E is for England: "Screamadelica" and the infusion of rave culture into early British indie PDF

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! ! ! ! ! “E F O R ENGLAND”! “Screamadelica” and the infusion of rave culture into early British indie! Jakub Fiala! Goldsmiths, University of London! January 2013
 TA BL E OF CONTENTS ! ! Introduction! 6! Primal Scream and early UK indie scene! 7! Historical and cultural contexts of the British rav...

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! ! ! ! ! “E F O R ENGLAND”! “Screamadelica” and the infusion of rave culture into early British indie! Jakub Fiala! Goldsmiths, University of London! January 2013


TAB L E O F C O NT ENT S!

! Introduction!

6!

Primal Scream and early UK indie scene!

7!

Historical and cultural contexts of the British rave movement!

9!

Album analysis!

10!

Conclusion!

12!

Bibliography!

14!

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I N TRODUCTION ! The most intriguing and influential movements in any kind of art often emerge by the process of fusion – a marriage of several, seemingly incompatible aesthetical paradigms, resulting in the creation of a new paradigm, which frequently becomes superior to its predecessors in both its impact and relevance to the current social and cultural environment. While in popular music, many of these moments occur after the zenith of the participating movements (such as the jazz/funk fusion in the early 1970’s), there have been a few marriages that came about rather early in the life thereof. One of the prime examples of such fusion, and the principal theme of this essay, is the “rave explosion” and the subsequent taking on of the house music aesthetics by the young British indie community in the late 80’s.! Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this fusion is the fact that despite the relative consistency of house music scene in the wake of British rave movement, not to mention the rather unified anti-establishmentarian sentiment within the indie scene (Harris, 2004), one might find an astonishing number of very distinct approaches to incorporating the aforementioned fusion ideology. In more or less obvious ways, house music elements found their way into numerous sub-movements in the UK, including the “madchester” scene, shoegazing, and even the commercialised, backward-looking movement of britpop. It would indeed seem fitting for a musicologist interested in these cultural happenings to investigate the diverse ways of appropriation of rave culture by British indie rockers so as to paint a complete picture of the corresponding musical zeitgeist.! Yet for the sake of this essay, I have chosen to focus on a single piece of music that, in my opinion, constitutes a sort of specimen of dance-rock fusion in the UK. Despite its release in 1991 (i.e. half a decade after the infamous “rave explosion” and the popularization of house), Primal Scream’s Screamadelica is often considered one of the most revolutionary rock recordings of the 90’s (Select, 2000). One of the main reasons for this is the fact that the record doesn't fit into any particular "movement" – it lacks an array of similar works in its own framework, yet it influenced an array of artists in different frameworks. In this essay, I shall try to outline the creative framework in which Primal Scream was situated in the time of the recording, and by analysing the influence of cultural context on the musical material of Screamadelica, I shall define the principal factors that led to the infusion of house into British indie music. In the end, the main concern of this investigation will be whether house music influences acting on indie are to be considered constructive, or destructive factors.!

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PRIMA L SC REA M A ND EA RLY U K I N DIE SCENE ! In the mid-80’s Britain, pop music found itself in a peculiar situation – while from the realm of politics, Margaret Thatcher kept on instilling a culture of social satisfaction, described aptly by John Harris (1999) as a “frenzy of consumption” and represented by “New Pop” bands such as Duran Duran, non-conformist cultural opposition seemed to have drowned with the slow demise of punk ideology and its musical rebirth in the dull, grey aesthetics of post-punk/new wave bands such as Joy Division, The Fall and The Cure. The apparent lack of a strong reactionary force in music was compensated by the emerging independent (or “indie”) movement, initiated by “a hard-headed network of post-punk companies” (Hesmondhalgh, 1999) such as Rough Trade and fronted by a group of bands and artists comprising The Smiths, Bobby Gillespie, My Bloody Valentine, etc. ! These bands would initially root their musical ideas in the punk ideology – not so much in terms of political attitudes as by their do-it-yourself approach to technology and the seeking of authenticity rather than sophistication. This approach is clearly recognizable in bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain, who combined the new wave ethos with the expressive devices of garage punk, amplified by embracing noise as the main source of musical material. Yet as much as one should like to directly link these new groups with the late 70’s punk explosion in terms of musical content of their work, there is a vast difference between these when it comes to their desired/presented social stance and lyrical expression. Thus while The Clash and Sex Pistols would play the way they did because of their angry anti-establishment mentality, indie culture generally held onto a certain aestheticist set of values based on a “classicist” attitude towards rock music (Hesmondhalgh, 1999). The overall sentiment was not one of rebellion, but either of “Morrissey-style miserabilism” (Reynolds, 1999, p. 95) or simply passive preference of artistic exploration to popular appeal.! According to Hesmondhalgh, one of the dominant stylistic traits of the “indie genre” was its apparent (but not necessarily intentional) racial connotation, practically all indie bands being formed by exclusively white musicians. Some of the musical features include focus on “jangly guitars” and suppresion of the rhythm track, which implies little resemblance to (and little acknowledgement of) the parallel musical trends in the US, where breakbeat-based1 hip-hop had  

