Jack Hues – Primitif
Release Date: March 20, 2020
After spending over forty years in the business of making music, Jack Hues officially launched his debut solo album – Primitif – on March 20, 2020. Odds are that you have heard the music of Jack Hues before. His band Wang Chung has been on the Billboard Charts multiple times, topping the Dance Charts twice with songs ‘Dance Hall Days’ and ‘Don’t Let Go’. Successfully scored the film ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’, whose title track become yet another hit for the band. Their biggest smash came in the form of the anthemic, ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’ which eventually went to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Jack stayed busy in the interim, scoring another film for Bill Friedkin called The Guardian. It was around this time that Hues recorded a solo album. But for whatever reason it was never released. He kept making music, however, this time forming a band with Genesis keyboardist, Tony Banks called Strictly Inc. Around the mid-nineties, Jack Hues met Sam Bailey and formed The Quartet, recording two albums Illuminated and Shattering with producer Chris Hughes on his Helium Label. More recently he recorded and released an album of orchestral versions of Wang Chung songs entitled Orchesography.
Today, Hues has his first solo album to see a release. Primitif is a double LP that seems to travel a full cycle around the sun with songs Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn, occupying space on the album. Each side has its own personality but remains a cohesive piece of genius. It touches upon love and loss, traveling – even if that means alone in ones’ own mind and finally coming out of it all with the sense of living life for as long as there is to live it. Having spent the majority of his existence in and around music, Hues says, “The resulting double album is my first-ever solo release and is, for me, the culmination of nearly 60 years of fascination and ultimately, obsession with Music and Recordings.”
I was able to speak with Jack about this Primitif album as well as Wang Chung. I was excited to learn about the writing and recording process of this album. I asked him to explain the album’s title the meaning behind it. Hues tells Sound Vapors, “It refers to the way I recorded the album. Which essentially, I was living in a little apartment in Canterbury 
which is sort of my hometown these days. I just had an acoustic guitar, a microphone and a computer. A lot of the songs started out like that. So, I just wanted to emphasize that it’s not exactly basic, the recording, because obviously with a computer these days you can do a lot. But everything came from this sort of primitive (primitif) recording setup. Also, emotionally it’s primitive in the sense that I think I’m dealing with emotions of sort of love and loss and so on that human beings must’ve been dealing with ever since they first thought about being human beings.”
Hues explains the writing process and timeline, “It was pretty quick for me really. The bulk of the songs I wrote and recorded between Christmas, let’s say the beginning of 2018, January through to the end of March. A three month intensive period. I did about half of the album then. I sort of stood back from it. I played some of the songs to a few people, I am good friends, who I respect their opinions. They were very enthusiastic about it. And I thought, yeah, I’ve got to keep going with this. Sort of upgrade it. Listening back now to what were the demos, although at the time they felt like, yeah these are pretty good recordings, I felt like I needed to keep going. So I wrote some more songs at the beginning of 2019. Then I went into the studio with some good friends of mine. There’s a band in Canterbury called Syd Arthur. Joel, who’s the bass player and sort of the mastermind of the band in some ways and Josh, who’s the drummer, helped me with the album. Josh played on all of the tracks. Joel helped me with the tweaking of the recordings and suggesting mix ideas. So I sort of widened it a bit and then another friend of mine played double bass on a couple of tracks. Another friend played the accordion. I involved more musicians as the process went on. The initial part of it was just me doing stuff myself.” I love hearing stories about the progress of an album and how one person with a mic and guitar can turn a project into something as wide and full as this album. It’s pretty remarkable.
Our conversation took us even deeper into the recording aspects of the album. Hues is engaging and enthusiastic when talking about these songs. It’s clear that this album is important to him and a life’s worth of experiences went into writing and recording it. It may have been a long road in seeing a solo album released but it was worth the wait. I encourage you to listen to the album once before you listen to our chat and then again after you hear what he has to say about the record. I’ve never really suggested this before but I think this time around you will thank me for it. Be sure to make time to listen to Whistable Beach, Look Of Love, An Ordinary Man, A Long Time, Diamond Ring and Video Games. For me, the album plays like a life’s worth of episodes and the finale or end credits, if you will, is played out with the Lana Del Rey cover of Video Games. I don’t think there was a better choice to end the album with.
If you initially came here because you are a Wang Chung fan. Two things: One is that I hope you become a fan of Primitf and two is, I have some good news about the Wang Chung discography. When I brought up several of the Wang Chung songs to Jack, he tells me, “It’s interesting that you mention that. We are on the verge of re-releasing all 
the Wang Chung albums. We’ve gone back and remastered them and written notes about what we still remember about the time.:laughs: Those albums will be released as like double, triple CD’s with outtakes and songs that didn’t make it from the time. Some of the songs have never been heard. Then some alternative mixes. It’ll be really good for the Wang Chung complete-ist. I think there’s quite a lot of interesting stuff there for people that are interested in the band.”
Sign me up for that. I’m excited to hear these songs being remastered into today’s standard of sonic level. I don’t mean the bricking-plague that has entered the world of music recently but a nice increased level and enhanced mastered eq’d version of these albums. These were mastered initially for vinyl, says Hues. When songs from this era were specifically mastered for vinyl, you didn’t get the CD potential since the technique for mastering for vinyl is quite a different process. I won’t bore you with the details but mixing bass frequencies is challenge in a vinyl environment and would undergo a different process for something digital. So basically – I’m pumped to hear these songs with new life to them.
This was a fun interview about an album that has become one of my favorites. Like I do with albums that are of this caliber, I remember where I was when I first heard it. I will always think back to this time in the world when I first heard Primitif. It’s an album that has stuck with me and will most likely continue to be a part of the records I am most fond of. That’s the power of music, man.
You can hear my entire conversation with Jack Hues by clicking on the link to your favorite place to listen to podcasts or by watching the video version on YouTube.
-Tommy Marz
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