Primal Scream

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• Genre: Alt Dance
• Hometown: Glasgow
• Primal Scream Website

About

Like a musical version of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," Scotland's Primal Scream have made a career of connecting the musical dots. Beginning in the mid-1980s as a Byrds-influenced Folk Pop group, they recorded a handful of singles and an album of well-crafted tunes that endeared them to the indie scene. They then moved on to embrace a tough blues swagger derived from the Rolling Stones and the Black Crowes until, like many English youth, the Scream were galvanized by the cultural earthquake that was Acid House. Their brilliant 1991 album Screamadelica is an absolute landmark, a seamless fusion of blissed-out House and swooning Pop created with the help of producer Andrew Weatherall. It's difficult to overestimate the impact of this album. Warmly embraced by both baggy-panted ravers and indie purists, it was many people's first exposure to electronic dance music. Primal Scream have continued to investigate the intersection of dance culture and Indie Rock, drawing on the worlds of House, Techno, big beat and Dub in their search for a more perfect groove.

- Mike Schulman