Laurence Pike

Australian percussionist Laurence Pike maintains active ties to musicians spanning jazz, indie rock, and experimental electronic scenes, while his own recordings merge those idioms into a singular voice. Having played in Triosk, Pivot/PVT, and Szun Waves, he issued the first of his spontaneous solo projects, Distant Early Warning, in 2018. His initial outing for choir and ensemble, The Undreamt-of Centre, emerged in 2024; a concert document of those same pieces followed the next year.

Pike trained at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under jazz pianist Mike Nock. Early recognition arrived through the electronic jazz-improvisation trio Triosk, whose 2003 collaboration with Jan Jelinek, 1+3+1, appeared on Pole’s ~scape imprint, after which the group delivered two further albums on Leaf before dissolving in 2007. He next joined the post-rock outfit Pivot, whose debut Make Me Love You surfaced in 2005; three years later the band moved to Warp for O Soundtrack My Heart. Additional credits from this period include sessions with Flanger, Bertie Blackman, and Savath & Savalas. In 2006 Monika Enterprise released Pike’s solo EP Drums for Fun and Fitness, built around a nine-minute drum solo and featuring remixes by Gudrun Gut and Masha Qrella. He also performed with Roam the Hello Clouds, whose Near Misses came out on ~scape in 2007.

Pivot adopted the name PVT in 2010 and issued Church with No Magic on Warp; two subsequent albums appeared on Felte. During the same stretch Pike contributed to recordings by Sarah Blasko and Jane Tyrrell. He formed Szun Waves alongside Luke Abbott and Jack Wyllie; the trio’s first album, At Sacred Walls, was released by Buffalo Temple in 2016, followed in 2018 by New Hymn to Freedom on Leaf. That same year Leaf issued Pike’s debut solo full-length, Distant Early Warning, captured live using only drums and sampler. He adopted the same method for Holy Spring in 2019. The following year he released Prophecy, composed in the wake of the Australian wildfires of 2019–2020.

A duo project with guitarist Cameron Deyell, Isola, appeared on Endless Recordings in 2022. Pike’s next record served as a requiem for his father-in-law, who died in 2021. The Undreamt-of Centre was recorded with the Vox Sydney Philharmonia Choir inside a nineteenth-century Gothic church and issued in 2024; early the next year a live rendering, The Undreamt-of Centre (Live at Phoenix Central Park), was made available digitally.