Primal Scream - Slip Inside This House
You think you can't. You wish you could. I know you can. I wish you would.
Album: Screamadelica [3rd album]
Recorded: London, England
Genre: Alternative Dance, Neo-Psychedelia, Acid House
Album Release: September 23rd 1991
Length: 5.16
Producer: Andy Weatherall & Andy Innes
Vocalist: Bobby Gillespie [age 30] or Robert Young?
Label: Creation Records
Music Video
Music Video (Australian Version)
The song is a cover of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators - Slip Inside This House
Charts, Streams & Sales
UK (albums): #8
UK (albums): x2 Platinum
Spotify: 4,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 750,000 +
Mercury Prize Winner 1992
Melody Maker Albums of the Year 1991: #1
Q Magazine Best British Albums of All Time: #18
Select Magazine Best Albums of the 90's: #1
The Scotsman Newspaper 100 Best Scottish Albums: #1
Credits
The drums are sampled from Mantronix - King of the Beats (1988) and Ice Cube - Rollin' Wit' the Lench Mob
Details
- Frontman Bobby Gillespie started off as the drummer for Jesus and Mary Chain. He couldn't play very well so instead of a full kit he just had two drums.
- Primal Scream, for this album, took their sound in the direction of acid house.
- The song is a loose cover of the sixties psychedelic track 'Slip Inside This House' by The Thirteenth Floor Elevators. To make it a better fit for the rave scene the cover version changes the lyrics from slip to trip inside the house. It's interesting that both dominant periods of British drug culture had people getting high to different versions of this track.
The lyrics are practically dripping in LSD "if your limbs begin dissolving" is sang happily. There is some contention as to who is actually doing the singing. Bobby Gillespie claims he was too wasted to record and guitarist Robert Young had to step in but the vocals do seem to have Gillespie's distinctive twang so I'm uncertain. One things for sure though, when the sitar introduces itself towards the end things get to a higher level on the psychedelic front. As the second track on the album it's clearly a part of the 'coming up' phase and was made for people to have a good time dancing. - Drugs and music. A deadly combination that hasn't half produced some
great records. Primal Scream's guitarist Robert Young died of a
suspected overdose in 2014. May he rest in peace. His bandmates
escaped the worst but it wasn't for a lack of trying. At one point they
prided themselves on being able to do more drugs than any other band and
all you have to do is listen to Screamadelica to know it.
The entire album is designed to emulate the highs and lows of a drug experience and with song titles like 'Higher Than the Sun' and 'I'm Coming Down' they hit the nail firmly on the head. The album cover was designed by an artist tripping on LSD. The now iconic blue face with massive eyes in a yellow sun is what he was seeing when he was looking at a bit of damp on the ceiling.
The album is basically comprised of remixes, only the original tracks were never released. Primal Scream would record their songs as usual and then an acid house DJ, Terry Farley or Andy Weatherall, would effectively remix them by adding samples and drum loops and the like. The DJ would take the indie rock and make it ready for the dancefloor.
It was more than that though. The album's an eclectic mix of dub, funk, house and psychedelia mixed with a gospel choir. It's a unique experience that's beloved by indie kids and ravers alike. I've never heard an album remotely close to it and I doubt I ever will. More than just being an album, Screamadelica's a time and place encapsulated in sound. It's a record of the early 90's Madchester scene made by a Scottish band who were only there for the kicks.
We just loved the fact that the more we worked with him. He was just a genius. It was just this natural talent to make this music and structure and arrange music in way that we’d never heard before. So he could take our songwriting and our instrumental.
(Bobby Gillespie talking to The Face Magazine)
Instrumentals in Primal Scream were fantastic and the melodies and the gospel singers and the strings and the slate guitars, we played lot of synthesisers as well. We got a lot of good synthesiser sounds, and he was really great at taking all this stuff and rearranging it and making it into this fantastic music. Acid house gave him this opportunity to work with a band like us, and acid house gave us, this rock’n’roll band, an opportunity to find this raw talent like Weatherall, and together we made 'Screamadelica'.
To me, I thought, this is total punk. The guy’s never worked in a studio, he’s never recorded a band, he wouldn’t know where to put a fucking microphone if his life depended on it. But he was genius arranger and a visionary, a sonic visionary.
Artwork
