| Melbourne’s Primitive Calculators met as teenagers in the early 70s, inspired by obvious heroes like The Velvet Underground, and The MC5 as well as then lesser known bands like The Fugs, The 13th Floor Elevators and The Godz. By 1977, they had formed a punk band called The Moths, and became Primitive Calculators in 1978. They cemented an identity of their own by developing a network of likeminded friends called the Little Bands, setting up a series of gigs where hastily-formed groups with names like Too Fat To Fit Through The Door and Thrush & The Cunts would play sets of fifteen minutes each.
Primitive Calculators’ debut single was released in 1979, pressed with plain black labels in a stark black and white sleeve, which introduced the atonal electronic chaos that was the Primitive Calculators’ trademark. It has gone on to become a highly collectable classic of Australian post-punk.
The following year the band attempted to relocate to London, but seeing how difficult life was for fellow expats the Birthday Party they decided instead to take an indefinite break. A live recording of a gig supporting the Boys Next Door in 1979 turned out to be Primitive Calculators’ swansong. Released by friend and supporter Alan Bamford in the early 1980s, Primitive Calculators is a crucial document of a band whose originality, power and humorously belligerent Australian mindset has never since been duplicated.
The band had an unexpected renaissance in 1986, when filmmaker Richard Lowenstein included them in his feature Dogs In Space (starring a young Michael Hutchence of INXS). Primitive Calculators reformed to appear in the movie and re-recorded their song Pumping Ugly Muscle for the soundtrack.
Chapter Music’s reissue of Primitive Calculators, twenty-five years after its original release, includes six bonus tracks (four by the Primitive Calculators, one by the Moths, and one by a nameless Primitive Calculators/Whirlywirld hybrid, recorded in the UK), plus a rarely seen video made for the song I Can’t Stop It by friend Janis Lesinskis. |
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