Screamadelica

Screamadelica is a 1991 album by Primal Scream and was their first to be a commercial success. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted it the 27th greatest album of all time.

The album was a massive departure from the band’s early indie rock sound, drawing inspiration from the house music scene (and associated drugs) that was becoming popular at the time of its production. The band enlisted house DJs Andrew Weatherall and Terry Farley on producing duties, although the album also contained a wide range of other influences including gospel and dub.

The album’s title track did not appear on the album itself; the ten minute dance track was also produced by Andrew Weatherall and sung by Denise Johnson. It appears on the Dixie Narco EP released in 1992, and featured in the opening credits of the now rare Screamadelica VHS video tape.

The album includes “Loaded”, which was a top twenty hit single in the UK. Dance DJ Andrew Weatherall began remixing “I’m Losing More than I’ll Ever Have”, from their previous album, and the resulting track disassembled the song, adding a drum loop from an Italian bootleg mix of Edie Brickell’s “What I Am”, a sample of Gillespie singing a line from Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues” and the central introductory sample from the Peter Fonda B-movie The Wild Angels. The single “Movin’ On Up” was the band’s breakthrough hit in the United States, reaching #2 on the Modern Rock Tracks, and also making #28 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks.

The album cover for Screamadelica was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of “Classic Album Cover” postage stamps issued in January 2010.