Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Four

One more cover version Sunday mix then I'll leave it alone for a while. I've been finding cover versions in all sorts of places since I started the first mix four weeks ago, songs springing to mind at random moments. Most of the ones I've chosen do something with the source material, take it somewhere else emotionally or stylistically. Some rip the original to shreds, some pay their respects but still tear it up. Some nod their head to their influences or pay something back. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Four

• Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End
• Spiritualized: Any Way That You Want Me
• The Kills: Pale Blue Eyes
• One Dove: Jolene
• Galaxie 500: Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste
• John Cale: All My Friends
• Monkey Mafia: As Long As I Can See The Light
• Raz and Afla: Windowlicker

Sonic Boom formed Spectrum after Spacemen 3 split up and his cover of Daniel Johnson's True Love Will Find You In The End is a gorgeous, angelic take on the song. Released in 1992 as a single and later included in two versions on a Sonic Boom/ Spectrum compilation.

Two years earlier Jason Pierce/ J Spaceman flew the Spacemen 3 coop first, releasing the first Spiritualized single, a cover of The Troggs 1966 single. Jason doesn't radically alter it but he makes it a Spiritualized song all the same. 

The Kills cover of The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes is gloriously ragged and fuzzed up, the guitar stuttering and ripping a hole in the speaker while Alison gives deadpan vocals. It was a B-side to their 2012 The Last Goodbye single.

One Dove's dubbed out, trippy reggae cover of Dolly Parton is a blast, Dot's beautifully off key vocals perfect for the band's blissed out but slightly on edge comedown re-imagining of the song. It came out as one of the B-sides to the 1993 single release of Why Don't You Take Me.

Galaxie 500 recorded several fantastic covers- their take on New Order's Ceremony may be the best NO cover ever recorded. Their cover of Jonathan Richman's Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste is superb, Jonathan's ninety second original stretched to to seven minutes, a thrilling Galaxie performance, the rumble of drums and bass matched by Dean's trebly, overdriven guitar. They only existed for four years, 1987 to 1991, but what a great band they were. 

John Cale covered LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends for LCD's own release of the single back in 2007- it came out as the B-side on 7" along with a sister 7" that had  Franz Ferdinand cover of the same song. Cale's version, piano, clipped krautrock guitars and his lived in, baritone voice give James Murphy's song a new dimension- when Cale sings, 'where are your friends tonight?', it conjures all sorts of imagery. 

Monkey Mafia's cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's was a 1998 single, a late 90s revisiting of a 1970 song, a call out to the weary travelers and wanderers, a song about going home. Pre- millenial tension?

Raz and Afla's cover of Aphex Twin's Windowlicker came out this year, a fantastic synths and percussion Afro- electronic floor filler- well, I can imagine some floors that it might fill. 

Squire Black Dove Rides Out

The picture above shows Two Lone Weatherdolls. Except they're not alone, they're together, along with a replica of a Lewis chessman from the British Museum and a load of other bits and bobs that fill up the front of shelves in my house. The Weatherdolls are the work of Claire Doll, a teenage friend of Andrew Weatherall. Claire began making them in lockdown in the aftermath of Andrew's untimely death five years ago today. She raffled them for charity. The slightly smaller one on the right, I won in a raffle. The larger one on the left, was won by a friend and then passed to a friend who passed it to me to look after on behalf of the Flightpath Estate (he holds a copy of our album under his arm), to accompany us when DJing (he came to Head in Stretford last July when me, Martin and Dan played there and will make the journey to The Golden Lion for AW62 in April this year). 

What Andrew would have made of this is anyone's guess. He was largely I think unfussed by fame. He turned away from the light of celebrity and the greasy pole on many occasions, choosing the road less travelled. He would have chuckled about all of this I'm sure, and been secretly pleased too, the way people have kept his name and spirit alive since that day, 17th February 2020. 

His business acumen was fairly haphazard. Recently Lizzie, his partner when he died in 2020 and for the many years before that, said that in 2019 he found an envelope of cash in the studio, the payment for a DJ gig or remix presumably, and said they should 'spunk it on a holiday'. In her post Lizzie added she was grateful for his 'slipshod accounting' and said that we should on this day, 'raise a cup of splosh and a Tunnocks tea cake or two in his honour, play something fitting... and keep him present'.

I know as well as anyone from my experience in recent years that we keep those who have gone alive by speaking about them and by remembering them. This blog has done its best to do that in the years since Mr Weatherall left us. He was an inspiration in so many ways. His loss is enormous and felt daily. Wherever you are Andrew, thank you.

Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out)

Breakdown was a One Dove single, released in 1993 after a year of record company shenanigans and delays. After his work on Screamadelica Andrew went almost immediately into the producer's role on One Dove's album Morning Dove White (with Hugo Nicolson at his side, his studio engineer and right hand man in those early years). One Dove's album is the equal of Screamadelica, in many ways a more even and complete album. The spacious, dubbed out songs with Andrew's magic FX dust sprinkled over them and Dot's voice on top float by in a post- acid house haze, the sun coming up on the morning after. Sabres Of Paradise were coming into being by the time Andrew worked on Morning Dove White and Hugo's presence was also required by Primal Scream as their on stage, the man who provided the sequencer and sample action, a key part of the Screamadelica live shows. The One Dove tracks are as a result split between those done by Andrew and Hugo and those done by Andrew with Jagz and Gary (Hugo did Fallen and Breakdown, Sabres  much of the rest). The Squire Black Dove remix of Breakdown is a lengthy, full on, widescreen Sabres dub excursion, with samples from Exorcist by Shades Of Rhythm, a bass loop from They Came In Peace by Tranquility Bass, a bucket of dubbed out space, rimshots and melodica from Andrew's imagination, and a vocal sample from who knows where- 'against the black blue sky/ The shadow of the dove/ An open mind's excursion... can you remember? The shadow of the dove...'

Another Imaginary Album

Another imaginary album. Previously I speculated about the Andrew Weatherall, Jah Wobble and Sinead O’Connor album that could have followed Andrew’s remixes of Jah Wobble’s Invaders of You in 1992 and the album that he was lined up to produce for The Fall in 1993 but which didn’t happen, as well as a re- united Joe Strummer and Mick Jones album c.1989. Today’s imaginary album is another Weatherall one, this time one that existed for a while on paper but was never followed through. In 1994 following the artistic success of Sabres Of Paradise’s Haunted Dancehall, the record company, Warp, were keen on a follow up with Sabres and some hand picked guest vocalists. The Chemical Brothers and Leftfield had both made records with guest vocalists by this point, including Beth Orton, Tim Burgess, Toni Halliday, and John Lydon and Warp felt Sabres should be getting in on the action. In an interview with NME during this period, possibly the dance music page Vibes (which Andrew’s friend Sherman edited and wrote), Andrew mentioned that he was looking forward to working with Ice T. Jagz Kooner has confirmed that Ice T/ Tracy Morrow’s name was on a list of names of people that Warp were hoping would take to the microphone on this mooted Sabres Of Paradise plus friends album. 

At the Sabresonic 30th event at The Golden Lion last November Jagz and Gary Burns confirmed that a list of names was drawn up. Dot Allison and Bobby Gillespie were both on it, both singers with close connections to Andrew, Bobby via Andrew’s production on Screamadelica and Dot via Andrew’s post- Screamadelica production on One Dove’s Morning Dove White. There is a cassette that belongs to Chris from Soft Rocks, given to him by Andrew as a thank you along with a pile of records, that contains an unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track that goes by the title of Al Green (Revenge Of Dove). The track has that blissed out electronic dub sound that Andrew helped shape with One Dove, possibly even contains a One Dove sample, and although the cassette is not top quality in terms of sound, it’s a real shame it was never finished, it’s very much a lost Sabres track. I’d love to share it but I think doing so would get me into trouble.

Sirens

The tantalising thing about the track’s title is the possibility that alongside guest vocals from Ice T, Bobby Gillespie and Dot Allison, the Reverend Al Green would be making an appearance. Imagine something like Sirens, above from One Dove's Morning Dove White, with Al Green singing on it.

According to Jagz the next name pencilled in by Warp was that of Tom Waits. Tentative enquiries were being made and it was at this point that Andrew got cold feet, getting the fear about working with some of his heroes, and kiboshed the whole project, not willing to put himself in a studio with someone who he regarded as highly as Tom Waits, a hero of Andrew’s since his teenage years.

Heartattack And Vine

Again, close your eyes for a moment and try to imagine Tom Waits' growl and gravelly tones, his gutter poetry, over the top of some mid- 90s Sabres dub. Think of the remixes that could have come from this imaginary album.

