Friday Fun: Primal Scream, 'Loaded'

You know, I remember reading somewhere that the whole pre-millennium tension thing burst a decade too early in ’89-’90, what with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Communism and in culture the whole acid-house fad that had every band worth their fashionable salt going dancey on us all of a sudden.

Primal Scream were a fair to middling rock band who oscillatated between C86 jingle-jangle guitars and stonesy riffs before they started messing around with synthesisers and employing house DJs Andrew Weatherall and Terry Farley for production duties.Now the primals can never be accused of doing anything by half, so when they went dance they made sure to include the female soul vocalist, the drum loop and the extensive remix, on their watershed album ‘Screamadelica’.

Just one of the albums many (and it has to be said varied) delights, is that shambling baggy anthem ‘Loaded’. The track started life when Andrew Weatherall began remixing ‘I'm Losing More than I'll Ever Have’, from their previous album, with the result of stripping the song back to its skeleton, adding a wicked percussion line from an Italian bootleg mix of Edie Brickell's ‘What I Am’ and a sample of Gillespie singing a line from Robert Johnson's ‘Terraplane Blues’. Now you would think that too many disparate elements would spoil the broth, but added to the already heady brew is an audio sample from the Peter Fonda film The Wild Angels that gives the track its intro and some would say notoriety.

So we get an impossibly floaty bass, a classic guitar figure cutting through the audio fog and barmy samples all over the place… never too much of a good thing apparently.

Where to find: Screamadelica (1991)

My Random Wednesday: Genesis, 'In the Cage'

When we think of prog rock the first reaction is to shudder and think of all cringe inducing stage theatrics and the interminable instrumental noodling designed to showcase alleged virtuosity.

So when we get a prog tendency, the best thing is to go for the pinnacle of the genre and Peter Gabriel era genesis can argue to be just that. ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’ is a curious album, in which Gabriel wove a intricate tapestry partly about the quest of the protagonist ‘Rael’ to find his brother, but with individual songs making satirical allusions to everything from mythology, the sexual revolution, advertising and consumerism. It’s a concept album so it’s wildly ambitous, bombastic (delightfully so) and more than a touch indulgent.

‘In the Cage’ is simply perfect prog , it’s one of the few songs from the album to remain in Genesis’ live repertoire to this day. Musically we get a chugging synth/ drum rhythm representing the clausterphobia that Rael experiences in his mental prison, before the track bursts open with Tony Bank’s infamous synth solo (remember them?), which provides a genuine shot of adrenaline into the prog body taking us onto some celestial plateau.

Every thing about this is epic, and it won't let you forget that. Lyrically it’s vintage, eccentric Gabriel, “drowning in this liquid fear” and so on. Three popular songs are referenced in the lyrics, “My Girl”, Del Shannon’s “Runaway” and “Raindrops keep falling on my head”, which only adds to the postmodern mystery.

Where to find: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (1974)

Metal Monday: Pantera, 'I'm Broken'

Starting life as glam metal also-rans, Pantera played a major role in shaping post-thrash metal with ‘Vulgar Display of Power’ in 1992. By slowing down the tempos and incorporating a harder-edged vocal style they pioneered a new era of groove metal. 2 years later Pantera returned to much hype and fanfare, becoming the defining metal band of their generation. Dubbed the most extreme album to ever get to number one, ‘Far Beyond Driven’ was devoid of nearly all the Thrash Metal influences Pantera had on their previous three albums, settling for a driller-killer mid tempo groove throughout the album.

Much of the shift was due to Dimebag Darrell's more down-tuned and heavier, sludgy playing in the style of Tony Iommi from metal behemouths Black Sabbath. Anselmo's lyrics were also showing a new found maturity, far more personal than on the previous albums. Don’t be lulled into thinking that the band had shed the metallic mayhem with their new found popularity, this is the sound of raging young men spewing forth blatant raw aggression atop jackhammer drums and industrial guitars.

‘I’m Broken’, is archatypal of pantera’s classic sound, the song features one of guitarist Dimebag Darrell's most famous riffs (later echoed in Audioslave’s ‘Cochise’) and Phil Anselmo’s razor blade vocal style. Pantera officially disbanded in 2003 amid a war of accusations and in late 2004, Dimebag was murdered onstage during a Damageplan performance. Although Phil Anselmo has garnered much acclaim fronting Louisiana bayou metallers Down, he is destined to live in the shadow of Pantera's peerless canon.

Where to find: Far Beyond Driven (1994)

Classic Rock: Van Morrison, 'You don't pull no punches, but you don't push the river'

Following the dissolution of his marriage to Janet Planet, Morrison quit the California life and took an extended trip back to Ireland in search of a new source of artistic energy and purpose. The following album Veedon Fleece, was written quickly in a three-week blitz of creative activity that saw a shift in tone from his previous run of albums. The album itself is his most preoccupied with Ireland, as if he was consciously attempting to invoke the memory of ‘Astral Weeks’ and achieve the type of divine transcendence which made that album live in immortality.

‘Veedon Fleece’ contains some of the most ambitious and challenging work of Morrison’s career. He puts himself at the heart of it all, the weary traveller trying to immerse himself back amongst the “real people”. ‘You Don’t Pull No Punches’, is the gargantuan centrepiece of the album, which appears as a form of escapist fantasy among the other grounded songs.

