Track Listing

1. Movin' on Up
2. Slip Inside This House
3. Don't Fight It, Feel It
4. Higher Than The Sun
5. Inner Flight
6. Come Together
7. Loaded
8. Damaged
9. I'm Comin' Down
10. Higher Than The Sun (Dub Symphony in Two...)
11. Shine Like Stars

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1120 in Music
• Released on: 2001-01-15
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
After peddling fey indie-pop in the mid-Eighties, Bobby Gillespie's Primal Scream took a quantum, inspired leap with the Andy Weatherall and Terry Farley-produced Screamadelica, which melds the trippy, blissed-out ethos of acid rock with its more rhythm and sample oriented late Eighties counterpart, acid house. Screamadelica is a meeting of supposedly hostile genres, like American and Russian astronauts docking together in orbit--a musical marriage made in space. All of the elements on Screamadelica--piano, samples, gospel singers, dub-drenched rhythms--float about weightlessly amidst one another, as if beyond gravity's pull. And gliding above it all is Gillespie himself, at best on "Higher Than The Sun", vocals at once ecstatic and wistful, staring down at a world that's yet to catch up with where he's at. In time, Screamadelica would come to be regarded as one of the defining albums of its era. --David Stubbs

CD Description
Primal Scream's understanding of rock's varied vistas is encapsulated on this release. At its core are a series of dance-oriented tracks that broach several musical barriers. Samples, tape loops, dub and plangent chords gel together over various grooves, at times uplifting, at others ambient. Mixmasters Terry Farley and Andy Weatherall add different perspectives to individual tracks, with gospel choirs, pumping brass and spaceward basslines bubbling around several selections. Former Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller generated the spirit of Beggars Banquet for the rousing "Movin' On Up", while elsewhere the group imply acknowledgement to talismen the Beach Boys and Big Star. SCREAMADELICA is the ultimate confluence of rock and rave cultures.

Customer Reviews

Truly Deserving Of That Top 25 Spot
This album is truly magnificent and shows Primal Scream at the top of their game. This light headed fusion between dance and rock is one of the best put together albums I have ever heard. The focus is more on the dance for this album (I'm not a big fan of the genre) but nonetheless it is truly magnificent. It's no wonder that NME puts an album of this quality in their top 25 on a regular basis. If you don't own this you are missing out on one of the most care free and easy going albums ever, if not, THE most. If your a Primal Scream, dance or rock then this album is for you. You are only a mouse click away from true happiness in music :)

1991's post-rave classic....
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 work...).

'Screamadelica' still sounds wonderful then and is as classic as any album you can name- it also stands up as one of those records which goes beyond genre and stands on its own terms- think DJ Shadow's 'Endtroducing', AR Kane's 'I', Associates' 'Sulk', Eno/Byrne's 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' or Psychic TV's 'Force the Hand of Chance.' It also forms part of a musical history around dance music and related chemicals- Psychic TV's 'Godstar soundtrack' (which fuses Stones-allusions & ecstasy), New Order's 'Technique' (some made in Ibiza & featuring acid-house nodding 'Fine Time'), Happy Mondays' 'Pills, Thrills'n'Bellyaches' & The Orb's 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld.'

'Screamadelica' is surely deserving of a deluxe-two-disc reissue, completing the picture with the original-version of 'Higher Than the Sun' (found on the 'Burning Wheel' single), the Terry Farley single-mix of 'Come Together' (a perfect pop-song) or the tracks on the 'Dixie-Narco' e.p., the epic 'Screamadelica' & the fantastic cover of Dennis Wilson's 'Carry Me Home.' Can only wait for such a joy...

Their maserpiece.
Jammed on the edge of baggy and before Britpop comes what many consider to be Primal Scream's first real album, after their first two had such minor impacts. A genre-blending masterpiece, it finds Bobby Gillespie and company mixing psychedelia, gospel, blues, country, baggy and dance music into over an hour of head-wrecking, drug-addled brilliance.

This album boasts just about everything a great album needs - variety, instant classics, strong growers, and even one duff track that you can cut out if you feel it necessary ('Don't Fight It, Feel It'). Aside from the undeniable strength of the material here, the sequencing of it is genius. Gospel-tinged opener 'Movin' On Up,' which is scarcely related to anyhting else here, is a God-bothering, 'Amazing Grace'-aping guitar tune with no synths in sight. It is in no way a preparation for the rest of the album.

It's followed in quick succession by a trio of dance-flavoured tunes. The baggy 'Slip Inside This House' is one of the best songs here; the aforementioned 'Don't Fight It' is the weakest song on the album, led by an incessantly annoying cricket sample; and 'Higher Than The Sun' is another peak moment, its closing minute of synth washes and samples absolutely stunning.

Big single 'Loaded,' with its infamous opening dialogue sample, shows the Stones influence that would crop up on their next album, closely followed by the wonderful 'Damaged,' a lovely country ballad and then the last real centrepiece song, 'Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In Two Parts),' a good companion piece to its earlier incarnation.

This album is essential to anyone remotely interested in any or all of psychedelia, baggy, dance, indie, or music in general. Utterly essential.