Product Description

After fully exploring their EXILE-era Stones fetish on GIVEOUT BUT DON'T GIVE IN, Primal Scream's fourth album, VANISHING POINT, picks up where 1991's epochal SCREAMADELICA left off. Once more, our heroes are on a quest to marry their post-Madchester garage groove to a perversely diverse electronic soundscape. On "Kowalski", multiple bass lines rumble downthe highway alongside Can-like tribal percussion, as Bobby Gillespie whispers non-sequitirs about a disappeared race-car driver. On "Star", a discourse on the modern cult of personality is bathed in wind-swept ambient pulses and Augustus Pablo's melodica, and punctuated by The Memphis Horns.
Butthe greatest of Primal Scream's gains come on the instrumental pieces. "If They Move, Kill 'Em" rocks on the shoulders of a wah-wah guitar and a thumping hip-hop beat, while an acid-house bass line, feisty brass section and sitar send a myriad of culturally diverse chills up the listener's spine. Throughout, VANISHING POINT is full of minor-but-miraculous sonic asides that make it a ride worth taking, as close to a perfect electronica-rock marriage as anyone's yet achieved.

Track Listing

1. Burning Wheel
2. Get Duffy
3. Kowalski
4. Star
5. If They Move Kill 'em
6. Out Of The Void
7. Stuka
8. Medication
9. Motorhead
10. Trainspotting
11. Long Life

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32622 in Music
• Released on: 2001-01-15
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
After 1994's Give Out But Don't Give Up, many critics wrote off Primal Scream as a drug-addled nostalgics, retreading lame rock clichés. Vanishing Point, while not a return to the sun-addled acid house fusion of Screamadelica was another voyage into the Scream's expansive mindscape. This time, however, the trip was bad. "Kowalski" heralded the album like a dark portent. Bobby Gillespie whispers bitter nothings over a distorted Krautrock groove that effortlessly melds Primal Scream's melting pot of influences--The Stooges, CanCan and Sun Ra. Vanishing Point seems propelled by demons, with the metallic funk of "If They Move, Kill 'Em" and "Stuka" providing dirty highlights--the latter threatening "If you play with fire, you're gonna get burned / some of my friends are gonna die young". It's not as essential as Screamadelica, but Vanishing Point finds Primal Scream at a terrifying and compelling depth. --Louis Pattison

Customer Reviews

Gimme Medication
If it's really for sale for less than £2, then you can't afford to not own this album. Somewhat undervalued, I bet that in 5 to 10 years time, bands will be namedropping this album as a must-mention major influence.
Brilliant, dark, druggy and unlike anything anyone else was doing (the others were flogging the exhausted pony that was Brit Pop, probably), Vanishing Point was new territory for Primal Scream and for British rock. While the Brit Poppers were riding a cocaine wave of increasingly banal, mainstream success, our then Brighton-based heroes Primal Scream (increasingly seen as veteran rock n rollers even back then) appeared to be exploiting the anxieties, paranoia and 'strung-outness' of a speed/e/whatever comedown to move away from Stones wannabe territory and show their potential, find their voice, and begin mining a very dark and twisted seem indeed. Flashes (flashbacks?) of Screamadelica and Give Out are evident, as are nods to the drrty techno sounds they went on to produce. In this way, VP is something of a link in the Primal Scream evolutionary chain, but it's also much, much more - it's a trip, a dark and twisting road trip.

1997's classic return to form...
The addition of former Stone Rose Mani to the line-up certainly invigorated Primal Scream, as did Martin Duffy's contribution to The Charlatans' 'Tellin'Stories.' The mis-fire that was 'Give Out But Don't Give Up' (territory they have mysteriously returned to on new LP 'Riot City Blues')was banished by 'Vanishing Point', an LP that came on the back of their Irvine Welsh/On-U-Sound single for Euro-96 (prediciting the dub-territory of 'Echo Dek') and 'Trainspotting' for the soundtrack of the classy adaptation of Welsh's classic debut novel.