As with all of his best work, the song sounds like the lonely troubadour standing in front of the microphone, entering a trance like state, and allowing the supporting musicians to follow his lead. They enter almost tentatively, one by one, but building, eventually giving life to a swirling, dreamlike choir of strings and woodwinds. The whole thing is delicately supported by Morrison’s voice, lying above it all manipulating from the heavens.

Lyrically the song takes us to exhilarating new places. He creates a new Celtic mythology, with the fleece as the Irish equivalent of the Holy Grail, a religious relic that would answer his questions if he could track it down, on his quest around the west coast of Ireland. William Blake and the Eternals and the Sisters of Mercy are added to the already bewildering mix, a symbol of everything yearned for in the preceding songs on the album; spiritual enlightenment, wisdom and artistic vision. Somewhat surprisingly, he subsequently revealed that the song owed a considerable debt to his readings in Gestalt therapy.

Morrison took a three year break coming back with the relatively lightweight ‘A Period Of Transition’ a man absolutely cleansed by the experience of ‘Veedon Fleece’.

Where to find: Veedon Fleece (1974)

Floorfiller: Cabaret Voltaire, 'Sensoria'

Born out of the proto-electronica scene of seventies Sheffield, Cabaret Voltaire were essentially a punk band who ditched the guitars and replaced them with rudimentary synthesisers creating a delightful variety of experimental electronic music, losing none of the aggression through the cold technology. Nowadays it’s easy to look back and hail the groups of this era as prescient visionaries shaping the techno landscape of the following decade but this is essentially industrial music, primeval and raw.

It wasn’t until micro-phonies in 1984 that they went all commercial on us and started turning all that punk energy into something to demolish your dancefloor, even getting some airtime on MTV in the process.

The original 'Sensoria' had meat put on its bones with a retooled 12-inch mix in 2001, something to really get excited by. It starts with a series of thudding beats, you know that familiar eighties ‘massive drum in a warehouse’ sound like the reverb’s been pushed into the stratosphere. The addition of a wickedly primitive bassline envelopes the sonic environment livening up proceedings nicely, the stuttering attack comes across as an experience not unlike being beaten repeatedly by a mallet. Acidic electronic licks, the catchy sample and upfront vocals build the track into a colossal exercise in rhythm.

Not so much something to rock the foundations as uproot them and steamroll anything foolish enough to cross the path.

Where to find: The Original Sound of Sheffield '83/'87

Modern Sounds: Fleet Foxes, 'Ragged Wood'

Following a couple of well received EP’s, the five-piece seattle based folk-rockers released their eponymous debut album in June. The close harmonies are likely to invite comparisons with post ‘Pet Sounds’ era Beach Boys or Crosby Stills and Nash, but if you’re looking for a pithy comparison, a more likely fit would be to dub them this years Arcade Fire. They fit the mould as an off-kilter eccentric band who’ve taken the mainstream by storm, now hopefully they avoid the ubiquitous radio overkill.

The track bursts open like a window pouring refreshing sunlight on the dusty rooms inside. With a ramshackle rhythm it goes off on a brisk cantor flowing with the aroma of woozy acoustic guitar and arcane instrumentation creating a vast kaleidoscopic wash. There’s a real purpose here, like the music is trying to free its shackles to float off into the divine ether. Don’t be fooled by the dizzy atmosphere, there’s a serious intelligence at work amongst all the play The stop chord technique and celestial outro reveal a more subtle hand at work, one of pure pop craftsmanship.

Where to find: Fleet Foxes (2008)

Random Wednesday: Time Zone, 'World Destruction'

Afrika Bambaataa is generally regarded as the "Grandfather" or "Godfather" among the early pioneers of Hip-Hop, as well as the prime innovator of the electro funk sound. His third single ‘Planet Rock’ laid waste to the vapid nature of popular disco, introducing a colder futuristic vision, that borrowed heavily from Kraftwerk’s ‘Trans Europe Express’ and ‘Numbers’. The latter in particular provided the perfect template for the breakbeat architecture that would become synonomous with hip-hop.

Bambaataa worked with different musicians for his experimental Time Zone project, which he would continue off and on into the nineties. Impressed by John Lydon’s
rabid delivery style, he had dub pioneer Bill Laswell arrange a collaborative session, the fruits of which produced the present track.

‘World Destruction’ is the first real rapcore song; predating Run-DMC and Aerosmith's ‘Walk This Way’, with its insiduous guitar line and a majestic synth figure. Lydon, fresh from his own experimentation with p.i.l., contributes a note perfect performance capturing the clausterphobic sense of impending doom perfectly. He shows us that punk and rap are two-sides of the same coin, both essentially aggressive, visceral genres.

Laswell contributed bass to the track, but the two main protagonists are clearly the stars of the show, brewing a storm with furious vocalisations backed by the ominous thud of the mechanised beat. One of those rare occasions in music when two genre leaders get together and make something at least equal to the sum of it’s parts, a little gem to cherish.

Where to Find: World Destruction Single (1984) &
The Best of British £1 Notes (2005)