Latest Release
- NOV 8, 2024
- 16 Songs
- Come Ahead · 2024
- Screamadelica · 1991
- Give Out But Don't Give Up · 1994
- Screamadelica · 1990
- Screamadelica · 1991
- Vanishing Point · 1997
- XTRMNTR · 1999
- Screamadelica · 1991
- Come Ahead · 2024
- Screamadelica · 1990
Essential Albums
- On 1997’s Vanishing Point, Primal Scream were ill at ease with the world. They still are but XTRMNTR transforms the darkness into fury. Their most thrilling and inventive record since Screamadelica, it’s a combustion of political sloganeering, pressure-cooker punk (“Accelerator”), agit-techno (“Swastika Eyes (Jagz Kooner Mix)”), scuzzy hip-hop (“Pills”), and throbbing psychedelia (“Shoot Speed / Kill Light”). Amid all the aggression and uprising, electro ballad “Keep Your Dreams” reminds us there’s still beauty and optimism at the heart of the band.
- Before acid house, Scotland's Primal Scream were your average, jangly psych-rock act. Then rave hit and Andrew Weatherall signed on to produce their third album, Screamadelica, and a generation's collective mind was blown. Their roots are evident in the Stones-style blues rock of "Movin' On Up," but the '60s quickly melt away as they dive into house beats, synth bleeps, dubbed-out remixology, and the mind-bending chillout bliss of "Higher Than the Sun" and "I'm Comin' Down." Dancing in muddy fields would never be the same again.
- 2024
- 2016
- 2013
Music Videos
- 2006
- 2006
Artist Playlists
- Come together and keep movin' on up.
- The UK groove merchants explore languid, psychedelic beats.
- Where synth-pop, psychedelic jangle, and rock ‘n' roll meet.
- Alt-rock, psychedelia, and dance music pushed to maniacal edges.
Live Albums
More To Hear
- The singer-songwriter explains her dislike of genres.
- At home with the Primal Scream singer.
- Best rock songs from the ‘80s.
About Primal Scream
Like superheroes who can transform themselves into any shape at will, Primal Scream have endured as a UK rock institution precisely because they’ve refused to settle into one. Since he established the group in Glasgow in 1982, frontman Bobby Gillespie has led Primal Scream through countless different lineups and musical permutations: wistful indie-pop outfit, leather-clad proto-punks, psychedelic dub crew, anarchist industrial armada, Rolling Stones revivalists, hedonistic rave ambassadors. The latter guise is their most widely recognized thanks to 1991’s epochal Screamadelica, a pioneering fusion of ’60s classic rock and ’90s acid house that saw the group subject themselves to the knob-tweaking whims of DJ Andrew Weatherhall and Alex Patterson of The Orb. But while that Mercury Prize-winning record marked their first major success, Primal Scream refused to repeat the formula, leading listeners instead on a roller-coaster ride that’s included the Sticky Fingers soul of 1994’s Give Out But Don’t Give Up, the nocturnal electro-noir of 1997’s Vanishing Point, the politicized techno-punk of 2000’s XTRMNTR, and the Middle Eastern exotica of 2013’s latter-day triumph More Light. But while Gillespie perennially exudes the sunglasses-at-night cool of someone eager to quiz you on your favorite Stooges and Can deep cuts, his duets with Sky Ferreira and Haim on 2016’s Chaosmosis remind us that behind all of Primal Scream’s genre-bounding experimentation is a mass-appealing pop sensibility that allows the group to sound both timeless and of the moment.
- ORIGIN
- Glasgow, Scotland
- FORMED
- 1982
- GENRE
- Alternative