Just reading through the reviews of Screamadelica. Bar the slow tracks you can groove to everything on here if you have it in you. Nah, scrub that! You can dance to all of it. Just depends on your idea of what dancing is. If it's a 4/4 boom boom cheesy shuffle then you gonna struggle! The perfect fusion of rock, dance, jazz and blues ever. Other reviews here and the many column inches written about this classic album over the years say it better than I ever can. This album changed my life for the better. Opened my mind up to wonderful new music and influences. Some of the greatest gigs experienced were at the Primal Scream all nighters around this period. If you can't dance to the perfect 10 minute Come Together mantra then you're dead in the hips region! Get your groove on buddy. It amazes me that about 15-16 years have passed since this music was made. Kind of saddens me in a way as it's nearly half my life ago! Maybe if you're an intrigued 18-19 year old coming to this album afresh it'll do to you what it did to me at the time of it's release (double vinyl in Our Price on Cheapside....I can still picture it). If all you know is the beautiful aggression of XTRMNTR and their latter releases then this may seem dated in some ways but just stick it on your headphones and let me sweet music take hold......RAMA LAMA LAMA FA FA FA GONNA GETTING HIGH TIL THE DAY I DIE!
J Parkes you said it mate - it's due a 2 disc re-issue!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Primal scream's Screamadelica is one of my favorite albums of the 90's. It has it all rock/dance/abit of jazz everything. My favorite tracks on the album would be 'movin on up' the opener reminds me of abit of m people, gillespie's voice has always sounded similiar to the singer from embrace. 'Loaded' is a great record, the record lasts just over 7 minutes and has some great music. 'higher then the sun' is also good, 'come together' is also good when your in the mood for it. 'don't fight it feel it' is also a track i like with it's dance style tune at the beginning. 'slip inside this house' is my favorite on the record along with 'inner flight'. There is a great acoustic track on this record called 'damaged' which is good. A good album yet i am slightly confused about who plays the instruments, i know primal scream play the instruments but i mean about the mixing, they always seem to have just a vocalist, guitarists, bass, and a drummer, so i do not understand, they must do it themselves.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Listening to 'Screamadelica' for the first time in many years was an interesting experience- it was the soundtrack to the early 1990s & was deemed a classic (something that it's still considered). Listening to it now is a bit like coming-up on that initial illicit-pill - Proustian-time recovery via ectsasy-flashbacks? As a double-album sequence it all hangs together wonderfully- there are only two songs (damaged, movin' on up) which are anywhere near The Stones (& that's due to the involvment of Jimmy Miller)- the rest has more in common with the rave-scene of the late 1980s/early 1990s (LFO, Hypnotone, Ultramarine, 808 State, A Guy Called Gerald, The Orb, The KLF etc)than Jagger & co. Primal Scream, who had previously been a C-86 indie-act, a Love-style psychedelic outfit & a Stooges-inflected garage-rock act (All Fall Down-Leaves-Ivy Ivy Ivy)may have "jumped on the dance-bandwagon" (as the criticisms common at the time went)- but with such aplomb. 'Screamadelica' is a long-player that captures that era, which was an exciting one and saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, the rise in use of ecstasy- I even have a theory that 1989/1990 was everything that 1999/2000 should have been- the displaced millennium. 'Screamadelica' is beautifully-wasted and turned-on, tuned-in and coming-up - the vibe it gives is a positive one and the trip the album takes you on takes you as high as the stars...Few albums have been so eclectic, a precursor has to be AR Kane's 1989 double-set 'I', which fused indie, dub, drones, ambient, space-jazz, soul, pop, classical and goth in one place (AR Kane were architects of the approach Primal Scream made here). 'Screamadelica' is similarly eclectic and fuses genres like dub, psychedelia, rave, rock, the blues & ambient. 'Movin' on Up' is the opener, an ecstasy-inflected update of The Stones (& George Michael's 'Faith'?), building into gospel & house and quoting the same Biblical-line used at the end of Scorsese's 'Raging Bull': "I was blind- now I can see." Following the opening climax of soulful-joy (courtesy of Denise Johnson), the album flips into dance-mode with a pulsing-reinterpretation of The 13th Floor Elevators' LSD-soaked psychedelic classic 'Slip Inside This House' (just the words & feeling remain) & then the full on rave-anthem 'Don't Fight It, Feel It', which nods to The MC5. The album then shifts gear towards the ambient, the great Orb-produced version of 'Higher Than the Sun', which seems like a mantra to the chemicals popular at the time, and spins off into a Sun-Ra-space-jazz utopia, evoking a feeling that you are on drugs (even though you're listening to a record). 