We went to the desert twice during our trip to Morocco. On each occasion it was a mind blowing and profound experience. The first excursion was to a pool resort on the edge of the Sahara. We sunned ourselves, had some more delicious Moroccan food and looked out into the desert, looking at the ridges and wadi, the endless shale and rock extending into the distance. My brother- in- law Harvey and I took a wander out of the resort and into the desert. We didn't go too far for obvious reasons. It was pretty humbling...
The second visit was the following evening, a trip further into the Sahara to see the sunset and then have a meal and enjoy some evening entertainment from local musicians. The drive out there was an experience in itself, turning off the road and onto a dust track that went on and on, over bridges that crossed dried out river beds, past camels and quad biking, tents and partially constructed/ falling down buildings, down a dip that I wouldn't have attempted in a minibus, round some tight bends, eventually arriving at our desert destination. The view from my seat through the van's tinted windows presented me this shot...
And then this one with some camel riders appearing over the horizon...
I don't know about you but my childhood was peppered with deserts- Indian Jones films, TV, books, comics, pop videos, Silk Cut and Turkish Delight adverts, Lawrence of Arabia (in 1981 when I was eleven years old there was a fancy dress party. Most of the eleven year olds went as Dr. Who, characters from Star Wars or Adam Ant. I went as Lawrence of Arabia- I was that kind of eleven year old). To be out in the Sahara and see camels (admittedly ridden by tourists) coming into view over the ridge was jaw dropping. The desert provokes a genuine sense of awe- it's vast and ancient, it will be there forever, long after we're all gone, it continues to grow each year (as Manchester's New Fast Automatic Daffodils noted on their epic 1990 single Big)...
Once we arrived at our destination we followed our guide up a hill to a ridge of rocks where we waited for the sunset. Staring out into the desert as the sun began to dip was something else, an experience that's difficult to put into words- the immensity of the desert, the feeling of being a very small part of everything, the lives of people who have survived in this environment for thousands of years, the sense of staring into the past somehow... it was all very moving. As a friend commented on Facebook recently, 'deserts speak'.
I've got loads more photos of the desert, many of which will inevitably appear accompanying posts here over the upcoming weeks.
In March 2019 Andrew Weatherall played at The Beta Hotel in Marrakech, an event hosted by Faber and involving David Keenan, Bugged Out and Heavenly recordings. Andrew's set was a dub set and I imagine his seriously dubbed out selections would have sounded pretty otherworldly in Marrakech. The set wasn't recorded but Sean Johnston unearthed Andrew's source CDs and shared them with The Flightpath Estate two eyars ago. The tracks were sequenced in the order they appear on Andrew's discs and uploaded to Mixcloud. You can listen to them here, two hours and eleven minutes of Moroccan Weatherdub at The Beat Hotel.
