Primes
Primes
/action driver; 2005/

 

 

 

 

 www.actiondriver.com

Oh hardcore techno.  Oh electro-punk.  Wait a sec, I never liked Atari Teenage Riot.  Big Black though, I’d sleep with Big Black.  Their drum machine of death was the perfect ingredient mixed next to those tin can guitars.  So anyway, now we have Primes.  Primes are another boy girl duo dead set on showing you how much bad assed attitude they have.  Formed in the first month of 2004, the Vancouver based duo is comprised of Jack Duckworth (Radio Berlin, A Luna Red) and an electro DJ named Michelle Synnot (aka Miss X).  The music lands somewhere between the yelling and drilling of Big Black and the sonic assault of ATR except slowed down a notch or ten.  Oh, and you can actually kinda dance to it.

The singing is for the birds.  We’ve heard this cock rockery before, ten thousand times.  You know like, the electroclash attitude thing.  What’s surprising is that Miss X actually comes through on the electronics and there are some genuinely gritty textures (“The Night”) and elastic funk beats (“Who’s In Control Now?”).  Actually, “Who’s In Control Now” is a pretty cool song, if not a little reminiscent of what Big Black could sound like in club cloths (minus the industrial choir speak-sing parts).  There are sections of electronics here that show promise beyond what this format seems capable of.  On “Whatever It Takes” the electronics and guitar hint at some crazy dance shit right around the one minute mark.  On the whole though, this style gets stale fast with the pissed off vocals and ear ass-kicking of the industrial dance beats.  But hey man, if your friends wear leather wrist bands and like to get sweaty and naked when they dance, you can’t go wrong.  Especially if you like to have violent sex.  Make some room beside those Peaches CD’s.

-Andrew Iliadis

/march 2006/