Sunday, March 23, 2008

A Primary Industry - Ultramarine

Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper made a name for themselves in the 90s as Ultramarine, releasing five albums of "pastoral techno" music. Before Ultramarine, they recorded as A Primary Industry (with three additional members), releasing a few singles and compilation tracks and one full-length LP entitled Ultramarine. You can definitely hear the seeds of Ultramarine (the band) in A Primary Industry, but many tracks have a more raw and lively sound, influenced by UK post-punk funk bands such as A Certain Ratio, Pigbag, and 23 Skidoo (props to Burl Veneer for spotting some particularly heavy "influencing"), and still others fall solidly into shoegaze territory. Their contributions helped make Rob Deacon's Sweatbox one of the best UK labels of the 80s; other acts on the roster included The Anti Group, Perennial Divide/Meat Beat Manifesto, and In the Nursery. Inexplicably, Ultramarine has never been reissued, so I hope to bring more attention to this lost minor classic with a vinyl rip, here or here.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks ! Amazing blog !
Been looking for this one, Chakk and the Heavy Duty Breaks stuff for a LONG time, my vinyl's knackered.
If you put the Abstract Magazine vol.6 up I swear I'll give up lager for a week.
Cheers, and keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

Fantastic website !
Been looking for this and the Heavy Duty Breaks for a long time, wore out my vinyl a long time ago.
Seriously appreciate your fine work here.

Fantod said...

Hello, I'm glad I could help out, thanks for the feedback! (Sorry about the delay in responding, I've got it set up to email me when new comments show up but it's not working.) I've got Abstract 6 around somewhere, I'll try to get that up for you soon.

Unknown said...

Brilliant site! Thanks for A Primary Industry and everything else. Thanks for resurrecting these treasures!

Fantod said...

You're welcome, and thanks for visiting!

Anonymous said...

I realise I'm a little late on this one but is there any chance of re-upping the link....Can't believe Rob is dead, I knew Rob via Abstract, he was a really cool guy :-(

Fantod said...

New links:

HF
MU
RS

Autotheism said...

Hi there...

Found these guys thru A Primary Industry which are great.
And from what I´ve seen this follow-up is even better.

but... All the Links here are Dead unfortunately...
It seems that even the New-Links are gone.
Any chance of Posting this again?









Stathis said...

Hello my friend,

any chance of repost this LP or send me e-mail at metallsta@yahoo.gr?

Thank you very much
Efstathiou Stathis

Rotsedammer said...

Thank you for the opportunity to explore early industrial music. Just heard "Perversion" from the "Life At The Top" compilation and I would very much like to hear more of this band. It seems none of the links above work, can you help me?

Jean (rotstedammer[at]gmail)