Performer Notes
- 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.
Professional 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..."
