Major Aussie Post-punk Innovator Passes Away

Influential Australian punk artist and one of the founding members of Primitive Calculators, Frank Lovece, has passed away. 

The Melbourne-founded outfit's frontman, Stuart Grant, addressed Lovece's passing in a statement published to Facebook on Sunday.

"When we were 16 Frank and I would sit up all night in my mother’s kitchen, writing poems and singing songs and banging on pots and pans…we thought we were beatniks," the post reads.

"He was always a miserable bastard. I wrote the song Cunt Luife, but it was him who walked around the world saying it all the time."

Grant concluded the post by saying the guitarist and singer carried a "lifelong hurt".

"When a person dies a singular little ray beam which illuminates the world in a totally unique way is extinguished."

Read the full statement below.

As noted by The Dwarf, after forming in 1978 (previously known as The Moths), Primitive Calculators released their debut single, I Can’t Stop It and Do That Dance, in 1979. 

Despite breaking up in 1980, the band's first live-album was released in the early '80s.

The four-piece made two comebacks since their final gig; in 1986, they reformed to appear in the film, Dogs In Space, and recorded Pumping Ugly Muscle for the soundtrack.

In 2009, Primitive Calculators again returned to perform at the Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds-curated Australian music festival, All Tomorrow's Parties in Victoria and went on to record a new album, The World Is Fucked, released in 2013.

Primitive Calculators' label, Chapter Music, has also issued a statement on Lovece's passing.