beside being defined as an electronic music genre, the term “breakbeat” signifies the “percussion-only section of a funk or disco track, the peak moment at which dancers cut loose and do their most impressive steps” (Reynolds, 1999). The usage of breakbeats as central rhythmic figures was first developed in the late 70s by DJ Kool Herc and has since become one of the most prominent techniques in hip-hop, not to mention it constituting a basis for the later subgenres of dance music such as jungle and drum and bass. 1'

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already conquered the pop charts and the club scene was being introduced to a new genre of dance music, “house” originating in Chicago nightclubs. It would indeed seem strange for a UK indie group in 1985 (with the exception of highly established acts such as New Order and Depeche Mode) to utilise synths, drum machines or syncopated rythms.! Bonner (2007) talks about Primal Scream as it began in Glasgow in the early eighties, when Bobby Gillespie and his schoolfriend Jim Beattie started casually playing and recording “elemental noise tapes” (Reed, 1994). Soon, the two would move on to cover Byrds and Velvet Underground, and drawing influences from 1960s psychedelic guitar bands in their own songs. However, they did not manage to appeal to wider indie audiences, especially in comparison with Gillespie’s other band, The Jesus and Mary Chain, who are often celebrated as the progenitors of the 80’s shoegaze/noise-rock scene. Yet when Gillespie was given the ultimatum to focus on drumming in the Mary Chain and quit Primal Scream, he chose to remain in his original band, with which he would soon start exploring a heavier side of rock and roll, influenced by the Scream’s signing to Alan McGee’s Creation Records – one of the major players in the indie sector until the late 90’s, characterised by Hesmondhalgh (1999) as “built very much around […] a reverence for a certain ‘classic’ pop/rock canon”. This reflected in the Primal Scream’s sudden obsession with (and frequent references to) the traditional rock aesthetic values resulting in an intriguing mélange of punk and 60’s rock’n roll. Most notably, the band’s drug intake began to gain legendary proportions similar to those of the Rolling Stones in the early 70’s.! It was not until 1988, during the British “Second Summer Of Love” initiated by massive popularization of ecstasy (MDMA) as the main club drug, that Primal Scream started to take interest in the emergent acid house scene. As Gillespie recalls, he has always been “quite fascinated by it, but not quite getting it” (Bonner, 1999). Being drawn, to the new and attractive rave parties, where “the music was better, the people were better, the girls were better, and the drugs were better” (Reynolds, 1999, p.106), the band swiftly abandoned speed for E. With the change in narcotics, a change in musical orientation came about, and in 1990, Scream’s guitarist Andrew Innes offered one of their older ballads, “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have”, to DJ Andrew Weatherall for a remix. Thus began the process that resulted in the release of the most successful dance-rock crossover recordings, Screamadelica.


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HI S TOR I C A L AND CULTURAL CON T E X TS OF T HE BRITISH RAVE M OVEMENT!

