young american primitive. an education.
Young American Primitive is a singular record and series of remixes all done by a man named Greg Scanavino. He is quite possibly one of the most important voices in EDM, yet he’s only released one whole record under the moniker of Young American Primitive, in the 90’s and under a limited run, self titled CD. (he attempted to release his 2nd record, but Geffen Records didn’t like to work hard on their sampling authorizations).
To explain, there are records that inspire entire generations, sometimes are the figure head of a musical movement. The EDM music scene in America in the mid nineties was bleak. There were multiple cases of the music cropping up in New York, Chicago, but most subtly, most importantly, was San Francisco. Yes there was Chicago house and New York did welcome Oakenfold with open arms back when he was a truly great mixer of what came to be known as trance. But San Francisco had voices of it’s own, evident in multiple biopics, movies and small label releases. Keep in mind San Francisco still has an Amoeba Music, one of the last pillars of modern society.
But only a few of these artists and DJ’s actually ended up changing the geography and forging a new format of what was dubbed progressive (insert: house, trance, breaks, etc). This is what Young American Primitive did. Nick Warren cites the release as the most important electronic music record ever. John Digweed speaks of it as legend and used it in the equally legendary Northern Exposure mix (or Sasha did, to be fair, their individual musical choices were not documented). All of our most important voices at present have heard it, and it was the torch carried throughout the EDM subculture….
“Have you heard of Young American Primitive?”
“Did you have the 192kbps MP3’s?”
This was one of those records that fell out of print and went into obscurity, mainly due to rather silly squabbles over sampling rights of various Outer Limits quips and quotes. It became an ebay oddity, one of those items that had skyrocketing bidding wars to get a mint copy. But someone, god knows who, but bless them, did a CD rip back in the late 90’s and started sending it out into the torrent sites, and music sharing sites. And Young American Primitive was popularized in the last 10 years by those early rips. Almost solely, this artist was rediscovered by the history nuts and electronic music magazine readers, the ones who’d cite any record a producer said was an influence.
I have only heard this record in those original 192kbps mp3’s for the past 4 years, the time since I originally heard the album. And now, iTunes has the release. Not beatport, not anywhere else, but iTunes. You all well know exactly my thoughts on Lossy formats, but I can not fault iTunes, as AAC 256kbps ABR is a vastly superior format to the formats I have heard of this record to begin with. Therefore, I must recommend you peruse this record and listen to simply how completely present it is. It was and remains ahead of its time. The sounds are distinctly modern, the melodies are haunting and beautiful and this record was produced at a time of DAT and Protools 2. Yet in 1993, this record was produced with the tools Mr. Scanavino had and his remarkable talent. Listen now, listen to a record that never was heard by enough of us, the holy grail of EDM and really wonder just when this record was made. Was it mastered two weeks ago or recorded in the Bay area in the 90’s? I wonder if I could tell if I did not know the truth.
The entire discography of Mr. Scanavino as Young American Primitive is on iTunes.
go there now. http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/young-american-primitive/id1422470
I do hope you enjoy. Make sure to listen to Sunrise, and hit repeat. As always, keep your headphones on.
_backchat.
