Primitive Man have just released what is arguably the best album of their career to date. Perhaps you’re not fully up to speed with it yet, but trust us; Observance has been haunting our speakers for months. That cosmic blend of obliterating heaviness with a touch of psychedelic insanity sums up Primitive Man perfectly. So we asked them to play the album in full, front to back for us. They countered this offer with a further proposal – a deep dive into their past. So, join us at Roadburn in April when Primitive Man will bookend the most crushing elements of their output to date with two special shows.
Explaining their desire to revisit the past, Primitive Man’s Ethan Lee McCarthy comments: “Primitive Man have spent the last 13 years finding and refining our sound. This has taken us to several different sonic places over the years. After taking a look at some of our old songs, we are going to be dragging some of them back up out of the mud and reinterpreting/ reintroducing the ones that we think stand out and have echoes of the future of what the band would eventually become. Roadburn is an essential piece of our history, some of these songs will not have been played since we were first at Roadburn in 2015, so this is very much about bringing where we are from, and where we have landed, together.”
Bringing us bang up to date will be their Sunday set focussed entirely on Observance. Ethan adds: “Roadburn is always an enriching experience, not only in terms of the other groups playing but the sense of community, chosen family and a magic that you can feel in the air. Roadburn and everyone behind it have been a welcome light in the abysmal tunnel that can sometimes define being an underground musician. We were lucky enough to see that light in 2015 and since then, the festival has remained inspirational and important to us not only as a band but as individual musicians. This record feels like a new chapter, so Roadburn is the most appropriate place for that chapter to begin.”
From the first Primitive Man first stepped onto a Roadburn stage back in 2015, all the way through to the upcoming edition of the festival, we’re delighted to be able to honour the evolution of this remarkable and distinctive trio.
