SHAVEN PRIMATES
We are a 5-piece dark-wave, art-rock, proto/post-punk band that seeks to push the boundaries of the genre. Our music is a narrative of human emotion and experience: fear, love and anger resonate through the orchestration, giving our audience a deeply cathartic release. We have rumbling, grinding bass, wailing guitars and synths that flit between retro and modern, thundering, rolling drums and crooning, screaming vocals. We are guided by the Velvet Underground, Kate Bush, Tool, Prodigy, Yes, Clash, Bowie, Porcupine Tree, and Pink Floyd, and by our own will for making music we love.
PRESS KIT
In January 2016, after a 17 year hiatus from music, Mark Elphinstone decided it was time to return. He was just in the beginnings of starting therapy to help him work through a dark history. He detailed out the most painful moments in his life in a list, gave them titles and assigned a musical feel or genre that he could think of would suit for each, and slowly wrote out demos over a year and a half in order to find a group of people to record it as a proper album.
Chronologically he details his experiences with sexual, physical, and emotional abuse in childhood in school and staying at relatives houses where material no child should see was accessible. This led to sickness and depression in his teenage years and wanting to start his life again; he wished he could lose his memory and start again. At 17 one night, November 26th, weighing just 8 stone, he became very sick and contracted meningitis which caused him to lose his memory. He lost sense of smell, taste, memory of colours and words, and spent the following 3-5 years recovering what seemed to be a majority of that. He details going into hard drugs, sex and alcohol in his early 20s and then realising that life meant more than that; that living was important. At the end of the album he talks about EMDR trauma therapy and finding his own way, and forming the band as we know it. Mark wanted this to be an album people can connect with, relate to, and listen and enjoy at the same time.
In 2017 the album was laid out and Mark put it first to Neil Barry, the keyboard player, who then connected up with Tom Clark, the guitarist, and then found Jarod Ganoe on gumtree (“bored drummer wants to make some noise”), and then finally Nick Letellier joined after hearing just how weird and wonderful an idea had been formed with the group, and thus by 2018 the band was made.
Over the space of the following year, once the 7 songs off the album were pretty much finalised, they started to hit the road to spread the word. The band knew what they had to put out there was unique and it would take some work because they had written it for themselves, not just simply to fit with the curve of familiarity. Slowly but surely, it has risen and strong signs of appreciation from both those in the prog and art rock community as well as the general public which is no mean feat!
The album sounds like Beefheart and Zappa hit the modern stage with elements of rock, punk, post punk, dark wave, and blues that not even they had tried before. You can hear influences of Tool, King Crimson, Bowie, Porcupine Tree, Kate Bush, even Seasick Steve, all laced in there because they could. Each step seems to make the listener stand back and wonder what the heck they just experienced.
Now the album is complete, and the videos are mostly made to detail out the complexity and sheer emotion that was involved in this, with no punches pulled. The band want the listener to get the full experience of knowing what it is to join us as a fellow Shaven Primate.
Tom: Shredding, soloing with the free spirit of Guthrie Govan meets Hendrix, seeing is believing
Nick: Rolling, classic, stretching every scale and time signature, challenging every boundary
Jarod: Stomping, rolling, filling, inspired by Bonham but applying his American roots
Neil: An octopus on the keys, working with every smidgen of tech available
Mark: Raw, dark, ranging, screaming vocals, and no holds barred on emotion
VISIT THE BAND MEMBER PROFILE PAGE
CONTACT:
Mark 07983330014
BACKSTORY
PRAISE
Even while rock music lingers on the sidelines hoping to make a comeback, prog remains its uncool cousin whose very existence is denied even by those who privately retain an affection for it. So a warm – and doubtless suitably ostentatious – welcome to Shaven Primates,
a band for whom elaborate song structures, virtuoso flights of fancy and technical prowess are worn proudly – and loudly.
The band’s debut EP even comes with a concept: the story behind singer Mark Elphinstone’s recovery from meningitis, which left with him with no memory and needing to relearn pretty much everything. Not that he appears to be lacking in any of necessary skills here, providing a variously harsh, rasping, desperate or wailing vocal centrepiece to the often elongated musical journeys that retain a caustic, imperious disdain for simplicity or lo-fi values.
‘Child of Dirt’ in particular traverses mood swings and stylistic detours to emerge like some powerhouse approximation of Tool cranking out the angriest passages from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’. Elsewhere soaring keys hint at Keith Emerson, spiced-up guitar solos veer into Robert Fripp’s airspace and Elphinstone’s epic, questing vocals bring a bit of The Who’s ‘Tommy’ to the party. EP closer ‘Outside’ initially feels like an aberration compared to the rest of the songs here, like a wild pier-end blues revue where Muddy Waters and Tom Waits are shouting and fighting in almost comical fashion over the last riff in the jar, but it has a mania about it and an almost Doors-like vibe in its dark-side-of-the-drunken- blues and overall, for all their technique and technology, Shaven Primates come armed with more than enough substance and power to earn your love as well as your respect.
Ian Chesterton, Nightshift Magazine
It’s not very often you’re sent an album from a new band that pulls you in straight away.
Firstly, I have to say that the music on this debut album from Shaven Primates is compelling even on first listening.