Andrew was quite vocal in interviews in the second half of the 90s about dance acts using guest vocalists, in a disapproving way, so he may have had doubts from the start but sitting here three decades later, the prospect of a Sabres Of Paradise album with Tom Waits, Ice T, Al Green, Dot Allison and Bobby Gillespie all singing on it feels like a lost opportunity, one that will have to live in our imaginations only.  

Forty More Minutes Of One Dove

Last Sunday's One Dove mix was popular with a slice of this blog's readership and included calls for a follow up mix so due to popular demand here is a further forty minutes of One Dove, a dubbed out and spaced out selection. 

One Dove Two

• Breakdown (William Orbit Stereo Odyssey)
• Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out)
• Jolene 
• Fallen (Darkest Hour)
• White Love (Higherwatha)

Breakdown came out as a single ahead of the album Morning Dove White in October 1993, the Stephen Hague mix being chosen by the record company to push it towards radio play but the real treasure was to be found in the remixes and versions, two of which I've included here. The first is one of two by William Orbit (the other being the Cellophane Boat Mix, named after an infamous boat party in Rimini). 

Squire Black Dove Rides Out is Sabres Of Paradise at their dubbiest, an epic remix that showed how far ahead Weatherall was in 1992. I wrote about it here  a couple of years ago, on a sample spotting tip (and finding Shades Of Rhythm and Tranquillity Bass within it). In 1993 I had Breakdown on cassette single, these remixes, the Stephen Hague single version and the Cellophane Boat mix on one tape which often soundtracked the long bus journey to my first teaching practice placement in Failsworth, North Manchester. I still have the cassingle, one of the few tapes that survived various culls over the years. The song in all its versions is burned into my subconscious, from 1993 to 2023, from being a trainee teacher to one now only two and a half years from being able to take his pension. 

Jolene was a superbly dubbed out and off kilter cover of Dolly Parton's 1973 single, which eventually saw the light of day in December 1993 on the 12" and CD single of Why Don't You Take Me.

Fallen (Darkest Hour) is the original, pre- Weatherall release when the band were Dove (the soap manufacturer didn't see the funny side of their name- I've no idea if Dove the soap manufacturers knew it was a drug reference or just didn't like their copyright being infringed. Either way Dove became One Dove). Fallen came out on Soma in 1991 with two other versions, Dawn and Dusk. Legend has it Dot managed to get Weatherall to listen to it, he proclaimed it record of the year and then offered to produce their album. 

White Love is also a key One Dove song, not least the ten minute Guitar Paradise version by Weatherall and Sabres. The version here came out in the US only and then in very limited numbers as a promo 12", a remix by Jon Williams for Hardkiss, a hypnotic remix complete with chanting monks and oil drum thump of the drums and a loop of Dot's vocals. There is another Hardkiss remix, the ten minute Scott Hardkiss Psychic Masturbation version of White Love but as I'm trying to keep these Sunday mixes at around thirty to forty minutes that is a remix for another day. 

Forty Minutes Of One Dove

After last week's Dot Allison mix I thought I should go back to the source and do a One Dove mix. One Dove's album Morning Dove White was finally released in October 1993 after a year of hold ups and wranglings about whose mixes and which versions should be on the final record, Stephen Hague's radio friendly sheen or Andrew Weatherall's lengthy dubby productions. We all know what history tells us about those kind of arguments. I bought it and played it a lot, an album that can transport me back to the flat I lived in then with a friend and the times we spent listening to it, the smell and hum of the gas fire, the ashtray filling up with cigarette butts. It sound-tracked our post- club arrivals back home, the winter of 1993- 94, a couple of break ups, us making our way into adult jobs, all that kind of stuff. I've listened to it ever since, an album that continues to give alternately shivers and a warm glow. Weatherall's production, on the back of Screamadelica, is expansive, restless, superbly chilled out but warped too and oddly timeless. The moody/ elegiac songs of Dot Allison, Jim McKinven and Ian Carmichael were clearly good to start with but once Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson got into the studio and began working on them they went somewhere else, sprinkled with the magic dust of the early 90s. Stephen Hague's mixes are possibly a little too shiny in places (and kept mainly for the CD version) but the vinyl is an album to rank alongside the best of the 90s. I once said here, many years ago, that it was brilliant but felt slightly flawed, like there was something missing. I'm not sure what that was or what I meant now. The album's cast included Weatherall's Sabres Of Paradise mates Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner, Jah Wobble's bass on There Goes The Cure, Phil Mossman (Sabres guitarist and future member of LCD Soundsystem) and Primal Scream's Andrew Innes. It's never been re- issued on vinyl. Copies on Discogs are currently starting at £80. Mine is most definitely not for sale. 

