Shine Like Stars

Last month Primal Scream announced the a thirtieth anniversary edition box set of Screamadelica, a box that will contain all the 12" singles from that album re- issued on vinyl (nine 12" singles) with a new and previously unreleased mix of Shine Like Stars as the tenth disc. The box retails at £120.99 and I'll just leave that figure hanging there. 

The new version of Shine Like Stars was played on BBC 6 on Friday and then was put online. It seems that they will be releasing this version separately from the box, probably for next year's Record Shop Day just in case you didn't feel that the box set was exclusive enough. Late stage capitalism/ the music industry is such a joy sometimes.

Shine Like Stars closes Screamadelica, an album that Primal Scream made with Andrew Weatherall producing and Hugo Nicolson close at hand. Initially Weatherall, a relative unknown as a remixer and producer but flushed with the summer of love, a great record collection and the enthusiasm and confidence of youth, remixed I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have into Loaded and then Come Together. Higher Than The Sun and Don't Fight It, Feel It followed and Alan McGee told Primal Scream they needed to turn this run of ground-breaking, hip shaking, boundary breaking singles into an album. Weatherall got the job in the big chair and the album followed. Shine Like Stars presented some problems for them, not quite falling into place and the sequencing of the album and how to finish it wasn't quite there either until Weatherall cracked Shine Like Stars. 

Shine Like Stars

It's a space- age lullaby, a twinkling musical box melody and a drone, some synths and a lazy pace. Bobby sings softly about someone sleeping. After the Stones- isms, acid house highs, crunching club beats, country ballads and blissed out dub trips of the previous eleven songs Shine Like Stars is a beautiful way to trail off, the accordion and waves lapping against the beach for the final seconds of the song and the album. 

The new/ previously unreleased mix is here. 

It's titled Andrew Weatherall Remix but to me sounds more like an earlier mix, the song in a development form before it was completed. There's some very 1991 piano and a different drum track and then a huge synth bassline, not a million miles from the one on Safe From Harm by Massive Attack (out the same year). The backing vocals at two minutes fifty are nice, an interesting part of the song that didn't make the final cut, and then Throb's guitar comes in, a grungy 70s Les Paul solo, that bassline and the twinkling melody playing off against each other. The final minute and a half has all these eventually unused elements piling up, the ooh oohs, the jagged bassline, Throb's guitar, Gillespie singing low in the mix. It's good to hear it, an interesting version of the song and an alternative take, definitely some distance from the cosmic dreaminess of the final mix. What Mr Weatherall would have said about it, we'll never know. Whether it's worth the £120.99 to have it as part of the box set along with the nine other singles, all previously released and owned by many of us, is a decision others will have to make according to their bank balance. I'm glad it's out there.