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PRIMAL SCREAM
Vanishing Point
(Creation)
Radiohead blame technology. The Wu-Tang Clan blame the CIA and probably blame you. Paranoia it sems. imbues the heart of all the great music being made in 1997. Not the Weat London Anxiety-U-Hire of Blur, but genuine conspiracy-fuelled end of-the-millenium psychosis. Whether due to a panicky sense of the coming apocalypse or a once-valid indie sound having become the corporate death rattle of bands like Jocasta, the late '90s is fast becoming a time of of disaffected experimentation. And at the heart of it all are Primal Scream.

"Screamadelica" may have changed the face of British music in the 90s. but the shock from its ecumenical uniticationof indie, rock, dance and soul pretty pretty much destroyed the band as well. Their ruined lack of control gave way to "Give Out, But Don't Give Up" - 'Raw Power remixed by Cliff Richard - and a disastrous series of self-destructive tours. Then nothing. Around February 1996 the band set about rebuilding it all, sifting through the post-'Screamdelica' E comedown and turning to a darker, inward world of disafection, dissolution and dread. Like a late-'90s companion piece to Sly Stone's 1971 classic "Them's A Riot Going On". 'Vanishing Point' is the sound or a band rejecting rock, dance and public acceptance in favour of a bleak, bass-heavy-groove. But where 'Riot' resulted from genuine political and social upheaval (Watts, Woodstock, Vietnam) , 'Vanishing Point' seems born solely of a band's internal mental crisis: they believe there are riots in the streets, it's just that they're too scared to go outside and find out.

As benefits an album born of such tears. the key player here is Andrew Innes, refusing to be photgraphed, wishing to remain anonymous, yet engineering one of the most oppresive musical productions of the decade.

Like Spiritualized 'Ladies And Gentlemen...', 'Vanishing Point' exists as some weird kind of retro-futurism - King Tubby mixing The MC5 in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop - yet with a sense that, like Radiohead this is a band taking music for the 21st Century. The most valid or the recent glut of 'imaginary soundtrack' concepts- this one to Richard Sarafian's 1971 film of the same name - "Vanishing Point' is best listened to at full volume behind the wheel or a large speeding automobile or at a medically dangerous volume on your Walkman. It is not an album that works in the living room.

Opening track 'Burning Wheel' encapsulates this. Starting tire as a Ravi Shankar experiment for the Eraser head Soundtrack, it transforms into a contemptuous Stones sneer bolstered through drugged up arrogance - "If you could see wwhat i could see...throughmy diased eyed/When my head is on fire/When I'm a burning wheel". After the suave cop-show soundtrack of 'Get Duffy' comes 'Kowaiski' the most evil single of the year so far. The relentless sound or Sonny Barger's Hell's Angels drilling into the heart of the corrupted American dream. 'Kowaiski is the core track of the album, imbued with paranoia and distortion from which almost every other track feeds- from the the waiting Barry Adamson dirt-funk of 'If They Move Kill 'Em' to he unstrung pain at 'Stuka'.

Even the straight-ahead rock songs are infected. 'Medication' - a numbskull 'Rocks' rift shot through with sickness, redemption and heroically inept drumming - is exactly that 'Give Out... should have sounded like But it's their cover version or 'Motorhead' the one sung through the Darth Vader mask that truly pushes limits - distorted, dehumanized wailing, and revwing motorbikes ending in a comic rawk explosion. Amidst all or this sandwiched in between 'Kowalski and 'If They Move... ' is the next singe. Star'.

From its Augustus Pabto melodica and Memphis Horns backing to the revolutionary rally of " Rebel souls in future days/Everyone who stands up for their right". Star' is a genuinely touching and indubitably daft call to arms. Yet, in the context or the rest of the album's aural viciousness, it is also an undeniably frail one, as if even the band recognise the utopian naivety in its selfless and possibLy unbidden shouldering of the black man's burden.

Along with Radiohead and Spiritualized this is also the sound of a band opting out of the chart rat-race and downsizing to something approximating future music for the the new millenium. With 'Screamadelica', Prirnal Scream where a band with only one place left to go - too far. Now it seems they've got there. 5 out of 5
Soundbite: 'Point of no Return"Vanishing Point: Select Review

Originally Appeared in August 1997 issue of Select Copyright © Select.

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