Putting together a One Dove mix without just sequencing a bunch of songs from Morning Dove White pointed me towards the remixes and B-sides. I couldn't find room on this mix for either Weatherall's majestic dubbed out odyssey, Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out) or their spaced out cover of Jolene- a second forty minute mix should happen at some point- and there are several Sabres remixes of Transient Truth not included below, the mighty Old Toys and Old Toys Dub are both stunners. The ten minute Guitar Paradise version of White Love looks like a glaring omission too. And if Fallen feels little like it was just tacked onto the end, then that's because it was. I just couldn't not include it in one version or another.

Forty Minutes Of One Dove

• Why Don't You Take Me
• Skanga
• Transient Truth (Squelch Mix)
• Transient Truth (Death Of A Disco Dancer)
• Why Don't You Take Me (Underworld Remix)
• Fallen (Nancy And Lee Mix) 7" Edit

Why Don't You Take Me is from Morning Dove White and was a single in December 1993, the now London Records owned Boy's Own label putting it out as the third single from the album and hoping for a hit. The Glaswegian dub reggae of Skanga was a B-side (along with Jolene, not included here). 

Transient Truth was also from Morning Dove White and released as an official 12" (with the Old Toys mixes) and a white label promo, both in 1992. The white label contained four Sabres Of Paradise remixes of the song, the two included here plus the Paradise Mix and the Sabres Fuzz Dub. I've no idea if the Death Of A Disco Dancer remix is a reference to The Smiths song of the same name. 

Underworld's remixes of Why Don't You Take Me are both up there with their best from the period, released on double blue vinyl along with a Secret Knowledge remix. Underworld's Up  2 Down remix is a long thumper. The one I've included here is dubbed out Underworld style and is magnificent. 

Fallen is where the One Dove story starts, Dot's breathless vocal and the ambient/ dub/ acid house music initially built around a Supertramp sample which led to legal action and the offending harmonica  being removed. Weatherall's remix for the 12" came with the title Nancy And Lee Mix, which sent many of us scurrying back to our parent's record collections looking for Sinatra and Hazlewood albums and singles. The version here is an edited one from a  February1992 7" single and I include just because it's such a great song it can even survive having four minutes chopped off it. 

Looking at all of the tracks I've left off this I think part two may have to come sooner rather than later. 

There Goes The Cure

I started bereavement counselling in April, a session a week for eight weeks. It came to an end yesterday with my final session. I didn’t go into counselling expecting that it could in some way ‘fix’ me- there’s no cure for bereavement, grief and loss. Isaac’s death will always be there and that’s that in a way, what we have to do is learn to live with it and try to find a way to rebuild our lives without him. Bereavement counselling also isn’t the type of counselling where there is a flash of light as everything shifts, or falls into place or suddenly a new path becomes clear- at least that’s my experience. It has been a weekly opportunity for an hour to talk about ‘it’- Isaac, grief and loss, life going on and all the other stuff that starts to bleed in- with someone who is trained to listen and to prompt and question (at times). It’s been useful as somewhere to drop all my emotional stuff once a week. I think I’ll miss it now it’s gone but am probably better equipped to manage without it. It has helped me untangle some of the thoughts, find my way through them- and my counsellor has been really good at helping me do that. 

Our bereavement counselling has been provided by MacMillan. Their counselling (staffed by volunteers mainly) is available for any adults who have suffered a bereavement, it doesn’t have to be cancer related. I don’t think this is widely known. The occupational health team connected to my workplace didn’t know this. This also confirms to me the state of affairs at the moment. My referral for counselling to our local health care trust brought me to an assessment quite quickly but I was then advised that an appointment for counselling through the NHS could take ‘up to three months’- they don’t have the staff or the budget to see anyone quicker than that unless they are suicidal. Charities like MacMillan step in to the gap of an underfunded and under resourced NHS.

