Screamadelica — 1991

Background

Screamadelica was released in 1991 at a pivotal moment for Primal Scream, a band that had built a modest following as a fairly conventional guitar act before dramatically shifting direction under the influence of acid house and the UK's rave and club culture. Producer Andrew Weatherall, brought in initially to remix a single track, ended up reshaping the band's sound so thoroughly that the album stands as a genuine hybrid between indie rock and dance music rather than either genre wearing the other's clothes.

Sound

'Movin' On Up' opens the album with a gospel-tinged rock and roll energy built around a driving guitar riff and horn section, immediately establishing the record's genre-crossing ambitions; 'Loaded', the single that started the whole transformation, layers a sample of a Peter Fonda monologue over a loose, groove-heavy production that bridges rock and dance music more successfully than almost any record before it. 'Come Together' stretches past ten minutes in its full version, building a euphoric, gospel-and-house hybrid around a spoken civil rights sample.

Genre fusion

The album moves fluidly between rock, dub, gospel, house and dance production without ever feeling like a band awkwardly experimenting outside its comfort zone — a testament to how completely the group and Weatherall reimagined what a Primal Scream record could sound like. 'Higher Than the Sun' in particular captures the record's blissed-out, psychedelic ambition, built around a hazy, dubwise production that owed as much to the era's rave culture as to any traditional rock songwriting.

Legacy

Screamadelica is widely credited as the album that most successfully bridged the gap between British indie rock and the acid house and rave culture reshaping British youth culture at the start of the 1990s, winning the inaugural Mercury Prize and remaining one of the most acclaimed British albums of its decade. Its genre-blurring approach directly influenced the subsequent britpop and dance-rock crossovers that followed through the decade.