The Return Of The Sabres Of Paradise

There was a flurry of excitement in the middle of last week, not to mention some 'I didn't expect to see that happening' style comments, when the line up for Primavera 2025 was announced (Primavera is an annual festival held in Barcelona). Tucked away with little fanfare in the list of artists on the right hand side of the poster is the name The Sabres Of Paradise.

Jagz Kooner soon confirmed via social media that it was indeed correct, The Sabres Of Paradise are reforming as a live act. A year ago next week me and my friends in The Flightpath Estate held an evening at The Golden Lion in Todmorden to mark the 30th anniversary of the release of Sabresonic, the first Sabres Of Paradise album. We had Jagz and Gary Burns fielding questions (by me!) and talking at length about their time as Sabres with Andrew Weatherall, how they met Andrew, how Sabres worked, what reocrding sessions were like, who did what, how remixes were done, all the fine detail that a small but committed audience wanted. After the Q&A was over we played Rob Fletcher's recording of Sabres playing live at Herbal Tea Party in Manchester in 1994, the only live recording of the group in existence. Jagz stood by the speaker listening and nodding. 'We sounded pretty good', he said. Later on Jagz DJed and he was still around when Red Snapper played the following night. At some point over the weekend Jagz told me and a few others that he was thinking about getting Sabres back together as a live band, do some gigs, draw a line under the Sabres story, and do it respectfully, in Andrew's memory. He also swore us to secrecy. 

The live band version of Sabres played twenty two gigs in 1994, a few one offs starting in London, then Sugar Sweet in Belfast, Sabresonic, Megadog and a tour in May 1994, Herbal in December 1994 and then a tour supporting Primal Scream (and then a few in Japan). Andrew was on stage with the band for the first few gigs but stepped down after the Belfast gig, saying that he felt like a fraud standing behind a keyboard. He much preferred to stand in the crowd and watch the band play the songs he, Jagz and Gary wrote, with Weatherall DJ sets before and after. 

The revived Sabres Of Paradise will be very much the musicians who played those gigs in 1994. That live band line up was Jagz and Gary, Rich Thair on drums, Phil Mossman on guitar (who would later join LCD Soundsystem) and Nick Abnett on bass. Nick established a key part of the visual identity of Sabres on stage, bass slung low, cropped hair and long leather trenchcoat. Jagz has got this line up back together and next June Primavera Sound will be graced at some point with the resurrection of Sabres Of Paradise as a live band. Jagz recently found the original sampler that he used when Sabres played live. He switched it on and it still holds within its memory banks the stems to some of those Sabres Of Paradise songs including Smokebelch and Edge 6. 

Clearly, Sabres aren't going to get together and rehearse just for one gig- I think I'm allowed to say that a UK tour is very much on the cards, as are gigs elsewhere. 

In celebration I thought a Sabres Of Paradise Sunday mix was the order of the day. I've deliberately avoided the big hitters, the tunes we all want to hear played live, and gone for some deep cuts, remixes and B-sides, the smokey, murky, dark and dubby Sabres Of Paradise.

Forty Five Minutes Of The Sabres Of Paradise

• Haunted Dancehall (Performed By In The Nursery)
• One Day (Endorphin Mix)
• Lik Wid Nit Wit
• Tow Truck (Depth Charge Mix)
• Theme III
• Jacob Street 7am
• Ysaebud
• Mother India (Sabres At Dawn Mix)

In The Nursery are from Sheffield, twin brothers who have been making music since 1981 and under a different name, Les Jumeaux, they contributed to Smokebelch. Sabres recorded and released Haunted Dancehall in 1994, their second album and the one Jagz considers to be the 'proper' Sabres album (as it was recorded as an album rather than a collection of already completed but unconnected tracks which is how Sabresonic came together). Remixes were commissioned and a remix EP Versus came out on CD with the remixes spread across 7", 10" and 12" on vinyl with versions by In The Nursery, LFO, Depth Charge, The Chemical Brothers, and Nightmares On Wax. In The Nursery took the title track and did their own version. This track had a bizarre second life when it as chosen by the BBC to be the style of music that would be played in the event of the death of the Queen and was played by Radio 1 when Diana was killed in a car crash in August 1997. Depth Charge was J Saul Kane, who made some fantastic sample laden hip hop// trip hop in the 90s and whose music has not to my knowledge been used to soundtrack the deaths of any members of the royal family. 

Sabres remixed Bjork's One Day (from her debut solo album Debut, one of 1993's best records) and the three remixes were released twice, once as Bjork Cut By The Sabres Of Paradise (two versions) and once as a Bjork remix album (titled The Best Remixes From The Album Debut For All The People Who Don't Buy White Labels) along with remixes by Underworld and Black Dog. As was the Sabres practice at the time, the three men would do a remix, then another, then another, changing tempos upwards and pushing things further. The three remixes of One Day are the beautiful slow and chilled Endorphin Mix, the Springs Eternal Mix and the Adrenaline Mix (of Come To Me). 