One of the most unpleasant side effects of grief, particularly present back in the period from January through to April, was a series of flashbacks I suffered. When Isaac died the three of us were with him. The consultant who had seen many people die from Covid told us what would happen and it was largely as he described. In Isaac’s last hour we were sitting on his hospital bed with him. I was sitting facing him, holding his hands and looking at him. When the moment came I was right in front of him and with him, looking at him. For some time afterwards, I would unexpectedly get flashbacks to the moment he died. They started happening on Tuesdays- Tuesday was the day he died- and would often come when I was driving. For an instant I was back in the room, holding his hands and looking at his face. I would smell the room and feel the pain. They would pass fairly quickly but for the moment the flashback was present, it was deeply unsettling and very unpleasant. I started to dread Tuesday mornings. Once it got past 12.45pm (the time he died) I would be ok, it would pass, but then I’d be waiting for the next Tuesday. When I started counselling in April I described all of this in one of my early sessions (the woman I spoke to from occupational health at around that time said the flashbacks were 'rather concerning' and commonly associated with PTSD). A few weeks ago, on an evening in early May as I pulled onto the motorway to drive to Tuesday night 5- a- side, I had a horrific flashback, the full on ‘back in the room’ experience. It left me short of breath, completely overwhelming me, knocking the wind out of me. Luckily the motorway was quiet and it passed quickly, I focussed on the road and sort of pushed it away. When I pulled in at the car park I got my phone out and wrote it down as a note, just described what had happened. I talked about it at counselling two days later and last week we went back to it and discussed strategies for dealing with it. We talked about it again yesterday and the realisation I haven't had one now for some time and about how I'd deal with one if I did. I haven’t had one since that one in May. Maybe the counselling, the talking, the passing of time and the acceptance has helped. 

I don’t mind some of the aspects of grief. That sounds weird I know. As time goes on and the raw, physical pain lessens, redcues as a permanent feature of living, as a day to day emotional state There are times and triggers when the crashing waves of grief and loss still come. Visiting Isaac’s grave does it. When we go, the sheer enormity of what has happened, of him dying, hits me anew (not every time but most). There are little things that trigger it: a photo popping up in my social media memories; the memory of somewhere we went or something we did; an encounter with someone who we haven’t seen since he died or who didn’t know; a memory of him randomly crossing my mind. When it comes I let it happen, I don’t try to suppress it. I almost welcome the fact that even now, nearly seven months on, it can poleaxe me, take my breath away, cause me to gulp and well up. It provides a link to him. I can feel it and then come up out of it, almost like diving into water and then getting resurfacing as you get through the surface and breathe air again. My counsellor described finding something to ground yourself at these moments, something tangible. The pain feels real and then it passes. 

Counselling has helped me with all of this. There’s no cure for what’s happened. It becomes a matter of accepting it and finding ways of coping. I’m relieved the flashbacks seem to have gone for the moment. Some of the other physical symptoms remain- the tinnitus is still present first thing in the morning and at occasions where it’s silent and I suddenly notice that my ears are ringing. My jaw clenching and tooth grinding is still there but also lessened, less acute than before. Sleep is still a bit hit and miss at times. But we agreed yesterday at the end of my final session that I've made progress- the fact that other, day to day stuff has become a bit more pre- occupying suggest that I'm moving on in some way, thoughts of Isaac and the grief are not ever-present like they were. She said there's still a 'heaviness' about me but I've come a long way from the person who turned up at the first session back in April. And that is good. 

There Goes The Cure

This 1993 song by One Dove with Andrew Weatherall on magic dust sprinkling  and production duties suggested itself to me while writing this post. Listening to it as I finished tidying the post up I thought it might be too close to the bone, and lyrically it is almost too much... 

'One cut too many/ One more life to go... losing a shadow/ Losing another soul/ So many echoes/ He's gone'. 

Tears come, again. But it fits very well and with those pianos and the post acid house/ comedown production, and that part where the dubby bass pushes its way through especially, it also feels like dawn has come and there might be a way forward after all. 

Tak Tent Four

I submitted another mix to Tak Tent Radio, an eclectic and broadminded internet radio station broadcasting out of Scotland. It went live yesterday. You can find it at Tak Tent and at Mixcloud. No irritating DJs talking over the intros, no cutting away for the travel news or adverts, no playlist songs you don't like but they have to play anyway, just an hour of songs from my record collection/  hard drive. I don't think there are many surprises in the tracklist, it's the usual sort of stuff I've been writing about here but collected into one hour long mix. 

