PREMIERE: Primitive Motion – ‘Same in the Same’ video

Brisbane artists Sandra Selig and Leighton Craig have been collaborating since 2003, when Craig began creating soundtracks for Selig’s art installations. They’ve since played together in a number of experimental outfits, including Deadnotes and Fig., making music based around improvisations and delighfully arcane instrumentation. (Over the years, the liner notes to Primitive Motion records have listed contraptions ranging from the stylophone to euphonium and flugelhorn).

‘Same in the Same’ is the latest single, and one of the loveliest moments, from Craig and Selig’s second LP as Primitive Motion, Pulsating Time Fibre. Taken from the record’s fleeting A-side – the pop half of this gorgeous and eccentric collection – the track clocks in at a succinct 1 minute and 14 seconds. Like most Primitive Motion songs, ‘Same in the Same’ exhibits the playful DIY impulses of early post-punk, circa the Raincoats or Young Marble Giants, as well as the lush expansiveness of electronic pioneers like Laurie Spiegel.

The track’s title is drawn from a poem Selig wrote several years ago – a verse (quoted by Craig in this 2011 interview) that seems to contain the seed for the pair’s entire creative project: “the primitive motion phenomena, the same in the same, left to chance”. This, in a nutshell, is the science of a Primitive Motion track – perpetual iterations of a melodic motif, recorded imperfectly, live, bubbling and warm.

‘The Same in the Same’ is accompanied by a video directed by Selig herself, a woozy meditation on the play of movement and light.

Primitive Motion are launching Pulsating Time Fibre on Saturday, 18 July at the Skukum Lounge in Brisbane. RSVP on Facebook.

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