Description
Clear vinyl LP
‘Reverberations (Travelling In Time)’ is the debut Primal Scream album that never was: 16 perfectly formed pop nuggets weighing in at just under 35 minutes.
Boasting eleven previously unreleased BBC session recordings, plus all five songs from the band’s first two Creation Records singles, ‘Reverberations (Travelling In Time)’ captures perfectly what many believe to be a crucial era for one of the UK’s most important groups as they went on to influence a wave of emerging bands, most notably The Stone Roses. It’s a collection that provides a snapshot of the youthful innocence and uninhibited passion that characterised their early two-minute indie-pop adventures.
Singer Bobby Gillespie says, “This music proves we really had something special going on back then. I’m very proud of this album, I’m glad these sessions are finally being released.”
‘Reverberations (Travelling In Time)’ is available as a special gatefold CD edition and on black or clear vinyl. All formats of the album include a wealth of unseen period photography plus essays by band members Bobby Gillespie and Jim Beattie, as well as music historian Bob Stanley.
The cover illustration was provided by renowned British illustrator and designer Julie Verhoeven, and each vinyl LP comes in a lavish gatefold sleeve with printed inner sleeve and a large format 8-page booklet.
A recap of the band’s early years provides the context within which the songs on ‘Reverberation’ were written and recorded. Primal Scream were formed in Glasgow during the early 1980s by Bobby Gillespie and Jim Beattie, two music obsessed kids from Mount Florida on the southeastern edges of the city. Initially inspired by punk rock and yet to learn how to play their guitars properly, early Scream home recordings were primitive affairs that often- featured Gillespie shouting into the microphone over droning basslines whilst banging on any household objects that came to hand.
By 1983 the band were developing a sound and writing style of their own, with Beattie playing an amplified acoustic 12-string on songs inspired by the duo’s eclectic music tastes that ranged from PiL through Love, Big Star and The Byrds via the Ramones. The duo became a fully formed band during 1984 with the addition of Robert Young on bass and Tom McGurk on drums, by which time Gillespie had been invited to drum – Mo Tucker style – for East Kilbride pals The Jesus and Mary Chain.
The debut Mary Chain single, ‘Upside Down’, released on Alan McGee’s fledgling Creation Records in November 1984, caused an overnight sensation upon release and placed Gillespie at the centre of a new and exciting sea change in the UK’s independent scene.
The debut Primal Scream single, ‘It Happens’ (backed with ‘All Fall Down’), was hastily recorded at Alaska Studios, London in February 1985 but, following its release on Creation in May it caught the attention of John Peel at BBC Radio 1, who invited the band for their first session on his show. Four new songs – heard here for the first time since being initially broadcast – indicated that the band were capable songwriters with a melancholic edge and self- assured swagger.
Early Primal Scream shows were special events. The band, now augmented by tambourine player Martin St. John, were one of the most exciting and original prospects in the UK at the time. As Bob Stanley describes in this album’s sleeve notes, “They looked like a gang. More precisely, they looked like a Glaswegian variant of Love, a bunch of hard-nuts playing soft sounds laced with something potentially explosive.”
Tracklisting
Imperial
Velocity Girl
Feverclaw
Silent Spring
I Love You
Tomorrow Ends Today
Bewitched And Bewildered
Crystal Crescent
Subterranean
Leaves
Aftermath
All Fall Down
It Happens
Crystal Crescent
Velocity Girl
Spirea X
