True Primes
We Have Won
Locust 86
CD / 180 gram LP
2007-01-23

"Brooklyn’s True Primes, likewise, makes music that is out of sequence—or at least follows a logic all its of own.

The duo of Rolyn Hu and Che Chen takes its cues from No Wave, early Sonic Youth and Royal Trux, Ut, Pussy Galore, Half Japanese, Jandek, Harry Pussy, and other lo-fi primal garage/avant-rock experimentalists. On the surface, the five-track EP We Have Won is, as you might expect, a messy, clattering, strung-out sludge-fest of sloppiness. Early on during the title track that kicks off the disc, there is no reason to doubt that conclusion as a lumbering, staggered snare-and-bass-drum beat is accompanied by a gentle one chord guitar strum over Hu’s agonizing vocals. So far, nothing new, but gradually a chorus of whining Inuit-like vocals emerges from the background until it reaches a crescendo and then is chopped and processed into becoming its own droning, beehive-like rhythm. “It’s wonderful,” coos Hu at the end of the song. You can say that again." - Richard Moule, Grooves

"Appealingly entropic pop, in which sunny melodies vie with tweaked-out masses of pure sound."- Time Out New York

"We Have Won, from True Primes, is one of those special records that mixes elements that you wanna hear together: Think the shambolic living room mess of Shadow Ring (but dynamic and not funny or monologue-ish) meets Majick Markers (gentler and not as go-for-it, but definitely getting there more consistently), occasionally backed by the communal/unison vibe from some close friend of La Monte Young or Tony Conrad. Slow-crashing instruments and relentless caveman drums share airspace with united vocals and ascending noise. I couldn't keep from liking this better than Charalambides (admittedly, I’m not the biggest Charalambides fan… to each, their own); it had that gentle, female-led vocal thing, but offset by a focused sense of intermittent chaos. Things suddenly and inevitably get wild --my kinda shi%. The balance of force and letting things happen is cool. Like Jandek, it's deceptively loose and open, everything happening, and not happening, being completely intentional. But unlike how most things which share similar qualities with Jandek tend to be, True Primes is good. Didja like Kousukuya’s early live record? I did too. This shares that extreme DIY/art-ness but not as aggressive/relentless. Remember what I said about the varied gentleness/chaos? This is pleasingly liberating music peppered with small doses of transcendence." Other Music

"Absolutely fucXing extraordinary.

I think you know you're onto something good when you can't quite come up with the words to adequately describe what you're hearing. I could throw names like Animal Collective, Deerhoof and Black Dice into the fray but I'd be referencing their playful exuberance rather than nailing True Primes sound. The swathes of feedback that scythe through "In the surf" from We have won , the tumbling biscuit tin drums, male and female voices screaming and getting molested by cheap effects pedals, maybe a little Harry Pussy if they slowed the hell down and took the time to really fall apart. But then they lurch into the beautiful fractured pop of We have won and I'm thinking of Mazzy Star just before a wash of feedback and disembodied voices drowns that reference before I have a chance to save it." Foxy Digitalis

"Sounds like an old 78 being overheard in another room; the bursts of energy and angst, abrupt and unrepentant, make you wonder just what it is you have "won." Insight? Immortality? A new way to express despair?" Music Emissions

"A swelltastic slice of impov-sounding garage noise beauty; True Primes' We Have Won provides a small amount of percussive racket, as on the opening title track, guitar mumbles and flies like a Low outtake, and then spazzes; the tone is total in-the-parking-garage fuzz. And who knows what she's singing about, but there's dropping notes, encroaching backing vocals which receive insane digital treatment, like Tuvan throat singing shot through a moog, and then they disappear to allow the gorgeous sung female melody to re-emerge. Yeah. Did I say Yeah? That's only the first track. Track 2, "In the Surf" left us breathless, a tribal beat arriving and leaving for feedback and key terrorism, and then weird wordless singing that includes orgasmic sounds. There's no real good way to describe We Have Won, but this is definitely the sound of all the parts of indie rock taken apart and put back together again in a new way." AmpCamp

"Their sound is honestly weird.The guitars are as sparse as guitars
get, and the amp's buzzing is as loud as the drums. Hu sings in a high wail
that recalls the Residents' Eskimo album (somehow in a good way), pealing
through hiccupy tremolo effects and onto Chen's space-echoed moans. Some
parts could be mistaken for tragic Breeders studio outtakes - imagine Kim
Deal drunkenly trying to play all the instruments at once while a locked out
engineer shakes his head in defeat but keeps rolling tape, 'cuz, screw it,
he's not paying for it anyway. Which is to say, this rules." - Matt Parish , Boston Weekly Dig

"True Primes' primitive style sounds like a choice, one the duo sells well.
So well that though "We Have Won (Reprise)" may sound on the surface like
Low or Galaxie 500, underneath it carries a much messier vibe, akin to the
fuzzy fever of Royal Trux or Half Japanese. The pair's implied incompetence
hypnotizes, as odd pauses and half-rhythms form a broken logic, like a
rolling football whose random bounces intimate a pattern. When all the
lopsided stumbling starts to get weary, Chen and Hu muster a climax,
punching the drums, fiddling with distortion, and humming through what
sounds like a kazoo. It may be a clever feat, it may just be dumb luck, but
the end of "We Have Won (Reprise)" justifies whatever means it took True
Primes to get there." - MARC MASTERS, Paper Thin Walls

 

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