The Primitive Calculators Are Wonderfully Fucked

There isn't much that you can say about Melbourne Cenobites Primitive Calculators that doesn't have the word fuck or some derivative of the word fuck in it. This is the band that were only around for a few years on the cusp of the '80s, making industrial synth punk dystopias that many have tried to emulate but never truly captured. That's because not only do you need to be a diseased harbinger of grime, saliva and despair, but such a concoction is far too brutal and volatile to remain a sustainable force, especially spawning from the supposedly febrile minds of ones so young. So whilst they left indelible marks on contemporaries The Birthday Party and The Boys Next Door, they left this mortal coil with very little archaeological evidence of their existence other than some dire (in the best sense) small releases and scorched earth (and this incredible video...).



But this kind of monosyllabic, single-minded fury can't stay in the bottle forever. Primitive Calculators resurfaced at the behest of acolyte Nick Cave when he curated the first Australian-based ATP in 2009. They may have been the reason the festival took four years to come back...but also the reason that Chapter Music is finally putting out the band's first album EVER in The World Is Fucked. And it is - if you look at it through Primitive Calculators' eyes. And you have no choice not to - these songs grab you and waterboard you with white noise, a endless montage of VHS nastiness, and viscous lyrical bile. Even the barked chant of Stuart Grant of the word 'dead' in the aptly titled 'Dead' comes with a miasma of variant outcomes - and all of them do not bode well for your humanity, or indeed all humankind. Because The World Is Fucked is a manifesto of abject truth - the song titles sharp stabs of declining morality (even a song called 'Love' is more about the soul-destroying absence of it). Closer 'Nothing' tells you that the world is fucked, but in a nihilistic, amoral sense - you know the end is nigh, so you may as well actively bring it about.



Also, it proves that Primitive Calculators could be one of the most ahead-of-their-time bands ever created. Not that that makes them accessible, or even likable. They are the harbingers of anarchic futility after all. But we should all be glad that something exists in the world as corrupted as this. I implore every record store to put this release next to all the vapid indie-folk, pop trash and Darwin Deez releases that you have in your shop. They will be wiped clean before the album hits the shelf.

The World Is Fucked comes out today - you can grab it here.

Lose Total Control On The Henge Beat

To complete today's triptych of incredible Aussie rock releases, we have Total Control with their Henge Beat. I mentioned seeing Dick Diver last week - well, seeing as Al is from Total Control, it's important for you to see on the strength of the Dick Diver album why Total Control is still his day job. The Henge Beat LP is dark, dank and oh so seductive, a driving synth-punk behemoth that wallows in the flooded basements of Berlin, hiding the remains of the Birthday Party, Ultravox and Wire. You can see a correlation with another white-hot album of this year, Iceage's New Brigade, yet this is a little less brutal. The musical nous of founding member Mikey Young (Eddy Current Suppression Ring, UV Race) may surprise some, but it is clear he not only understands what makes garage rock tick (rather than poseurs), he can also pat Ian Curtis on the nape of the neck before giving him a donkey punch. Henge Beat is rabid, a little perverted, but also another release that seems unaffected by affectedness. This is a sound that pervades the participating members because they believe in this. And that is what makes Total Control a dangerously beautiful (albeit combustible) commodity.

I implore you (like I have with Royal Headache and Witch Hats) - get this now!

Total Control - One More Tonight
Total Control - Carpet Rash

Dirty Adolescence Makes For Visceral Entertainment

I dont know what else to really say here, other than Teen Hygiene shouldn't be allowed near any other living organism, let alone the impressionable adolescents their moniker mirrors. This is the most UNhygienic sludge punk dirge yelps that New Zealand have turfed out for years, and it is surprisingly strong for a band who have been haunting the land of the long white cloud for just on a year now. Their DIY aesthetic combined with disturbing imagery and leering temperament gives off a hefty waft of delirious lechery, all of which we can heartily revel in. Think the Birthday Party after an orgy of red wine and a mountain of coke. Good times. Just dont let them within two hundred metres of your daughter...

Teen Hygiene have a 7" available for sale on their bandcamp site here, with promise of more to come. You've been warned...

Teen Hygiene - Dream Girl Generator

Teen Hygiene - Self Diagnosin'

Teen Hygiene - Show U My Delite

Any Knives to Grind This Autumn????

Nick Cave is a musical entity all on his own. All things he touches turned to gold; everything he does is inimitable. The Bad Seeds continue to surge forward; his second novel The Death of Bunny Munro is a work of twisted and yet empathetic genius; his ghostly scores for The Road, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Cowardly Robert Ford and The Proposition (which are all brilliant films) lift the heavy subject matter into the netherworld...

Then there is Grinderman, where Cave and some of his Bad Seedites (including the cracked genius of The Dirty Three's Warren Ellis, whose work on Cave's scores is immediately recognizable) harken back to Cave's roots in The Birthday Party to let forth a bilge of vitriol, spewing forth sleaze, noise and aggression. It scares you - you know you are powerless - and yet you beg for it to have its way with you, the rougher the better...

So before I have a cold shower, two bits of rad news. This electric side project is bringing out a second album to complement the self-titled debut of 2008. Recorded in various London studios, the LP (tentatively titled Grinderman 2) is due out September 13 via Mute Records. And secondly, they are playing at the Hammersmith Apollo on October 1. I saw them play in Brisbane back in October 2008 - I thought Id lost my musical virginity before then, but I was (not so) sadly mistaken... You have been warned.

Grinderman - No Pussy Blues