Vanishing Point, the movie:
A cult classic released in 1971 which mirrors America’s obsession with cars and the open road, and the plight of the little guy against the authorities. It is essentially one long chase sequence as Kowalski (no first name), played by cult actor Barry Newman, commits to a bet to deliver a Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours. There are flashbacks to personal trauma, a radio DJ who eggs him on (“the last American hero, the electric centaur, the demi-god, the super driver of the golden west”) and cops on his back. Of course, it doesn’t end well.
Vanishing Point, the album:
There was a country rock n soul soundtrack, featuring Kim Carnes, Jimmy Bowen and Delaney, Bonnie and Friends, but even by the 90s it was long forgotten and hard to find. The concept of doing an album for an imaginary film wasn’t new. But doing a soundtrack for one which had already been done … well that was a little bit leftfield. And the Scream did it because they wanted to. The resulting album sounds nothing like the original soundtrack; indeed, it contains some of most ambitious music the Scream ever made. Their soundtrack was based on a skewed and likely substance-filled take on the nature of the film.
‘Burning Wheel’, the opening track, sounds like an outtake from Screamadelica, something that may have been a little too Krautrockian for that swaggering composition to the days of new drugs and when indie music crossed into dance. Its Syd-era Floyd, Faust, and Primals c.1985 all wrapped up in one.
The album’s centrepiece, and the lead single, ‘Kowalski’, samples heavily from the film itself – all from the DJ’s magnificent diatribes that turn a cop chase into a road race: “Two nasty Nazi cars are close behind the beautiful, lone driver / The police know that they’re getting closer ... closer / Closer to our soul hero in his soul mobile / Yeah, baby, they’re about to strike / They’re gonna get him, smash him, rape / The last beautiful free soul on this planet.”
Bobby Gillespie’s own, sparse lyrics seem only to fill the gap between the dialogue-cum-verses; a drum sample from Can’s ‘Halleluwah’ is thrown in and the song cribs the bassline from a Funkadelic song. Ex-Stone Roses bassist Mani is on fire here, a valuable addition to the gang.
The instrumental ‘If They Move Kill ‘Em’ – a line from the bloodiest and baddest western of them all, The Wild Bunch, is driven by a constant drum backbeat, a hollering synthesizer and pounding bass. Following closely by is ‘Stuka’, its dub bass intro introducing the cacophony of noise of the German dive-bomber in full flow. The airplane included wailing sirens intended to smash their enemies into submission, something the Primals attempt to recreate. There’s almost two minutes of instrumentalism before the voice kicks in, a muted, low-fi drone, which comes across as Darth Vader singing Lee Hazlewood, and limited to such oblique snippets as “I got Jesus in my head like a stinger / He moves from tree to tree in the back of my mind / A ragged shadowy figure, I got him.” Is this even Bobby Gillespie singing? Seems so.
An intriguing inclusion is a cover of Lemmy’s ‘Motorhead’, initially released as a B-side in his final days with 70s prog-punks Hawkwind, and his metal monster band’s debut single. The two songs are somewhat different with the metal version, more, erm metally. Scream’s take on this rock anthem is to revert to Hawkwind’s original, retaining all its nastiness and throwing in a perverse opening verse, with Gillespie sounding like a gecko being mauled by a domestic cat, and various loops and layers thrown in for good measure.
There’s also a chunk of instrumentals, including a brooding update of ‘Trainspotting’ from the Scottish drugs and ... well more drugs degenerate movie of the same name, with about two minutes trimmed from the version that appeared on the official soundtrack.
Among all this dub’n’bass and dirty garage rock, it is a little surprising to hear ‘Star’, the second single to come off the album (as part of an EP), which owes a little to ‘Loaded’, with a horn section, snaky melodica played by Augustus Pablo, and a sincere and simplistic chorus: “Every brother is a star / Every sister is a star” as well as these killer lines that Gillespie throws in to the love-in: “The Queen of England, there's no greater anarchist / One man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist.”
After the Stones-devotional Give Out But Don’t Give Up (1994), the Scream really took a leftfield turn with Vanishing Point. Out went the Keef riffs and Jagger swagger, in came an industrial level melding of krautrock, dub, electrofreakery and Ennio Morricone. It’s magnificently experimental, and utilises all manner of distortion, fuzztones, tape delays, drum machines, and sitars. It’s a rampant adventure into the unorthodox, at a time when British bands were encouraged to go retro. But this was the backlash to Britpop, the Santa Claus of music scenes that disappeared as quickly as it appeared. And with the Super Furry Animals and Radiohead ramping up the weirdness and the outlandishness at the same time, there was only way for the future of so-called Cool Britannia: oblivion. It was the beginning of something new: the Scream followed it up with XTRMNTR and Evil Heat, both of which simmered with unadulterated Krautrock, post-punk, Millenium confusion and anti-capitalist anger.
