An Oasis Of Slowness

In May 2010 Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston started a club night at The Drop in Stoke Newington,  a Thursday night in a small, 140 capacity room. Sean and Andrew met back in the early days of acid house and the fun that went with it all. As one of Flash Faction Sean had a 12" released on Andrew's Sabres Of Paradise label, the mighty techno rush of Repoman, and Sean had joined Sabres on tour. In the 2000s they re- connected. Andrew invited Sean to DJ at the launch for his Watch The Ride compilation and when Andrew was short of a driver for a jaunt to Brighton to play a DJ gig, Sean stepped in and took the wheel. In the car Andrew asked if Sean had anything they could listen to. Sean had recently been enjoying the slowed down sounds of Daniele Baldelli and the early/ mid 80s Italo cosmic disco scene (as detailed in Bill Brewster's book Last Night A DJ Saved My Life). After re- emerging with some remixes and a bit of a reset around 2007/ 8, Andrew was looking for a new thing and they hatched a plan to play together, slowed down, cosmic sounds, 'never knowingly exceeding 122 BPM' as the tagline later stated. 

Weatherall had frequently turned away from whatever he had going on, moving onto a new sound or night or band, and with A Love From Outer Space (as the night was called, named after an AR Kane song that Andrew had played at Shoom in the late 80s) he did so again. Sean gave an interview to The Quietus last month which outlines the history of ALFOS and also thirteen tracks that span and summarise ALFOS. Read it here. Make sure go all the way through to the end, there are some great stories attached to some of the records not least the one on page 8, Superpitcher's Voodoo and 'the genius of Andrew Weatherall'.

ALFOS became a travelling club night finding residencies outside London (Phonox in Brixton has become its London home). There have been regular ALFOS trips to Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Leeds, Manchester, Chieti in Italy and The Golden Lion in Todmorden. When Andrew died (17th February 2020, the anniversary coming up soon) Sean played Phonox the same week, a pre- booked gig for the pair. He made the emotional decision to go solo. During lockdown Sean began broadcasting the ALFOS Emergency Broadcast Sessions out of his kitchen in Hackney, a crowd of ALFOS devotees tuning in via the internet for some communal musical action to lighten the lockdown load. ALFOS, in real life and online, has become a community, the crowd as much a part of the ALFOS ethos as the music.. As an attendee both at The Golden Lion and in Manchester, I can confirm this. People make new friends at ALFOS. ALFOS is undoubtedly about fun. It's hedonistic. It's about dancing and being locked into the groove. It's about new music played alongside old, about the joy of digging out new tunes/ old tunes, slowing down records to that 122 sweet spot, the pitching down revealing something new. A lot of the ALFOS records have an emotional heft too, something that pulls at the heartstrings and the soul. It's connected to the tempo, the 118- 122 BPM pulses like the human heartbeat and forges some kind of connection to the blood pumping from the heart while dancing. 

To celebrate ALFOS's fifteenth birthday Sean has put together a compilation album of selected ALFOS tracks, some never available before. The artists are as wide a variety of nationalities as you'll find in one place with musicians and producers from  Portugal and Mexico, from Italy and Poland, south east Asia and from Denmark, from Belfast and from Slough. Spaced out chug, cosmic krautrock, spun out Scandi- disco, records that nod to the Balearic and acid house roots but with their eyes locked on the present. The vinyl has twelve tracks across two discs, kicking off with Neville Watson's previously unreleased dub of The Blow Monkeys' Save Me, a slow motion sundown moment. Further in there is Popular Tyre's Feel Like A Laser Beam, eight minutes of drum machine powered, interstellar robo- disco, a track rescued from an abandoned hard drive that Weatherall and Johnston turned into an ALFOS classic. 

The digital/ CD release is expanded, nineteen tracks and a twentieth track, all the previous ones sequenced into a continuous mix. It's already shaping up to be one of 2025's best compilations. When taken together, on either vinyl or digital, what's clear about all of the music- from Laars to Secret Circuit via Das Komplex, Briosky, Kimo, Duncan Gray and more- isn't just the slowed down tempos, the famed cosmic sheen or the peaky, trippy edges, it's the warmth of the music, the inclusive nature of it. Come on in, it says, it's lovely in here. 

You can buy A Love From Outer Space// A Compilation at Bandcamp and your local record shop. 

The album comes with a fanzine, which has an essay/ interview written by Tim Murray and masses of photos. On the back of the fanzine there is a page of thank yous from Sean and down towards the bottom, there is a very nice mention to The Flightpath Estate, something I don't think any of the five of us would have dreamed of a few years ago. 'The eternal brotherhood of The Flightpath Estate for keeping the record straight'. That's my next t- shirt/ badge/ tattoo sorted.