Initial single 'Kowalski' was an odd choice to return with - blending industrial dub (recalling the Adrian Sherwood-produced 'Twitch' by Ministry), the gothic, Krautrock & samples from the classic 1971 road movie 'Vanishing Point' (up there with 'Two Lane Blacktop', 'Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia' & 'Punishment Park'). One of their greatest moments and even better in its live incarnation, which features a more animated Bobby Gillespie and a My Bloody Valentine-style loop of euphoric-sound. Second single 'Star' featured the late Augustus Pablo and applied dub to the Stones-territory of earlier songs like 'You're Just Too Dark to Care' and 'Cry Myself Blind.' It does appear to believe that Rosa Parks was dead - in 1997?

The third single and opening track 'Burning Wheel' is one of my favourite Primal Scream songs, despite the fact its opening appears to have been pilfered from Can's 'Future Days'! A great production that veers from channel-to-channel, featuring some wild organ from former Felt-keyboardist Martin Duffy - in line with the great 'Get Duffy' & his replacement work for the late Rob Collins in the Charlatans. The first half of the album goes out strongly with 'Out of the Void', which is a darker relative of their 'Screamadelica'-era, fitting with their later allusions to Joy Division, PIL and The Pop Group.

'Stuka' appears to reflect Gillespie & co's two decades too late flirtation with WWII imagery (Throbbing Gristle, Siouxsie Sioux, Joy Division & Keith Moon all there first!), though I think this was put down to Andrew Innes then obssession with 'The World at War'! Another hypnotic blend of dub, electronica and psychedelia, fitting well alongside the Chemical Brothers' best moment 'The Private Psychedelic Reel', the great Unkle-remix of The Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony' & Liam Howlett's remix of Method Man's 'Release Yo'Self.' 'Medication' gets right the Faces/Stones-thing they were doing on the previous LP (only 'Rocks' could be argued to have been a success)- though I'm quite intrigued by its current incarnation that is slower & recycles the 'Keep On Keepin'On'-riff from Joy Division's 'Interzone.' The cover of Motorhead meanwhile, is the sole duff moment and an obvious b-side - I'm sure Lemmy was mortified!

The album goes out strongly with the epic soundtrack piece 'Trainspotting' which sounds like it fuses 'Screamadlica' with dub and John Barry and the bleak 'Long Life' - which feels like a 90s-relative of 'Closer'-Joy Division and sounds like a precursor of 2000's 'Keep Your Dreams' (which was essentially Joy Division do 'Higher Than the Sun' with title from Suicide!). 'Vanishing Point' has dated well and alongside 'Screamadelica' and 'Xtrmntr' stand as their key albums. It was certainly one of the highlights of the late 90s alongside Royal Trux's 'Accelerator', Spiritualized's 'Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space', Screaming Trees' 'Dust', Neutral Milk Hotel's 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea', The Flaming Lips' 'Zaireeka', Meat Beat Manifesto's 'Subliminal Sandwich', Ghostface Killah's 'Ironman' & baader meinhof's eponymous LP. Pity 'Riot City Blues', 'When the Bomb Drops', is otherwise miles apart from it...

Worth another go.....
I have far too many albums which I have bought over the years, played once and if they don't grab me over another couple of spins I give up. My collection is full of them.

To give these albums another chance, I have started my Album of the Week campaign. I come home from work every night, Monday to Friday and play the selected album from start to finish. If still continues to disappoint, back in the cupboard it goes.

I bought this shortly after it's release in 1997 and played it few times, wasn't keen and it's been gathering dust ever since. Well it's Wednesday today and it's growing on me, Kowalski always was great as is Star and Burning Wheel. For me though, the best track is Trainspotting with it's blissed out bass and haunting drums. Give it a go, Sreamadelica it ain't, but still worth another chance......