Primitive World - The Revolt of Aphrodite

• Crafty sci-fi minimalism and rude broken beats from Ecstatic co-owner Sam Willis (Primitive World)
• In/directly inspired by the “bawdy, acerbic”, forgotten ‘60s sci-fi novels of Lawrence Durrell
• Cut at D&M, Berlin. Painting by Daniel John Willis. Photo by Sam Willis
• RIYL Alva Noto, Dego, Russel Haswell
 
Ecstatic co-owner Sam Willis turns cues from forgotten English sci-fi author Lawrence Durell into bouts of taut, fractious, and probing funk on his sophomore LP, ‘The Revolt of Aphrodite’

Following a similar process that was applied to the visual cues of overlooked British constructivist Marlow Moss in his 2018 debut album ‘White On White’, Sam Willis aka Primitive World employs a strategy of in/direct references to Durrell’s seminal ’60s sci-fi diptych ‘The Revolt of Aphrodite’ - comprising the novels ’Tunc’ and ‘Nunquam’ - in an absorbing reimagining of its scenes, rendered in a mix of glitching electronic shrapnel, craftily disrupted UK club rhythms, and stuttering gremlin vocaloids. 

The original books’ themes of “Nietzchean psycho-sexual satire”, and their acerbic, bawdy, densely allusive text, serve to push Primitive World toward more complex drum programming/editing and a finer spectrum of timbres in order to best transpose the stories into music. Set against a backdrop of the May 1968 general strike in Paris, the books address notions of multiplicity and contingency, and a preoccupation with structure and “cause and effect” that Primitive World reflects in the music’s mazy narration and his poetic embrace of literary/musical license. 

Where modern electronic music too often arrives at the same aesthetic conclusions inspired by iconic work from William Gibson or Asimov, then Durrell’s influence provides something very refreshing to the playful and absorbingly otherworldly nature of ‘The Revolt of Aphrodite’. Using the same palette as found on his ‘White On White LP’ - PPG Wave, Kurzweil K250, Emulator 4 and Lexicon 224 - Primitive World’s familiarity with the set-up leads to a finer manipulation of form throughout the album. Oscillating between the Alva Noto-esque minimalism of ‘All This Vulgar Data’, and the cubist UKFunky rhythms in ‘Iolanthe Dances’ or Dego-like broken beats in ‘Skins Plastered With White Lead’, to end up in the curdled electronic sensuality on ’The Foetus Of a Love Song’, Primitive World’s 2nd album offers deftly imaginative and playful solutions to the homogeneity of modern electronic music’s all-too-often blinkered dreams.

Tracklisting

1. All This Vulgar Data

2. Ioanthe Dances

3. Olive Pits Burned By Lye

4. Into The Heart Of Our Perplexities

5. Skins Plastered With White Lead

6. RV03&

7. Flesh Made From Compressed Ideals

8. Ideas Made From Compressed Impulses

9. Harpalus Among The Tombs

10. The Foetus Of A Love Song