Lik Wid Nit Wit is a dub techno track that could be Sabres at the best, seven minutes of Andrew's vision and Jagz and Gary's playing- rim shots (that could be Gary banging a drum stick against a scaffolding pipe at Orinoco Studios), melodica, the dull thud of the 909, dub bass, the unmistakeable Weatherall '93 sound. It was played on Andrew's 1993 Essential Mix and appeared on a CD only compilation (Volume) before being re- released by A Sagittarian in 2018. Lik Wid Nit Wit also seems to be the genesis of another pair of Sabres tracks, giving birth in one way or another to both RSD and Wilmot.

Theme III was on the Theme CD single, a metallic dub of the hip hop title track. Theme 4 was on Haunted Dancehall. Theme II turned up on Select Magazine's free cassette Secret Tracks. 

Jacob Street 7am is from Haunted Dancehall, part of the run of three tracks that conclude the album and that form a psychedelic/ ambient endgame to the record and to Nicky McGuire's tour through London's grimy underbelly, as described in noir style in the sleevenotes by one James Woodbourne (actually Andrew).

Ysaebud was released as a one sided 7" single on Andrew's Special Emissions label in 1997, credited to S.O.P. From The Vaults. Easydub. The vocal sample, 'Ever since I was a youth/ I've always been searching for the truth', is from The Truth Theme by The Truth. Killer Sabres dub. 

Mother India was by Fun- Da- Mental, released in 1995 with two Sabres remixes, Sabres At Dawn and Sabres At Dusk. Each remix sounds exactly like the FDM track being redone at that time of day in the title. 

Smokebelch

Smokebelch, the Sabres Of Paradise track that will most likely outlive all their others turns thirty today. The 12" single was released on 20th September 1993. The fact that this is three full decades ago will make some of us feel very old. In some ways the intervening thirty years have gone in the blink of an eye but in some ways the release of this record and the world as it was then do feel a very long time ago. I was twenty three when it came out (there's that number again), just starting my teacher training course. Looking back at who and where I was then and who and where I am now it does feel like thirty years. At the same time I can clearly recall buying the 12" in HMV on Market Street, a small quantity of them in the rack at the back of the shop. I can clearly remember taking it back to the flat I shared in Altrincham and playing it over and over. It's remained close to me ever since- in December 2021 we played the Beatless mix at Isaac's funeral, at the graveside. 

In tribute to the record and to celebrate its thirtieth birthday today I thought I'd sequence the various version together, fifty minutes of Smokebelch. It's not exhaustive- the Flute Mix is missing (originally appearing on the B-side of the David Holmes remix 12" and I don't have it digitally) and so is the later, Two Lone Swordsmen version done in memory of Ali Cooke for the Cut The Crap three CD compilation.  

Sabres Of Paradise- Andrew Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns- based the track on LB Bad's New Age Of Faith, a 1989 release written by Lamont Booker. Keyboards on Smokebelch were played by Les Jumeaux, a duo also known as In The Nursery who remixed Sabres' Haunted Dancehall in 1994. The painting on the sleeve was by Richard Sen, graffiti artist, raver and DJ/ producer in his own right. The names came from Andrew noticing smoke pouring from cooling towers (someone,somewhere on the internet had a fuller version of this anecdote but I can't find it at the moment). 

The Beatless version came out later on in 1993, a 7" single given away with initial quantities of the album Sabresonic (also thirty this year, in a couple of months time. I'll come back to that nearer the time). It is four minutes of ambient gorgeousness, the twinkling melody notes pulled out and dancing like the light from the stars. 

Smokebelch I also turned up on Sabresonic, a echo- laden rhythmic monster, kick drum banging away with metallic cymbals and distorted bassline. Darker and with some '93 Weatherall techno menace, the light only appears halfway through with the alternating long synth notes. Meanwhile the drums power onwards. 

The  Smokebelch 12" single, thirty today as I keep saying, came with two versions- the Entry and Exit versions, each coming in at nearly twelve minutes. The two mixes contain those same sounds put together in a different order- the ticking, matchbox percussion, that warm bassline, the squelches, rumbling timpani, synth strings, the dancing woodblock topline, the pianos and synths, snares and thumping kick drum. Nothing fades in or out slowly, everything is lightswitch style, turned on and off, in and out, the different elements layered perfectly. We noticed over the months that followed that it worked in multiple situations- it was euphoric and ecstatic in clubs and in a crowd and could be reflective and more melancholic played at home or in a lower mood. The Exit version is pacier and taken at a greater speed. 

The David Holmes remix came out a week later clad in a yellow sleeve rather than the red one, a fuller, more intense version made for mutating dancefloors into seething messes, an acid squiggle added to it, whistles, rattling marching band snares, breakdowns, more piano and the majorettes carrying us down the road for several minutes at the end. 

Smokebelches

• Smokebelch (Beatless Mix)
• Smokebelch I
• Smokebelch II (Entry)
• Smokebelch II (Exit)
• Smokebelch II (David Holmes Mix)