’ and ‘Bad Dad’ meanwhile, Harris interrogates how this fear of taking a leap intersects with the easy confidence of masculinity. “So what?” she shrugs, “You’re some kind of ‘hero man’.”It’s like Shania Twain’s ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’ but given an electro-clash makeover.PVA’s Blush has been a long time coming. Nearly three years ago, Ella Harris and Josh Baxter–who share vocals, synths, guitars, and production–alongside drummer Louis Satchell shot out of left field with the closing 2010s decade Speedy Wunderground 7”, Divine Intervention. The cut was an electroclash ditty–four on the floor drum patterings, simmering hi-hats, a rather blurred and slinky guitar, and Harris’ “reading of a laundry-list'' speech delivery. It brimmed with ideas more than it was an outright techno banger. Yet, no one else in that pre-pandemic window quite had a cut like this that oozed casual coolness with such a riveting synth drop and boogie-bounce chorus. The tight-knit trio began when Harris and Baxter began making what they dubbed “country-friend techno” together in 2017. One of their first songs was born from Harris dictating her dreams to her new bandmate and their first show, at night called Narcissistic Exhibitionism at The Five Bells pub in New Cross, took place just two weeks after they met. The night was curated by Harris and featured painting, sculpture and photography upstairs, and bands on the ground floor. She booked PVA as headliners. To be fair, PVA were never cut from quite the same cloth. The South London trio walked a well-trodden path as graduates of the Speedy Wunderground singles club, and later cementing themselves as key players amongst the well-documented Windmill scene, but have since joined a growing trend of indie bands in favour of defecting to a more electronic pulse – see Working Men’s Club’s Fear Fear and Squid signing to Warp. The band’s resulting debut Blush arrives as an album of compromise that strikes balance between machine-made currents and the visceral raw power of an intimate live performance.

This is the sound of a group pushing past expectations and delivering an album that opens up new worlds of possibility. Defying easy categorisation might be instinctive to PVA but BLUSH makes other elements of the band’s world clearer than ever before. During the past two years Ella has worked on solo material as Lime Zoda and written two collections of poetry, much of which she used as the basis for lyrics on BLUSH.

South London band PVA’s stunning debut album BLUSH consolidates the beating pulse of electronic music with the raw energy of a life-affirming gig and reveals more about the trio than they’ve ever previously shared. GRAMMY-nominated, South London trio PVA have announced details of their highly anticipated debut album “BLUSH”. Following on from the release of their critically acclaimed single “Untethered”, the album is due out 14th October via Ninja Tune.