Tak Tent Four

• Durutti Column: Sketch For Dawn I
• Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood: The Crescent
• David Holmes and Steve Jones: The Reiki Healer From County Down
• Reinhard Vanbergen and Reinhard Roelandt: Amber Amplifier
• Steve Cobby: 45ft Tide
• Nick Drake: Rider On The Wheel
• Saint Etienne: Little K
• One Dove: Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out)
• David Holmes: Theme/ I.M.C.
• A Mountain Of One: Custards Last Stand
• 10:40 Kissed Again
• Ry Cooder: Cancion Mixteca (Paris Texas Soundtrack)

Against The Black Blue Sky

One of the joys of Andrew Weatherall's remixes, especially the early 90s ones, was the sample spotting- Weatherall's samples were like breadcrumbs to follow that led you to his influences and then other records and artists. Last Saturday I posted a tribute to Jean 'Binta' Breeze, the Jamaican dub poet who died in earlier this month who Weatherall sampled for his dub remix of Saint Etienne's Only Love Can Break Your Heart. In 1991 Andrew met Dot Allison from One Dove and agreed to work on the trio's album. Fresh from a lost weekend in Rimini he arrived in Glasgow to add his magic to One Dove's songs. After much wrangling with the record label (who wanted to go with Stephen Hague's poppier, shinier mixes of some of the songs) the album Morning Dove White was released, a year later than it should have been, in 1993. The album is a genuine lost classic of the 90s, the flipside to Screamadelica, a multi- layered, dubby, down tempo, after hours record, magic and mystery woven into the grooves of the vinyl. It still sounds like that- in fact if anything, it sounds better now than it did then, infused with a timeless beauty. The album has never been re- issued which adds to its allure (apparently plans are afoot to re- release it with all it's singles and remixes plus rumours of never previously released Weatherall mixes of some of the songs). The album was also key in the formation of Sabres Of Paradise with Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner engineering the album. 

The single Breakdown came out in October 1993 in various versions and mixes across various formats. I still have a cassingle of Breakdown as well as my 12" copy and a CD single came out containing five versions. They included Stephen Hague's Radio Mix, a lovely chugging, spacey Hugo Nicolson remix (the Cellophane Boat Mix) and an eight minute, wonderfully fluid, sci fi William Orbit Stereo Odyssey Mix. But the most extraordinary remix was Weatherall's reworking, Squire Black Dove Rides Out, a ten minute tripped out dub excursion taking up all of side B of the 12" single. 

Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out)

Over the descending synth string chords a sonorous voice strikes up, 'against the black blue sky/ the shadow of the dove... an open mind's... excursion', and then 'can you remember?/ the shadow of the dove'. I've no idea where this voice comes from incidentally so if anyone knows, please write in to the usual address. The voice is swamped by some dubby percussion, all rimshots and echo, and a huge stuttering bassline starts up. The bassline is taken from Exorcist by Shades Of Rhythm, slowed right down. Exorcist is raw, breakbeat techno repurposed into a widescreen dubbed out adventure. 

Exorcist

An acoustic guitar comes in, slightly startling. It's from Breakdown and played by Andrew Innes from Primal Scream. There's a lovely dubby melodica,  from I don't know where (chances are it's from an Augustus Pablo or King Tubby record) and then there's Dot's vocal, chopped up and looped, 'na na na- na/ na na na- na na/ na na na- na/ na na na- na na'. Those sumptuous synth strings sweep back in and some distant kettle drums pound and just as it sounds like Squire Black Dove Rides Out is reaching a conclusion the dub comes back, everything sent around for a few more bars, and then the acoustic guitar is brought back, more and more round and round. There's another breakdown (ha!) at seven minutes with an excerpt of the bassline from They Come In Peace suddenly dropped in, a total change in the feel and the tempo before it all returns again to the drawn out dub business. 

They Came In Peace

They Came In Peace was a 12" single by Tranquility Bass, American spaced out ambient dance, also originally released in 1991. Blissful chill opening with crickets and a voice from US TV saying, 'they came in peace for all mankind' before the jazz bassline loops its way in. 

The transformation of Breakdown, a forlorn downtempo, pop song- Phil Spector meets the back room of early 90s clubland- into a dub odyssey shows the breadth of Weatherall's imagination and his ear for a sample, a snippet or loop from another record, taken straight out of his record box and refashioned in the studio in a new way. 

Monday's Long Song

One of the peaks of Andrew Weatherall's productions and his work with Hugo Nicolson is this version of One Dove's White Love. In its Radio Mix state White Love is perfect, breathless, left field piano pop. In its ten minute sixteen seconds long Guitar Paradise version it's a boundless, endless work of imagination, with Phil Mossman's guitar part in the forefront and it showcases Andrew's ability to stretch a song out and find new places for it to go and new directions to send the listener in. From the opening guitar chord, all feedback, pedals and amplifier, and the sliced up pieces of Dot's vocal to the arrival of the drums a minute and a half in this is a trip. The crunchy, vivid guitar continues to weave its magic and Dot's full vocal is layered on top. 

