Portrait Of An Atmosphere, by Primitive Motion

Portrait Of An Atmosphere

by Primitive Motion

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freersounds Each piece is captivating from start to finish, like a conversation where you pay attention to every word. Instruments are stripped back, almost bare. Selig and Craig use everything at hand, from whistling to guitar, voice and field recordings. There are lots of different sounds, but they all seem to know their place. Favorite track: Portrait I.

Cas Castle (The Modernist, PBS 106.7FM) thumbnail

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Reverse board print, black inner print, standard vinyl

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Portrait I 05:27	buy track
2.	Portrait II 06:05	buy track
3.	Portrait III 05:26	buy track
4.	Portrait IV 10:41	buy track
5.	Trenches Of Time 09:15	buy track

about

Recorded and produced by Primitive Motion between 2018 and 2020 at Kindling House and Woodburn Laboratory, Meanjin/Brisbane, Australia.

Sandra Selig: voice, handclap, flute, cymbals, melodica, radio, saxophone, glass bowl, drums, marble in bamboo, zither, wind chimes, bowed cymbal.

Leighton Craig: acoustic guitar, reed organ, cymbals, field recordings (Kyoto Japan), tremolo guitar, miniature saxophone, voice, piano, metal stool, bird call, synthesiser, wind chimes, shaker, timber box.

Artwork by Primitive Motion
Cover photograph by Gordon Craig 1946
Mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space

A Note From Leighton Craig

Portrait of an Atmosphere was recorded with the intention of crafting a long duration work of constituent parts; a suite of related compositions to be listened to as a singular narrative. It focuses on acoustic elements to achieve the kind of sound immersion that is central to our practice, without using the typical palette of reverb and delay. It is rewarding for us, that in the absence of these tools, it still enters the dream-float realm, attaining that sense of something 'other'. It is at once the least and most Primitive Motion-sounding album to date.

The title of the album has been taken from one of Sandra's cut-poems, an ongoing series of work where she reduces/cuts the text on the page of a found book to arrive at a poetic denouement. In this context it seems fitting that some recordings on the album also have the sense of being cut together, although perhaps more as collage than reduction. Most obviously Portrait IV joins a piano track with fragments of studio improvisation, a drifting fog that finally clears by restating the single-string guitar motif of Portrait I. The beginning at the end; mirror in a mirror.

The final track on the album, Trenches of Time (another cut-poem title), sits outside the Portrait suite but shares the same path of call and response intra-studio exchanges and acoustic intervention. But this album is more than a recording project. It represents the ongoing thread of non-verbal conversation that passes between sound makers, and has been exchanged between these band members for over a decade, captured here in an evolving dialect. It's a peculiar language that can be understood through the bowing of a cymbal and the wheezing of a reed organ. It's this conversation that is the joy and otherness of making music.

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released March 17, 2023

This is a Guide To Saints Edition

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Primitive Motion Brisbane, Australia

Primitive Motion is the Meanjin/Brisbane duo of Sandra Selig and Leighton Craig.

email: kindlingrecords@yahoo.com.au

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Primitive Motion recommends:

ARCADIA
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Check out PM beat master Edmund Xavier's great FWY! desert disco. Sandra returns the favour and plays some sax on this album too Primitive Motion
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Green Coronet
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Leighton's solo cassette released on A Guide to Saints Primitive Motion
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Four Deadnotes
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The pre-PM band that Sandra and Leighton were in. Also check out the micro label "Kindling" that Leighton runs - keep an eye out for limited edition lathes etc Primitive Motion
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