It’s been nearly three decades since Primitive Calculators played their last show – but the post-punk legends have lost nothing in the intervening years. Words and photo by RENÉ SCHAEFER.

It wasn’t a particularly well-guarded secret that Primitive Calculators were the “mystery band” playing at Chapter Music’s 18th birthday celebration at The Tote as warm-up for their highly anticipated All Tomorrow’s Parties appearance.

It’s truly an indication of a band’s originality when they sound as radical and innovative today as they did when they last played live 29 years ago. Their abrasive mix of drum machine and primitive synths with the more traditional rock instrumentation of guitar and bass vaguely aligned them with post-punk minimalism and the NYC No Wave noise experimentalists of the late ’70s. But really they were (and still are) in a field of their own.

Stuart Grant looked both nervous and wired as he plugged in his guitar in front of an expectant hometown crowd. There were old friends and die-hard fans, but also a lot of fresh faces, too young to remember the days of the famed “Little Bands” scene which spawned Primitive Calculators.

With interest in the band revived by Chapter’s re-release of their back catalogue, everybody wanted this show to be special. And it was. From the first rumbling beat, these days coming from Frank Lovece’s laptop rather than the Roland CompuRhythm drum machine of old, it was clear that time has not robbed Primitive Calculator’s music of any impact.

Denise Hilton’s synth lines were jittery and high-pitched, David Light did his best to get a suitably fucked-up bass sound and Grant was compelling in his manic intensity. Ear-splitting guitar jabs punctuated his borderline-nihilist lyrics as he conducted the band through an intense set that included crowd favourites ‘Do That Dance’ and ‘Pumping Ugly Muscle’, new material that fit seamlessly into their repertoire and some choice covers.

“This is a song about nothing. It’s called ‘Nothing.’” Too right! Where bands like Suicide were rock’n’roll romantics at heart, Primitive Calculators attempt to tear down the edifice of rock by stripping away any semblance of blues-based groove. Nowhere was this more apparent than in their cover of Johnny O’Keefe’s ‘Shout’, which replaced hip-shaking rhythms with anti-human jackhammer beats and atonal yelps.

Hilton looked bemused both by Grant’s intense performance and the audience’s enthusiastic reaction to music that was never conceived to have a particularly broad appeal. The fact that people can still relate to it outside of its historical context and any kind of cool fashionability must be extremely gratifying for its creators.

More than their contemporaries Whirlywirld and Tch Tch Tch, Primitive Calculators embraced obnoxious noise, not so much to entertain or even deliberately offend, but to project a brutally honest picture of themselves as individuals and as a group.

As such, they still remain 100 percent true to their original vision and commitment. How many bands can you say that about?

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