Primal Scream’s “Echo Dek” was recently repressed for Record Store Day. It’s been interesting to go back and listen to it in retrospect. When the album was first released, in 1997, it seemed like a radical move. The band handing over the masters for their brand new long-player, “Vanishing Point”, to On-U Sound co-founder, Adrian Sherwood, to create an accompanying collection of dubwise versions. However, in hindsight, a heavy dub influence can already be heard in several of the original tracks. 

“Get Duffy”, led by keyboard maestro Martin’s smoky organ keys, was a terrific trip hop homage to Roy Budd. “Trainspotting”, too, took more than a few big tokes, zoned-out and nodded its head to hip hop beats and a repeating, hypnotic guitar figure (1). The loved-up, Civil Rights activist celebrating “Star”, might be more Muscle Shoals, Alabama, than Kingston, Jamaica, but it featured roots legend Augustus Pablo on melodica. “Stuka” especially, was a crazy concoction of colliding, shape-shifting drums. Nyabinghi percussion rattling and ricocheting in deranged delay. Stuffed full of samples, shouts and strings. Door bells – a la Bim Sherman’s sought-after “Station Dub”. Aircraft roaring, screaming. Not quite grounded by a Jah Wobble-like bass melody. Sherwood submitted 2 passes at this. “JU-87” crashed and clanked. Sending out smashed up crescendos and spirals. Adding stuttering tape effects and SOS signals. Reducing the vocals, growled through a toy Darth Vader helmet, to rumbling rumble. “Wise Blood” swapped these for his late friend, Prince Far I, giving praise to Jah. Twisted circuitry into flights of twittering birds. 

Flipping titles to cryptic clues to their sources “Last Train” and “Revolutionary” saw Sherwood have his way with the stereo. Manipulating, constantly changing the focus of the mix. Setting off sirens. Throwing in extra percussion. Hooking up kicks to wah-wah pedals. Squeezing and stretching sonics backwards. Grooves were extended into rippling rivers of bass. He slowed the Can / “Halleluwah” inspired “Kowalski” to a room-shaking, shuddering, comparative crawl. 

The strung-out tracks such as “Long Life” and “Out Of The Void”, in particular, really benefited from Sherwood’s manhandling. He turned their trippy-ness up to 11. To the former, at the outset way more than elegantly wasted, introducing wailing, traditional reeds, while inverting the tune’s textures and tones. The resulting druggy drift summoning scenes of Burroughs and Gysin stoned, wandering Marrakech, looking to score. The latter, now  labelled “Vanishing Dub”, lost most of Bobby’s self-loathing. Its operatic outbursts, bubbling sound effects and general spooky, haunted air, conjuring Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson’s remixes of “Higher Than The Sun”. 

Prior to the recent Record Store Day reissue, I’d never sat and listened to “Echo Dek” from start to finish. Back in the day I’d bought the box of 7s, rather than the long-player, and hadn’t gotten past the Far I-sampling “Wise Blood”, which I loved. So, nearly 30 years later, I was surprised how well Sherwood’s remixes work as a self-contained package (2). Amounting, in its own right, to a classic, timeless dub set. 

NOTES

(1) “Trainspotting” was Weatherall’s first production for Primal Scream since 1991’s game-changing and Mercury Prize-winning opus, “Screamadelica”. Fans, like me, were incredibly excited.  Engineered by Tim Holmes, then of Death In Vegas, at Orinoco Studios, it initially appeared around a year before on the soundtrack to the film of the same name. The track was a distinct departure from the dark techno terrain Weatherall had been exploring as part of The Sabres Of Paradise, and instead of resembled “Reflections”, from Bill Conti’s “Rocky III” score. “Reflections”, perhaps not coincidentally was sampled by The Scream when they themselves remixed Ruby’s “Heidi”, and this was the sort of tune that we’d get hammered to at Disgraceland, in Islington, on The Essex Road, where both the band and Weatherall DJed. The night I passed my Phd viva I somehow ended up wearing a pair of fake boobs (my project was focused on creating in vitro models of breast cancer), high on cocaine and lager, dancing on the ledge of the boozer’s roof. 

(2) The decision to leave off “Dub In Vain”, Sherwood’s version of the MC5-esque “Medication”, removing the great, but in this context, jarring rock & roll, actually helps the album to work as a cohesive whole.