In Gorbachev We Trust – The Shamen – 1989 – Released January 30th, 1989 Demon Records / Fiend 666
Named in honour of the last ever president of the USSR, the Shamen’s second studio album was a strange and seductive synergy of acid smiley euphoria, 60s psychedelia and concrete Soviet perestroika.
It unknowingly inaugurated a pivotal year for music and geopolitics, when people stood up to power, demanding change while smashing down the walls of authority.
35 years on the spirit of that age is lying dormant, as new digital walls have built up around us, backed by terabytes of terms and conditions which no naturally occurring creature could ever possibly comprehend.
To tear down these walls we must reforge our collective consciousness and make sledgehammers of our minds, time let the ancient wisdom of The Shamen show us the way.
The Shamen began life in mid-80s Scotland as a psychedelic rock band, but as with fellow Scots Primal Scream and other UK bands like Underworld, the group would be irrevocably altered by the burgeoning acid house scene.
1989, therefore, saw The Shamen mid-schism, as frontman Colin Angus continued to push the group in more of an electronic direction, though not everyone shared his enthusiasm.
By the time the album was released all the other original founding members had already left.
In Gorbachev We Trust, therefore, represents a turning point for the band which just so happened to arrive as the world found itself standing at the crossroads of history.
Tear Down This Wall
The 1980s were a happier time when all we had to worry about was rampant unemployment and the ever-looming danger of complete annihilation caused by all-out thermonuclear war.
Back in those days, the Rookies were just the bad guys in Hollywood, rather than merely in reality, with all our Russian Bond villains being purely fictitious in nature.
Instead of rampaging fascist kleptocrats, we had Mikhail Gorbachev, the most unlikely of Soviet leaders, a would-be reformer and peacemaker seeking detente with the West.
Hardly the kinda guy Chuck Norris needed to worry about.
Many considered Gorby opportunistic, others idealistic or simply naïve, though that didn’t stop him polling more popular than the US president, according to some sources. (The main source, in this case, being the opening scene of The Naked Gun.)
And while it’s impossible to be the head of the commie regime and not have blood on your hands, I honestly believe he was 100% earnest in his desire to end the Cold War.
He was certainly more of a man of peace than that crooked nazi cowboy Ronald Reagan.
I inherited my interest in politics from my grandmother. She was an old skool socialist who hated Reagan and Thatcher and loved that Gorby could put the bastards in their place.
And since she put her trust in Gorbachev, I did too.
In Gorbachev We Trust features one of my favourite album covers of all time, perfectly rendered in Soviet propaganda art style with Gorby wearing Jesus thorns, how could I not want to listen?
I vividly recall chuckling at the first time I ever saw it, in a now long-since non-existent record shop in my hometown.
It also perfectly encapsulates the album’s themes; Cold War politics, messianic religious bigotry, with war and destruction on the one side and the transformative power of people on the other.
The agents of Armageddon versus the children of Ecstasy.
IGWT is an album that’s very much of its time, coming just before a crucial point in history where everything changed.
The Thatcher/Reagan era was over, but the Cold War was not, so we were still fearful, yet growing increasingly optimistic.
The Soviet Union was still very much a credible superpower when this album was released 35 years ago, within a matter of months of its release, it all came toppling down like Tetris.
In the end, it wasn’t Reagan or Gorbachev who tore down the Wall, but regular people taking collective action.
With the city reunited, Berliners would later celebrate, dancing and mingling within the dank bunkers of the former GDR, unified under the banner of a younger, more charismatic leader, Adam Strange…
Gurning With Gorbachev
Straight in with Synergy – and no prizes for guessing what this track’s about, the “MDMA-zing” chorus kinda gives the game away.
The title is appropriate also, as the track itself is something of a synergy of styles, an acid house track at its core, but accompanied by rock guitars plus a generous sprinkling of original series Star Trek samples on top to get our minds energised.
Sweet Young Thing is a cover of a song from the Monkees, albeit toughened up with hash industrial drumbeats and distorted guitars. It’s followed by Raspberry Infundibulum, which is a more traditional rock and roll track.
War Prayer is an antiwar song based on lines from Mark Twain, mashed up with samples of Cold War era propaganda. I’ve always had a soft spot for this kind of thing ever since I first fell in love with electronic music after hearing Paul Hardcastle’s 19.
I’d put this track in the same category, in that it uses samplers not merely to make a track but to make a clear political statement.
War Prayer is an album highlight for me, meshing 60s psychedelia with tough 80s hiphop beats, the counterpoint between those sweet vocal harmonies and the actual lyrics and the jarring use of samples, including an American evangelist claiming “God will destroy Russia” and a woman warning us “World War three could begin anywhere at any moment.”