! The legendary UK rave scene, having emerged in the late 80’s in London, Manchester, and to some extent, Brighton, has its origins several years before, in the underground clubs of Chicago. In venues such as Warehouse and Music Box, DJs Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy would start incorporating a more electronic, raw sound into their sets, using synthetizers and samplers instead of “live” tracks. This new approach was reminiscent more of 70’s electronica than disco, and with the use of the iconic Roland TB-303 bass synth, it gained the moniker “acid house”. The principal musical traits of this music were the straight 4/4 beat, little harmonic movement and a fluent formal structure with individual tracks fading in and out of each other.! House was first imported into England in the mid-80‘s by DJs in London’s gay clubs – only to limited success (Reynolds, 1999, p. 57). It was several years ago that Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling discovered the new sound on a holiday on Ibiza, alongside a new drug, ecstasy (a substance called MDMA). Fascinated by the positivity of “E” and the exciting athmosphere of acid house parties, they decided to open clubs in London that would capture the spirit of Ibiza (Bonner, 1999). These clubs were Oakenfold’s The Project and Rampling’s Shoom. Soon, ecstasy would spread all over England, attracting more and more club audiences due to its euphoric, encouraging effects and easy consumption in the form of pills2. Beside the vibrant London club scene, a fervent house community emerged around the Haçienda club in Manchester, managed by synth-rock veterans New Order and their Factory Records label.!  

The new parties were fundamentally different from disco events – generally, they would go on till unreasonably late hours and the dancers would employ moves know as “jacking”, described by Reynolds (1999, p.29) as “unpaired freestyle self-expression” as opposed to the “courtship ritual” of disco. Fueled by ecstasy rather than alcohol, “raves”, as they have been dubbed in the UK, were celebrations of unity and freedom from the materialism of modern civilization. In a sense, they constituted a return to the rudimental tribal communion. Due to strict club laws in the cities, most rave events soon moved to warehouses in the countryside and retreated into the realm of secret gatherings, which did not decrease their popularity at all.! The fundamental change brought by (mainly acid) house into dance music was that, as Reynolds argues, the classicist notion of a “song” was replaced by a new object – a “track”. OfIn popular culture, these were often depicted as “smiley faces”, emphasizing the positive emotions caused by the drug. 2'

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ten consisting of “little more than a drum track” (Reynolds, 1999, p.26), tracks are the most remarkable expression of functionalism in music – stripped down of lyrical ideas and strong melodies, their principal aim was to provide an inspiring, energetic soundscape for a trance-like style of dancing under the influence of E. This approach requires a completely different way of producing and arranging the music, focusing on the horizontal (rhytmic) rather than vertical (harmonic) development.!

! A L B U M A NA LYSIS ! Screamadelica was released in 1991 following four singles that all appear on the LP. These tracks are indubitably prime examples of the dance/rock crossover perfected by Primal Scream on the album – thus two of them will be the principal focus on this chapter, followed by a brief analysis of the rest of the recording. This is mainly due to the fact that the principles of dance/rock fusion are similar in most tracks, although there are vast differences among them in terms of lyrical content and athmosphere.! The first single, and arguably the most successful and revolutionary one, is “Loaded”, a 7minute track produced by DJ Andrew Weatherall and originally intended to be a remix of an older Scream song, “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have”. The original sported Stones-like slide guitar and several bluesy bass lines, out of which only the last one was used by Weatherall in the remix. These, along with the pompous horn stabs, were one of the few remnants of the remixed song – everything else was completely unrelated sound material: “a drum loop from an Italian bootleg mix of Edie Brickell's "What I Am", Gillespie singing a line from Robert Johnson's "Terraplane Blues" and a sample from the Peter Fonda B-movie Wild Angels” (Bonner, 1999).! The track begins with a short sampled dialogue from Fonda’s movie, proclaiming “we wanna be free … to do, what we want to do … we wanna get loaded … we’re gonna have a good time, we’re gonna have a party”. The positivism of the “E’d up” rave community is introduced here in a very clear, almost satirical fashion – yet the following horn melody together with an unnaturally high-pitched vocal phrase acts as a direct, serious confirmation of the spoken idea and of the celebratory mood of the song. After the pompous introduction, another surprise for the pre-Screamadelica Primal Scream fan occurs – a deep, 4/4 house-y drum loop comes in, contrasting the intro in terms of dynamics as well as the overall tone colour. This “rave theme” is clearly separated from the bombasticity of the horn riff by an extremely abrupt cut between the two parts (perhaps achieved by using a sequencer). However, after several measures, classic rock instrumentation starts coming back – an uplifting, bluesy piano riff and the aforementioned slide guitar. In the end, the two sound worlds introduced in “Loaded” reach unity and coherence, resulting in a strange, yet very danceable mix. The ever-present beat is interrupted