'You laugh, I smile
Mirrors in thought, these fortunes we can share
And where there is dark, there are ghosts
Who give me hope'

The bassline is an enormous dub inspired thing, bubbling away underneath. The trademark early 90s/ Sabres Of Paradise/ Screamadelica timbales make an appearance too. I remember buying the 12" single on release, in Oxford of all places, having come back from a summer spent catching trains and camping in France. We arrived back in England and were making our way back to Manchester by train. I can't remember all the details, maybe there was work on the railways, maybe we had to change trains, but I went into HMV in Oxford and there was White Love on the rack at the front of the singles department. I have no idea how having spent several weeks in France living on cheese, bread, cheap wine and even cheaper cigarettes, I had any money to buy a record but I bought it on the spot and cradled it all the way back home. The feeling I get from the sound of those guitars coming in and Dot's voice hasn't faded at all in the twenty seven years in between then and now. 

White Love (Guitar Paradise Mix)

Monday's Long Song

One thing Andrew Weatherall did from the earliest days of his own remixes and productions was scatter clues for you to follow. He worked with One Dove producing their debut album Morning Dove White, a much delayed album and one which was mucked about with by the record company who wanted a pop hit. Fallen came out in 1992, ahead of the album which didn't appear until autumn 1993, and the eight minute version on the A- Side was this-

Fallen (The Nancy And Lee Mix)

The chugging intro and those huge timbales are heavenly even before the first appearance of Dot's breathing. After a minute Dot's speaks, her voice very close up, and says 'I don't know why I'm telling you any of this, one thing is don't ever told anyone I told you this, don't save me, just forgive me' and then we have lift off into blissed out ambient- tinged dance music.

After Andrew's death in February One Dove member Ian Carmichael posted his memories of the making of the album on Facebook- 

'The day Andy Weatherall came to Glasgow to work in my studio, I slept in.

When I arrived, breathless and sweaty and terrified, I was thinking I've kept this VIP DJ waiting outside on the doorstep for 20 minutes; he's going to be so pissed off and I'm the biggest jerk in the world.

He was sitting reading NME. Smiling. Smiling BIG. The reviews of Screamadelica had just come out that day. The NME saved my life.

As friendly and happy as he was, I was still intimidated by him, and his way of working was so unconventional I felt that I was playing catch-up the whole day. His first instruction on the remix was to change the time signature of the track - EVERYTHING had to be reprogrammed. I was a nervous wreck.

And then we started to commit to tape the tracks as he wanted them played - starting with just the rhythmic breaths - and he would add elements in and we'd just record it to tape and build the track up bit by bit. Back then that meant editing a 1/4" reel to reel.

I had bits of tape all of the floor, around my neck, across the mixing desk - I couldn't remember what any of them were. I had razor cuts on my fingers and my hands were sweating so much I couldn't hold the tape. I wouldn't even get halfway through an edit before Andy would be giving out instructions on the next part of the track. All I could see in front of me were the red LEDs on the tape machine screaming OVERLOAD! I wanted to die.

It was one of the worst days of my life.

And one of the best.'

The Nancy And Lee Mix was named after Sinatra and Hazlewood. I wasn't particularly familiar with Lee Hazlewood's work in any depth at that point although I knew his name at least in part from a Thin White Rope e.p. I'd bought in 1988 where the Paisley Underground/ desert blues group covered Some Velvet Morning. My Mum had been a Nancy Sinatra fan and there were some of her records at home- Nancy In London and Boots were both around (I'm sure they still are, she doesn't throw much away).

Some Velvet Morning is a strange, dark, psychedelic pop song with strings, rattling snares and shifting time signatures, sugar spiked with LSD. Nancy and Lee duet, Nancy as Phaedra playing off against Lee's baritone. The lyrics suggest an acid trip- 'some velvet morning when I'm straight/I'm gonna open up your gate'- but Lee said later on he didn't know what the words meant. He said they were inspired by Greek mythology and that Phaedra had 'a sad middle, a sad end and by the time she was 17 she was gone. She was a sad- assed broad, the saddest of all the Greek goddesses, so bless her heart, she deserves some notoriety, I'll put her in a song'. Nancy, recently one of Trump's biggest and most frequent online critics, said in the 1990s 'I've been singing this song for over 20 years and I still don't know what the darned thing means'.