Yes it’s progressive, but it doesn't sound like it's trying to be progressive. It’s quite a unique sound with layered influences throughout.
After a third or forth listening it becomes quite apparent that you’re being taken on a journey, a journey through one person's eyes on addiction, trauma, pain and struggle, a journey through one person's life. That person is the vocalist with Shaven Primates, Mark Elphinstone.
Child Of Dirt seems to be the autobiographical narrative that flows through the album, so in that respect you could squarely put it in the area of a concept album.
The music, lyrics and vocals are visceral, dark and ultimately cathartic, reminding me of the same musical and lyrical vocabulary used by artists like Roger Walters, Peter Hammill or Jim Morrison
The music is deep, immersive and expertly executed. When you think this was a self funded album you really have to take your hat off to the band. There is some fantastic guitar work on the album, keyboards that paint a dark sonic landscape and the rhythm section drives every track.
I normally pick favourite tracks, but in this case I suggest you listen to the album as a whole. Being conceptual in nature and the life journey of an individual, you need to spend some time and experience that journey. Isn't that the point of concept albums?
All in all, a highly recommended album from a band that actually has something to say.
Oxford’s Shaven Primates are a 5-piece band citing a broad range of styles and genres – including progressive rock, dark-wave, art-rock and post-punk, amongst others. Inspired by David Bowie’s death in 2016, and the solace vocalist Mark Elphinstone found in his music whilst going through therapy, the concept of an album chronicling the dark, personal history of his youth gradually took shape. His fellow band members developed the music over the next couple of years, the result being this first full-length album.
Over seven jagged and emotionally charged songs, Mark reveals his personal journey through sexual, physical and emotional abuse as a child, and hard drugs, alcohol and sex addiction in his early 20s. His emotive vocals are a challenging listen for sure, but they certainly match the emotional feel of the subject – whether it is screaming anger, deepest fear or yearning love. They also integrate well with the dynamic and varied instrumental palette used by the rest of the band.
The sound of children playing and a subtle piano introduces the opening title track, but soon a driving rhythm from Nick Letellier (bass) and Jarod Ganoe (drums) propels the song into deeper territory, supporting keyboards from Neil Barry flowing around Waters-style angst-ridden vocals. Languid one minute and intense the next, Tom Clark delivers a flowing guitar solo towards the end, creating an intriguing and vibrant start to the album.
As church sounds recede, a reverberating bass and chiming guitar patterns begin On the Bleeding Edge, and now Mark’s vocals are spat out with a punky, Alex Harvey-like manic venom and the music adds to the sinister, nightmarish atmosphere. The Zoo begins serenely, the harmonised vocals having a touch of Bowie or Hammill to them, before atmospheric keyboards and a dense rhythm raise the intensity and fearful screams take us into the epic Three Piece Suite. From animal noises and rumbling bass, the multi-faceted track twists and turns with theatrical, Zappa-style vocals, along with hints of The Wall-era Roger Waters bitterness. The tempo and intensity ebbs and flows, with Tool-like metal guitar chords and stabbing keyboards, all building towards a manic conclusion.
Outside has a deceptively catchy, strolling beat and musical soundscape, but is contrasted by raw and deranged Beefheart-like tones. Driving heavy rock and a rolling drum and bass beat pushes through Mind and makes it one of the most accessible tracks – getting the head nodding nicely, with some effective guitar soloing to savour. The start of final track Answers is the album’s highlight for me and is where all the wildly varied strands seem to effectively knit together. Spacey keyboards and guitar duel around each other and Mark’s vocals are almost mainstream here. However, don’t be fooled by the minute of silence that follows. You are soon bombarded by rising and falling multi-tracked vocals and an extended section of Floydian electronic ambience which takes us further into the recesses of Mark’s troubled mind. A scattering of nightmarish visions and soundbites swirl around before fading away – surprisingly immersive but also deeply unsettling.
Best played in one sitting, Child of Dirt is a demanding, dense and eclectic experience, but it is a cathartic and emotional one. Progressive in the true sense and continually pushing genre boundaries, it is true that the spectrum of vocals on display will not be to everyone’s taste. However, for the more adventurous listener, there is much to explore on this dark and intense ride, and Shaven Primates’ ambition and talent is to be applauded.
David Edwards
A Different Aspect #70 – The Progressive Aspect – TPA
ACHIEVEMENTS
GALLERY
SOCIAL MEDIA
In 2019 we set out to build TAD Studios as a multi-room recording studio to help Tom, our guitarist with his rehearsal space, and Umair, the sound engineer and architect of the whole building. It was very costly both in the financial and emotional sense, but now it is slowly paying off: We recorded all of "Child Of Dirt" (the album) there and on November 26 2021, the 21st anniversary of the night Mark contracted Meningitis, we performed the entirety of the album in that studio over live stream and in person to an audience to celebrate its completion. We were elated by the experience, and to push it out to the rest of the UK we created the "lost/found" child poster which is printed on the front of the cover of the album from its placement in a street in Oxford, as well as 400 copies of it being put up in 8 major cities around the UK (Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Cambridge, Leeds, Manchester, Oxford, and London (Holborn/Covent Garden/Soho).
Over the last 3 months, we have pushed out 4 detailed music videos, with another 4 to come in the next 2-3 months, to detail the entire album.