Additional information
Primal Scream: Bobby Gillespie, Robert Young, Andrew Innes, Martin Duffy, Gary "Mani" Mounfield, Paul Mulreany. Additional personnel: Ian Dixon (bass clarinet); Paul Harte (harmonica, synthesizer); Jim Hunt (saxophone); Duncan MacKay (trumpet); Augustus Pablo (melodica); Marco Nelson, Glen Matlock (bass); Pandit Dinesh (tabla). The Memphis Horns: Wayne Jackson (trumpet); Andrew Love (saxophone). Producers: Brendan Lynch, Primal Scream, Andrew Weatherall. After fully exploring their EXILE-era Stones fetish on GIVE OUT 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 down the 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. But the 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.
Reviews
Rolling Stone (7/10-24/97, pp.120-122) - 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...it rages woozily across the cranial dance floor, pinballing between mind f***s, genre hops and drug trips..." Spin (9/97, pp.157-158) - (8 out of 10) - "...In unfazed and lucid waves, everything--dance beats and guitar crunches, Memphis memories and Abbey Road scorings, the raw and the refined--washes through VANISHING POINT. Primal Scream hear classic rock, TV and movie scores, reggae, and the sleek means of electronica as fabulous interchangeable style moves..." Entertainment Weekly (7/11/97, pp.65-66) - "...Imagine a bunch of woozy Scots jamming in a Middle Eastern techno club in bustling Piccadilly Circus, and you have a rough idea of the swirling, hypnotic acid-trip electronica of VANISHING POINT..." - Rating: A Q (1/98, p.114) - Included in Q Magazine's "50 Best Albums of 1997." Option (11-12/97, p.111) - "...With VANISHING POINT, Primal Scream shows fruits of what must be some of pop's most voracious sets of ears....It just [seems] that no matter where the Screamers lay their hats they manage to sound at home, or at the very least, pretty damned cool." Melody Maker (12/20-27/97, pp.66-67) - Ranked #16 on Melody Maker's list of 1997's "Albums Of The Year." Melody Maker (7/5/97, p.51) - "...a real feeling of movement within its grooves; sometimes cruising on easy, other times oblivious and blindingly LOUD....crams everything in with a casual, dirty ease which [many] bands nearly kill themselves trying to stumble across." Musician (9/97, p.87) - "...loose-limbed song structures and multitudinous manipulated sounds of classic dub. Guitar, bass, drums, and vocals are often processed to a point where they are rendered unrecognizable among the mind-bending mix of tablas, sitars, bassoons, theremins, and Lord knows what else..." Village Voice (2/24/98) - Ranked #40 in the Village Voice's 1997 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll. NME (Magazine) (12/20-27/97, pp.78-79) - Ranked #4 in NME's 1997 Critics' Poll. NME (Magazine) (7/5/97, p.58) - "...VANISHING POINT is a landmark for Primal Scream. It finds them all but abandoning their classic-rock shtick and discovering...the band's real voice....a truly surprising, sometimes even magical, record..."