Of course, that’s just as true now as it was then, probably more likely now when you think about it, which is depressing really. If only there was a way to just forget about all that and put a big fat silly smile on my face…
Adam Strange is a friend of Mary Jane, a known associate of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and the Shamanic predecessor to the better-known man about town, Ebenezer Goode.
Now this track certainly wears its 60s psychedelic rock influences on its frilly, tie-died sleeve, while simultaneously referencing a decidedly 90s drug, MDMA.
Adam being an anagram of MDMA, y’see? Clever eh? Not all those braincells were burned up.
Adam Strange is in my brain
But I’m so glad to know him
– Adam Strange, The Shamen
Jesus Loves Amerika (Fundamental) – again, the same themes keep coming up again and again. Ecstasy is good, bible-bashing American lunatics dreaming of atomic raptures are bad.
This one really skewers the right-wing religious loonies and features the killer line:
“Jesus loves America
But I don’t love neither”
– Jesus Loves Amerika (Fundamental) , The Shamen
Well, if the album cover didn’t do it already, the US tour’s definitely cancelled now guys…
Transcendental has proper four-to-the-floor, pre-trance techno vibes but it’s showing its age this one more than most of the tracks on here.
It’s a similar story with Misinformation, at least musically, though the actual theme is arguably fresher than ever, as is the chorus:
One man is smiling
The other telling lies
Mutate their expressions
Maintain their disguise
Fact or Fiction
We will never know
Paint us a Picture
Where truth never shows
And we can’t find the truth
In the word
– Misinformation, The Shamen
Raptyouare holds up a little better. Yes, it’s obviously very much a 1989-sounding house track, but in it, you’ll find the seeds of the subsequent 1990 classic, En-Tact.
And so we get to the title track, In Gorbachev We Trust – which is the last track on the LP Version of the album.
(*The CD version has two extra tracks, a rock track called Yellow Cellophane Day and a more dancefloor-friendly track called Mayhew Speaks Out, a follow-up to their earlier track Christopher Mayhew Says, however since I can’t find either of them on YouTube or anywhere else to share with you guys, let’s wrap it up with Gorby since it brings it all back full circle anyway.)
In Gorbachev We Trust starts off with a decidedly 80s-sounding electro beat as layers of news samples are layered on top, including mentions of disarmament and Gorbachev’s policy of “perestroika.”
The lyrics, meanwhile, consist of the same four lines repeated as a mantra:
Put your phantasy in someone
Say a prayer and hope to stay young
We’ll have chemicals and freedom
In Gorbachev we trust
– In Gorbachev We Trust, The Shamen
Amen Tavarish.
MDMA-Zing
Both MDMA and the USSR caused notable effects on human neurology, though the differences could not be more striking.
Yet the Shamen’s core message of collapsing walls and crumbling defences would prove to be eerily prophetic.
Man of Letters, man of substance
Bring me to my senses
Keep me close to my companions
Crumble our defences
– Adam Strange, The Shamen
Gorbachev’s policy of Glasnost, opening up the USSR to the outside world, bolstered global security and reversed a nuclear arms race decades in the making.
His policy of Perestroika, on the other hand, an ambitious internal restructuring of the Soviet system, proved to be his undoing.
By opening up too much he laid the rot at the core of the USSR bare, allowing its external enemies to take advantage while internally the kleptocrats and psychopaths seized power.
Putin’s war was already six months old when Gorby died in 2022, a relic from a time when politicians still rallied behind a tangible ideology, instead of being purely the instruments of naked, nihilistic greed.
The chemical Glasnost of Colin Angus would also result in radical restructuring for the Shamen, but unlike the USSR, the group did not collapse.
With the original core founding band members departing, Angus and bassist Will Sinnott forged ahead, releasing the aptly-named Phorward.
This third Shamen album, released just five months later, would still retain traces of the band’s indie origins while also doubling down on the acid house sounds.
It was followed up with the Shamen’s most acclaimed album, En-Tact, the following year.
En-Tact would prove to be the band’s masterpiece while also being notable for adding Mr C to the lineup as rapper.
Alas, Will Sinnott would die shortly after its release. 1992’s Boss Drum, therefore, was a bittersweet affair, coming so soon after the death of one of the group’s most prominent members, it nonetheless became the group’s most successful album to date.
A bizarre mish-mash of hippy-dippy parody pop and radio-friendly rave culture, albeit packed with oblique drug references, it was a hugely influential album for my generation.
And, of course, in the time between the releases of En-Tact and Boss Drum, the USSR had collapsed and poor ole Gorby was out of the job.
Perestroika’s a hell of a drug.
