CHRIS & COSEY
TECHNO PRIMITIVE (BLUE LP) (CONSPIRACY INTERNATIONAL)
label:
CONSPIRACY INTERNATIONAL
Chris & Cosey's remastered limited edition vinyl series continues in August 2023 with the release of Techno Primitiv (1985), Trust (1989) and Pagan Tango (1991) - all available on vinyl for the first time since their original release.
The remastered albums will be available on coloured vinyl, each with a printed inner sleeve of archival photos, via CTI.
Elemental 7, Muzik Fantastique!, and Feral Vapours of The Silver Ether were released earlier this year, and the series has seen many of Chris & Cosey's influential albums available on vinyl for the first time, giving listeners a new opportunity to revisit some of their celebrated catalogue.
Techno Primitiv, originally released on Rough Trade, the album is from Chris & Cosey's whiplash minimal '80s icy synth period, freshly remastered and reissued for the first time since 1990, replete with that striking cover art of Cosey as a call centre cyberpunk, and a proto-new beat ace, `He's an Arabian'.
This 1985 record is a sterling example of the EX-TG duo at a crest of their powers, shining a light forward for synth-pop, body music, and the post-industrial era.
Only four years earlier they had departed Throbbing Gristle and embarked on one of electronic music's most feted journeys with a debut couplet of LPs `Heartbeat' and `Trance', that set the bar high for `80s machine music.
However with 1984's third studio album `Songs of Love and Lust' they went sleeker, sexier and more club-focussed in a way that carries on into this one, albeit biased to a more techgnostic steeliness conveyed by Cosey's piercing stare on the cover.
The slow, thrumming momentum and quarter-tone refrain of `He's an Arabian' is a masterpiece on the cusp of digi-dancehall and synth-pop that would become a Belgian staple (leading to their LPs for LD Records), while we also find big highlights in the nimble electro-pop stepper `Hazey daze' featuring Cosey's dreamiest vox and dubbed cornet, as is the naïf charm of `Stolen Kisses', while the sound deign and edits are most evident on the title tune's fractal jump-cuts and outernational cyberpunk noir of 'Do or Die'.