Urban Hat€monger ?

Time to end this once & for all


They say it takes talent, luck, and hard graft to achieve greatness. Screamadelica is proof that you just need the love.

Bobby Gillespie loves music. He's possessed by the sounds of Phil Spector and Lee Perry, the spirit of Lemmy and Lennon and Arthur Lee's Love. He worships in the church of Aretha and exorcises demons last seen possessing Keith Richards and Keith Moon. He can barely play an instrument. His voice has absolutely no range. But Screamadelica's magic is Bobby's. It's all in the love.

Well what else was it going to be?

There are lots of reasons why I love this album of which I will go into more detail later , but what makes this album my favourite above anything else is the heart behind it.The first paragraph sums up everything for me. This album is one big love letter to music.
Now I don`t know what came first , did I always feel this way about music , or was it this album that made me think that way?
I love the philosophy of this album. It`s a philosophy of 'we can do anything we want'. It`s not an album limited to a typical band structure but much more that of a collective, if it sounded good it was in , regardless of who could provide it. So you get soul singer Denise Johnson , Public Image LTD bassist Jah Wobble , The Orb , Rolling Stones/Motorhead producer Jimmy Miller and Sabres Of Paradise Andrew Wetherall taking on the main production job, all of them throwing in their worth to the album.
Some critics have cruelly suggested that this is more an Andrew Wetherall album performed by Primal Scream than it is an album produced by Andrew Wetherall for Primal Scream. To me personally I think it`s probably half & half. Wetherall produced 8 of the tracks here and Primal Scream wrote 10 of the songs on the album (The exception being the cover of the 13th Floor Elevators song Slip Inside This House).Without either this album would not have happened.
As it says in the first paragraph , this is about making it through a love of music. In the 80s Primal Scream were considered a bit of a joke. In fact it was only down to Bobby Gillespie`s friendship with Creation Records boss Alan McGhee that they were even signed in the first place. The first album 'Sonic Flower Groove' an album stuffed full of C86 jangly guitars was disowned by the band before it was even released. The band toughened themselves up to record 'Primal Scream' in 1989 an album full of MC5 inspired garage rock , that hardly set the world on fire either. It was one of the songs on that album 'I`m Losing More Than I'll Ever Have' was remixed by Andrew Wetherall to include Jamacian Dub , a loop from an italian bootleg remix of Edie Brickell`s 'What I Am' , Bobby singing a line from Robert Johnson`s 'Terraplane Blues' as well as samples of Peter Fonda from the movie ' The Wild Angels' and re-released as 'Loaded'.
It was the band`s biggest hit.
Bobby had always had a love of the Acid House movement in the 80s and was keen to incorperate it into the bands sound , with the success of Loaded the band went into the studio using this new direction with the people mentioned above. It took the band almost 2 years to record the album. With Screamadelica taking an age to make , plus My Bloody Valentine`s Loveless being made around the same time just as slowly Creation Records almost went bankrupt several times over. Because of this 4 songs off the album (Loaded , Come Together , Higher Than The Sun & Don`t Fight It , Feel It) were released as singles long before the album saw the light of day. Finally in September 1992 the album was released to much critial acclaim.The band even won the Mercury music prize for that year. But somehow the £20,000 cheque that came with the prize somehow got lost in the celebrations.
But what does it sound like ? Bloody awesome actually....

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