To mark the release of Lost Frequencies, we've stocked a couple of classic Primitive Motion LPs. Between 2013-2018, Primitive Motion released their defining trio of albums on Bedroom Suck. Pulsating Time Fibre was the 2nd in the run and a pop doozy:
David Keenan, The Wire - “The enigmatic title almost gives it away, a fragment of the past come alive. The Brisbane duo of Sandra Selig and Leighton Craig occupy an alternative pop continuum in common with archaic futurists like The Silver Apples and Joe Meek circa I Hear a New World, sonic explorers whose music is founded on the hope that the sound of tomorrow is what the fantasy of yesterday would make of it.
Craig and Selig are perhaps best known for their work with The Deadnotes, a group that took Tori Kudo's notion of idiot-avant into the Australian garage. Craig was also a member of the Lost Domain while Selig is an accomplished visual artist. Utilising male and female vocals, keyboards, flute, saxophone, clarinet, drums and bass, the duo navigate FX heavy envrions combine oscillating rhythms and and crude drum tattoos with soft, narcotic synth patterns.
The first side of the LP is perfectly formed, running through 11 miniature pop constructs that favour depth over duration. Titles like “Golden Light Clinic” and “Slow Motion Time Release” evoke the music's contradictory ability to appear ghostly, barely there, while dense with sensuous microtonal detail. The second side is even better, as the duo push out into longer more orchestral pieces, at points occupying a kind fo parallel pastoral to the groups associated with the keyboard-heavy reveries of the Canterbury scene, players like Egg and Uriel/Arzachel.
A beautiful track like “coronet”, with its childlike lead melody – is that a stylophone – and its deep background of constantly peaking choral drone and acid guitar confuses timelines so completely that it would mix up the escape velocity of Neu! 75 with the blurry tape ascensions of James Ferraro's classic Marble Surf. But it's the nine and a half minutes of foggy keyboard reverie that opens sides two, “To Shape A Single Leaf”, that crowns the set, all aquatic tones, underwater moonlight and endlessly longing wordless vocals. It feels like a heavenly pop hit from a parallel universe where pop music's present is made up of echoes from the future and echoes from the past.”
Bedroom Suck Records, 2015