13. Primal ScreamXTRMNTR
I’d have to go for a Primal Scream album because they’re pals and I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t. Screamadelica has been touted as one of the greatest albums ever and it probably is, there’s no question about it – it’s that amazing fusion of rock & roll and acid house. A defining album. It set the agenda for so much that came after with electronic dance music and how that all panned out. The rock star and the DJ combined with the comedown. But the one that I think is their greatest ever work is XTRMNTR. It’s a much harder, edgier techno kind of album. That’s their classic. I think that will stand the test of time as their work of genius. They always pull in such fantastic collaborators. They had Davie Holmes on the last album who did an amazing job; Kevin Shields working on XTRMNTR, obviously [Andrew] Weatherall on Screamadelica.
Didn’t you make a record with them?
Yeah – ‘The Big Man And The Scream Team Meet The Barmy Army Uptown’. I think it got to No. 14 in the charts. It got banned eventually. We were supposed to go on Top Of The Pops but they wouldn’t let us on. The BBC wouldn’t play it. I think they were concerned that it was going to incite some bother and I couldn’t see why because it was some fairly innocuous, daft stuff. I ranted on it basically. I dunno how we would have actually performed it if it had got to that – it would have been pretty crazy.