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only once, in a section of the track that resembles the “breakdown”, a typical phase of dance music structure, whose principal function is to relieve the song’s tension and provide sonic space for a “build-up”. By using these features, the standard pop song form is completely effaced in “Loaded”, leaving a groovy, futuristic soundscape, free from most references to classic rock and roll canon and thus deliberately failing to adhere to one of the main values of indie rock music, the “classicist” attitude that was so characteristic for Creation Records (Hesmondhalgh, 1999). This approach is then in sharp contrast with the “old-school” slide guitar and piano motifs taken from the original.! The second single on the album, “Come Together”, is an extended, Weatherall-produced version of a radio-friendly tune. The original, albeit quite fitting into the concept of Screamadelica, is a standard indie-pop song with a verse and a chorus, embellished with acoustic guitars and traditional 60’s guitar band harmonies. The harmonic progression of the verse in terms of harmonic functions is I-IV-I-IV-I-VI-IV-V – such harmony involves a lot of tension-and-release movement, culminating in the final dominant chord. The principle of increasing tension in harmony, despite being one of the key paradigms of music, is rarely used (or supressed) in dance music, whose main goal is to provide a constant backdrop for raves and parties. Thus in the album version, Andrew Weatherall only focused on the harmony of the chorus, which is a simple rock and roll progression of I-V-VIIb-IV and goes on throughout the entire track. Combined with the steady 4/4 kick drum beat, it delivers the steady pulse required for ravestyle dancing. The only “decorative” instrumental elements of the track are echoy sound effects reminiscent of the 70’s dub recordings – however, they do not interfere with the fundamental rhythm section – not in terms of timbre nor beat-wise. In a similar way to “Loaded”, there is a breakdown section, which slowly builds up towards the climax part of the track, where gospellike choir vocals proclaim the spirit of 80’s rave scene – a spirit of unity and peace. Yet there is a significant feature of “Come Together” that differentiates it from “Loaded” – the separation of individual sections of the song is much less clear, blurring the line between the musical content of the radio version and the “remix” content. Instead of introducing two distinct, although coverging soundscapes, the track is mixed as a substantial dub recording, disregarding the apparent difference between the original indie rock ethos and the new aesthetics of house music. This shows even greater commitment of Primal Scream to the cause of merging the two sets of values and therefore creating a new one.! When looking at Screamadelica as a whole, one might perceive the recording as divided into three distinctive parts – the first one, ending with “Higher Than the Sun”, comprises fast-paced house tracks with rather substantial, clearly presented lyrics and (apart from the first track) a darker mood. “Movin’ On Up” is a Rolling Stones-influenced rock song with gospel elements, a direct reference to the 1960’s rock and roll ethos with little electronic material. The next two tracks are more house-oriented in terms of instrumentation, sporting deep TB-303 style bass lines and gloomy harmonies evoking the athmosphere of the legendary British warehouse parties. This part of the record is concluded with “Higher Than the Sun”, a lyrically rich electroni-

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ca song with a complex melody (BBC, 2011). It is followed by three tracks that constitute a certain antithesis to the first four – the athmospheric instrumental that is “Inner Flight”, and the aforementioned positivistic ecstasy-infused house tracks, “Come Together” and “Loaded”. These three abandon the ferocious rave spirit of the preceding ones for a more spiritual, philosophical approach to dance music reminiscent of The Shamen and the New Age movement (Reynolds, 1999, p.105). Finally, the last four tracks represent a very artistic take on the album’s vision, including the surprisingly classicist ballad “Damaged”, and the free improvisation-style tracks “I’m Coming Down” and “Shine Like Stars”. The tenth track on the album, a remix of “Higher Than the Sun”, is an intriguing experiment that involved production by The Orb, one of the most remarkable London-based electronic acts. In the end, the final part of Screamadelica, albeit the least danceable section of the record, is the most polished and revolutionary...