De dub version: Echo Dek (1997)
Echo Dek was the logical dub and remix version of the album which was released just a few months later. Master knob twiddler Adrian Sherwood was at the controls, bashing and smashing eight of VP’s tracks – with ‘Stuka’ getting the double version treatment. These already mightily impressive tracks were cut up and reconstructed into an even further and abstract dub orbit. Sherwood sampled Prince Far-I on ‘Wise Blood’, one of the rejigs of ‘Stuka’. Some tracks merit the makeovers but the versions of ‘Star’ and ‘Kowalski’, if we’re being honest, remain pretty much honest to the originals. Remix albums tend to suffer from laziness and record company pushiness, but Sherwood has a free rein and the passion to carry out a good job.
‘Burning Wheel’, the opening track, sounds like an outtake from Screamadelica, something that may have been a little too Krautrockian for that swaggering composition to the days of new drugs and when indie music crossed into dance. Its Syd-era Floyd, Faust, and Primals c.1985 all wrapped up in one.
Bobby Gillespie’s own, sparse lyrics seem only to fill the gap between the dialogue-cum-verses; a drum sample from Can’s ‘Halleluwah’ is thrown in and the song cribs the bassline from a Funkadelic song. Ex-Stone Roses bassist Mani is on fire here, a valuable addition to the gang.
The instrumental ‘If They Move Kill ‘Em’ – a line from the bloodiest and baddest western of them all, The Wild Bunch, is driven by a constant drum backbeat, a hollering synthesizer and pounding bass. Following closely by is ‘Stuka’, its dub bass intro introducing the cacophony of noise of the German dive-bomber in full flow. The airplane included wailing sirens intended to smash their enemies into submission, something the Primals attempt to recreate. There’s almost two minutes of instrumentalism before the voice kicks in, a muted, low-fi drone, which comes across as Darth Vader singing Lee Hazlewood, and limited to such oblique snippets as “I got Jesus in my head like a stinger / He moves from tree to tree in the back of my mind / A ragged shadowy figure, I got him.” Is this even Bobby Gillespie singing? Seems so.
An intriguing inclusion is a cover of Lemmy’s ‘Motorhead’, initially released as a B-side in his final days with 70s prog-punks Hawkwind, and his metal monster band’s debut single. The two songs are somewhat different with the metal version, more, erm metally. Scream’s take on this rock anthem is to revert to Hawkwind’s original, retaining all its nastiness and throwing in a perverse opening verse, with Gillespie sounding like a gecko being mauled by a domestic cat, and various loops and layers thrown in for good measure.
There’s also a chunk of instrumentals, including a brooding update of ‘Trainspotting’ from the Scottish drugs and ... well more drugs degenerate movie of the same name, with about two minutes trimmed from the version that appeared on the official soundtrack.
Among all this dub’n’bass and dirty garage rock, it is a little surprising to hear ‘Star’, the second single to come off the album (as part of an EP), which owes a little to ‘Loaded’, with a horn section, snaky melodica played by Augustus Pablo, and a sincere and simplistic chorus: “Every brother is a star / Every sister is a star” as well as these killer lines that Gillespie throws in to the love-in: “The Queen of England, there's no greater anarchist / One man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist.”
After the Stones-devotional Give Out But Don’t Give Up (1994), the Scream really took a leftfield turn with Vanishing Point. Out went the Keef riffs and Jagger swagger, in came an industrial level melding of krautrock, dub, electrofreakery and Ennio Morricone. It’s magnificently experimental, and utilises all manner of distortion, fuzztones, tape delays, drum machines, and sitars. It’s a rampant adventure into the unorthodox, at a time when British bands were encouraged to go retro. But this was the backlash to Britpop, the Santa Claus of music scenes that disappeared as quickly as it appeared. And with the Super Furry Animals and Radiohead ramping up the weirdness and the outlandishness at the same time, there was only way for the future of so-called Cool Britannia: oblivion. It was the beginning of something new: the Scream followed it up with XTRMNTR and Evil Heat, both of which simmered with unadulterated Krautrock, post-punk, Millenium confusion and anti-capitalist anger.
Echo Dek was the logical dub and remix version of the album which was released just a few months later. Master knob twiddler Adrian Sherwood was at the controls, bashing and smashing eight of VP’s tracks – with ‘Stuka’ getting the double version treatment. These already mightily impressive tracks were cut up and reconstructed into an even further and abstract dub orbit. Sherwood sampled Prince Far-I on ‘Wise Blood’, one of the rejigs of ‘Stuka’. Some tracks merit the makeovers but the versions of ‘Star’ and ‘Kowalski’, if we’re being honest, remain pretty much honest to the originals. Remix albums tend to suffer from laziness and record company pushiness, but Sherwood has a free rein and the passion to carry out a good job.
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