'Higher Than the Sun' is one of those records that makes me feel like I'm on drugs - see 'Loomer' by My Bloody Valentine, 'Space Invaders are Smoking Grass' by i-f, 'Halleluwah' by Can, 'Spectral Mornings' by Cornershop, 'The Great Curve' by Talking Heads etc...'Inner Flight' sounds like a post-house-Eno, looping a sample which sounds like Martin Gore's vocal on Depeche Mode's 'Shake the Disease' into an ambient moment...Next up is 1990-single 'Loaded', Andrew Weatherall's reworking of Primal Scream's Stones-like-anthem 'I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have' fused with a dance-mix of Edie Brickell's 'What I Am' & samples from b-movie 'Wild Angels,' which starred Peter Fonda & Nancy Sinatra. The album then shifts to downer-mode with the bruised 'damaged', which attempts to sound like The Stones anywhere between 'Let It Bleed' & 'Exile on Main Street' (think 'Sister Morphine', 'Sweet Black Angel','Torn & Frayed'), and then drifts back up with the ambient-space-jazz of 'i'm comin' down.' The album concludes on a reworking of 'Higher Than the Sun' ('a dub symphony in two parts') which features ex-PIL bassist Jah Wobble- this reprise works wonderfully here, though as a conceit it didn't work on 2000's 'Xtrmntr' and its lame Chemical Brothers remix of 'Swastika Eyes.' Finally there is the gorgeous, minimal electronic joy 'Shine Like Stars' - the music reflecting the feeling of the drugs (yes, the drugs did wo
Rating: 5 out of 5
Part of 'Screamadelica's critical acclaim may have more to do with itscultural impact rather than it's musical one. It's fusion of a traditionalrock 'outlaw' image with the then contemporary dance scene was bound toattract critical enthusiasm. Dance music by its very nature is mostlynon-image based, the stationary DJ playing their lyric-free records. Bandslike Primal Scream and the Stone Roses helped to bring dance music to analternative rock/indie audience. In the late 1980's rock in the U.K. wasincreasingly becoming marginalised, beaten back by the all-consuming riseof pop creators such as Stock, Aitken and Waterman. In contrast dancemusic was at the cutting edge of youth culture and if British guitar bandswanted to retain some sort of street-cred, they'd have to jump from thesinking ship on to the bandwagon pretty quickly.On 'Screamadelica' this fusion of styles can be seen in the band's choiceof producers, Jimmy Miller and Andrew Weatherall. Most of the album soundslike 12-inch remixes of the original guitar based songs. A process whichhas become standard for a lot of British guitar bands' C.D. singles. Foranyone who's ever been at a rave most of the tracks on 'Screamadelica'make perfect sense as an aid to an ecstacy high, the slow long drawn-outbuild up adds to the sense of euphoria that occurs at the track'szenith.As an all-out fusion of rock and dance I think 2000's XTRMNTR was a moreinspired effort, but 'Screamadelica' was the beginning of Primal Scream'smusic experimentation. 'Screamadelica' is frequently listed on Britishmusic mags top 100 lists. However in the cold light of day 100 years fromnow, without cultural reference to the time it was created, pop musichistorians maybe slightly bemused as to why an album built aroundrepetitive riffs should be lauded in the same way as the expressive,original song structures of 'Revolver' and 'Pet Sounds'.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Part of 'Screamadelica's critical acclaim may have more to do with itscultural impact rather than it's musical one. It's fusion of a traditionalrock 'outlaw' image with the then contemporary dance scene was bound toattract critical enthusiasm. Dance music by its very nature is mostlynon-image based, the stationary DJ playing their lyric-free records. Bandslike Primal Scream and the Stone Roses helped to bring dance music to analternative rock/indie audience. In the late 1980's rock in the U.K. wasincreasingly becoming marginalised, beaten back by the all-consuming riseof pop creators such as Stock, Aitken and Waterman. In contrast dancemusic was at the cutting edge of youth culture and if British guitar bandswanted to retain some sort of street-cred, they'd have to jump from thesinking ship on to the bandwagon pretty quickly.On 'Screamadelica' this fusion of styles can be seen in the band's choiceof producers, Jimmy Miller and Andrew Weatherall. Most of the album soundslike 12-inch remixes of the original guitar based songs. A process whichhas become standard for a lot of British guitar bands' C.D. singles. Foranyone who's ever been at a rave most of the tracks on 'Screamadelica'make perfect sense as an aid to an ecstacy high, the slow long drawn-outbuild up adds to the sense of euphoria that occurs at the track'szenith.As an all-out fusion of rock and dance I think 2000's 'XTRMNTR' was a moreinspired effort, but 'Screamadelica' was the beginning of Primal Scream'smusic experimentation. 'Screamadelica' is frequently listed on Britishmusic mags top 100 lists. However in the cold light of day 100 years fromnow, without cultural reference to the time it was created, pop musichistorians maybe slightly bemused as to why an album built aroundrepetitive riffs should be lauded in the same way as the expressive,original song structures of 'Revolver' and 'Pet Sounds'.
Rating: 4 out of 5