Primal Scream - Screamadelica

Creation Records

Screamadelica is Primal Scream's third studio album and was released on this day in 1991. It's looked upon as a step away from the bands rock roots and into more electronically influenced pastures. It was the first Primal Scream album to receive commercial success and went on to heavily influence the British music scene of the 90's(and beyond). Bands like Oasis and Blur would take plenty of notes.

Screamadelica was the first album to win the Mercury Music Prize in 1992. The band started to take inspiration from the UK underground scene at the time and its affiliation with psychoactive substances. Mostly produced by Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson with The Orb(Higher Than the Sun) and Jimmy Miller(Movin' On Up and Damaged) stepping in to produce their respective tracks. The album is known for its amalgamation of alternative rock, alternative dance and neo-psychedelia.

Other groups may have done the sound better, but they didn't make it this accessible and available. Sometimes a small sacrifice in quality is necessary to open the floodgates. Screamadelica definitely compliments a care free, aloof head space. Although it's feel good music, it's laced with a haunted melancholic malaise. Undertones of abandonment, oppression and rejection resonate from the material - pretty much all the characteristics of the UK rave scene at the time. Loaded captures the rebellious nature of this scene like no other "We wanna be free, to do what we want to do and we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time, and that's what we're gonna do'. Happiness isn't the absence of sadness and Screamadelica is a musical representation of this sentiment.

There's the British music scene before Screamadelica and there's the British music scene after Screamadelica. It's a changing of the guards affair.

September 23rd, 1991.