Customer Reviews

Vanishing Point

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Along with Radiohead's "OK Computer", Prodigy's "Fat Of The Land" and The Verve's "Urban Hymns", Primal Scream's "Vanishing Point" is truly music for the next millenium. From the sitars of the opener to the final sonic chaos of the last track this truly is a great album. This is not to say, however, that it is everyone's cup of tea, far from it. As with most great recordings it takes a few listens before the music really grips you. This is a highly recommended CD for the person who thinks a little bigger than college radio!

In spite of the overwhelming praise lavished upon XTRMNTR, this one is better. Combining house and techno with traditional blues/rock and unique sound bytes, Vanishing Point is the Dark Side of the Moon for Primal Scream. "Kowalski," "Star," and "Medication" are each extremely different and somehow they all fit. Still, singles lovers should be warned that this album is a mood piece, and the mood is paranoia. "Star" encourages resistance against oppression with a constant look over the shoulder. Anyone who doesn't like to invest time in listening to something that builds and builds but never comes down should stay away. This is a post-industrial warning that probably came a little too late.

When I popped this CD in for the first time my head literally exploded in deep-seated audio delight! Burning Wheel is a masterpiece of spatial sound and music being combined into one super smooth burst of energy. It only gets better from there, trust me.

And a damn sight better than their Rolling Stones "tribute" album that preceeded it, Vanishing Point is a return to what Primal Scream do best. A marriage of guitars, synths, twisted vocals, drugged out rhythms ( both fast and slow - you get the idea that some songs were recorded under the influence of speed, some while on heroin) and psychedelic production touches. One minor gripe: when I first popped this into my cd player, the opening track "Burning Wheel" caught my attention. "I've heard this chord sequence, these sounds, before." After listening a few times, I thought I'd thumb through the cd booklet and find sampling credits for Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" only to discover that this track is listed as a band composition. For shame!!!! Otherwise this is agreat cd. Highlights include the cover of "Motorhead", done as electronica, and the title track to "Trainspotting" ten-plus minutes of slowly unwinding, euphoria inducing, trance like psychedelia. A keeper, for sure.

This band is named Primal Scream in honour of the the last american to whom Speed means freedom of soul, the question is not when you gonna stop, but whose gonna stop you ...... get your head round that and this albulm KICKS.....

This album contains a very eclectic mix of musical and production styles. While it is often compared to Dark Side of the Moon, the melodies which are reminiscent of Pink Floyd sound a lot more like early Floyd than any of Floyd's hit albums.

But this album is much more diverse in style than that. "Get Duffy" is an instrumental that reminds me of Kruder & Dorfmeister or Air in its analog techno sound. "Motorhead" has enough grit and samples to pass for a Ministry song.

This album will hook you on Primal Scream. It is easier to listen to than XTRMNTR, and is a better place to start for a first time listener. I also think this album has a more mature sound than their earlier albums: less ear candy and more song crafting.

This album tempts one to be fascist about their musical taste. I rarely comment on an album unless it is so good that I am driven to power up my laptop, fire up amazon.com, search for "primal scream" and choose to write a review. There's a lot of talent on this album, and it can appeal to the electronic/dance spinners as well as the "wall of sound/not quite industrial" new-wavers. Pick it up. It's very good.

The biggest problem with Vanishing Point is that it doesn't really maintain a consistent tone. It starts off with an excursion into electronic dub, slowly developing a somewhat dark and moody feel. But then, on track four, it throws you a really earnest, folksy acoustic ballad that expresses reverence for civil rights icons, sounding like the Manic Street Preachers at their least vital. I can applaud the sentiment, but this sounds really out of place after you've been working hard to create a sense of menace.

On the second side, it gets even worse. Primal Scream have always been goofy Stones revivalists at heart (they just have exceptional taste in dance music), but the band's landmark albums Screamadelica and XTRMNTR both find ways to incorporate that tendency into electronic music so it doesn't stand out too much. But "Medication" is a completely unadorned straight-ahead attempt at blues-rock, and it sounds very repetitive and boring. What's worse, it is immediately followed by a Motorhead cover. I have nothing against Motorhead, but Bobby Gillespie has the wrong voice for any kind of swaggering hard rock. It makes him sound weak and straining.

This is all a bit easier to take if you remember that the band's goal is to create an alternate soundtrack to the movie Vanishing Point. In that context, the sudden use of sixties-style folk is more understandable. If you view the protracted, long jams in the dub songs as a stoned road movie soundtrack, it makes more sense. The electronic songs "Out Of The Void" and "Stuka" are unremarkable musically, but they do have a sort of trippy vibe. Still, it's not really first-rate material.

Perhaps it would be easier to just enumerate the good parts. The first three songs are pretty good. "Burning Wheel" has Gillespie singing about something or other in a detached manner, accompanied by a reverberating guitar line. The song takes a really long time to get off the ground, but it sets the tone for a freaky dub album. "Get Duffy" is a fine instrumental. It has a jam-like quality, but the rhythm is funky and enjoyable. This leads into the excellent "Kowalski," which rips off the bass line from Massive Attack's "Safe From Harm" (hey, steal from the best) and lays some sampled dialogue and droning guitar over it. The hoarse, rhythmic whisper repeating "Kowalski, vanishing point" is oddly effective.

The dub-jam sound comes back a couple more times. "If They Move Kill 'Em" uses a really neat dub echo as the lead. The guitar line that counters the lead seems a bit incongruous, but does the stoned seventies thing well enough. Personally, I prefer Kevin Shields' incredible deconstruction of this track on XTRMNTR, which is much harsher, trippier, and simultaneously more danceable. However, the original does occasionally emphasize a funk-keyboard backdrop that is quite appealing. Toward the end, "Trainspotting" is basically another long jam with electronic effects, and it's all right, though not particularly memorable.

Whether you like this album or not will heavily depend on how much the idea of a bunch of meandering dub jams for a road movie suits your mood. I have a lot of trouble listening to the whole album most of the time (and I gave it many chances), but once in a while I hit a mood where this sort of half-focused, lazy, vaguely weird music sounds pretty good, when neither of the focused, well-defined tones of Screamadelica and XTRMNTR seems to be quite what I'm looking for. In that setting, Vanishing Point might be just the thing ("Kowalski" definitely gets some momentum going), but even then, I sort of have to force myself to ignore the blues-rock detours. I'd suggest leaving this one for after you become acquainted with the band's two most famous albums.

Vanishing Point is a great disc. As with all Primal Scream releases they wear their influences broadly and with distinct strokes. The background synthesized sounds are very much from a Hawkwind listening party in 1973. The beats totally modern. The guitars as crafted and to the point as ever. The vocals weave that Primal Scream druggy scene as perfectly as ever. They are in top form here, but I have a taste for all of their music in all it's forms, so at the top really does mean "at the top" of their game. I like the way they go from trippy 70s stylings to Satanic Majesties Request drum taps and finger pickings to the echoed and beat happy club sounds that are all the best of the Scream. Disonance is not a bad thing and when the Primal Scream uses this late 20th century musical technique it is to the advantage of the overall sound of the CD. Think smooth jazz and clubland neon dances, then you have Vanishing Point. HA! and the unrestrained joy of Medication and Motorhead as new century interpretations of 60's Seattle garage band rave-ups is dance crazy and a wonder to enjoy. And that is what makes Primal Scream so great, that they can move between genres in a flash and still be purely Primal Scream.

This is one of the most underated albums of the 90's, it was a real comeback following the Scream's flirtation with Stones styled rock. This is a dense batch of Dark yet uplifting songs, covering but not copying all genres. The most essential Primal Scream album.