Some Velvet Morning

But the clues and references are dropped for you to follow so the names in brackets on a remix send you off on a quest down the rabbit hole to fill in the gaps. Second hand records from the 1960s were easy to get hold of in the early 90s, second hand record shops and charity shops filled with dumped collections and I found a copy of Nancy And Lee without too much much trouble. Nancy's Greatest Hits as well (with the gatefold sleeve).

Andrew Weatherall would return to Some Velvet Morning in 2003 when Primal Scream recorded a version of it for their Evil Heat album, Kate Moss duetting with Bobby. The 12" single had a Two Lone Swordsmen remix, Andrew and Keith weirding it out in disco dub style.

Some Velvet Morning Disco Heater Dub

An Open Mind's Excursion

I found the above photo while looking at Robert Frank photos on Google image search. It's by Jakob Perlmutter from a series he did as a homage to Frank. The use of space framing the two people, lots of empty space, and the grey tones are all very Frank but the face of the girl could only be recent (the nose piercing particularly).

One Dove always seem autumnal to me, the days getting shorter, the creeping darkness and chill in the air. The 1993 remix of Breakdown by Andrew Weatherall is career highpoint for all involved- from the opening seconds as the chords fade in and the voice 'against the black blue sky, the shadow of the dove' as the Sabres dub production kicks in. Big rattling bass, a Shades Of Rhythm sample, chopped up acoustic guitar and melodica. Dot's 'na na na na' refrain looped. A prime example of the art of the remix.

Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out)

Transient Truth

Dot Allison was here yesterday, providing the vocals on a King Of Woolworths song. That song was posted as part of a long discussion at a One Dove forum/Facebook group about the Sabres Of Paradise mixes of their 1992 dub- house masterpiece Transient Truth (with group member and founding member of One Dove Ian Carmichael chipping in). The 12" release came with two remixes, the Old Toys Mix and the Old Toys Dub, both credited to Andrew Weatherall, Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner (collectively Sabres Of Paradise). The first keeps some of Dot's vocal and picks up the pace halfway though, the second more abstract and dubbier. Both are pretty high tempo and fairly full on reworkings.

Transient Truth (Old Toys Mix)

Transient Truth (Old Toys Dub)

There was a second vinyl release, a promo 12" in a plain sleeve, collecting four further remixes. I hope I've got all these labelled correctly- all the mixes are here but I apologise in advance if any are wrongly titled or the links are mixed up. Inevitably there's a lot of repetition and parts that appear and re-appear (the synth part, various drum and percussion sounds, Dot's vocals, the bassline)- but they're all worthy of release and it's clear to see why Weatherall wanted the four on the promo out as well as the Old Toys versions. The other four mixes are the Paradise Mix, the Sabres Fuzz Dub, the Squelch Mix and the Death Of A disco Dancer Mix.

The Paradise Mix starts slow, then builds with that Sabres timbale sound, fragments of Dot whispering 'listen', lots of percussion and some melodica as a top line. At ten minutes plus it's the longest of the remixes.

Transient Truth (Paradise Mix)

The Fuzz Dub is thumpier and sparser with an intermittent buzzy, fuzz line, giving it its name.

Transient Truth (Sabres Fuzz Dub)

The Squelch mix is pretty far gone, noises flipping between the speakers, a bit of Dot, reverb heavy timbale, a long, slower trip, more melodica- dubbed out dub- house, a dub of a dub.

Transient Truth (Squelch Mix)

The final one starts with a kick drum and clatters away with the familiar synth riff fading in and out and the descending bass part to the fore. I don't know why it's called Death Of A Disco Dancer Mix- I can't find any obvious reference to The Smiths song of the same name.

Transient Truth (Death Of A Disco Dancer Mix)

Stick all of them on a cd or a playlist and lose yourself in a slice of 1992. After a while, listening to them one after the other, a zen-like calm kicks in, time and space slip away, transience becomes the natural state. Or something. Even if a One Dove/Sabres inspired transcendence is not achieved, it's a nice way to spend forty-five minutes.

Doved

One Dove's debut (and only) album, the majestic Morning Dove White, was delayed in being released for a year due to wranglings between the band (who favoured Andrew Weatherall's dubby, post-Screamadelica mixes of their songs) and the record label London Records (who wanted Stephen Hague's poppier mixes that might get played on daytime radio). A compromise of sorts was eventually reached. But at least Morning Dove White came out and is still adored by most of those people that heard it back then. Their second album never made it. The band's Soundcloud page has some songs that were earmarked for it. This one, Kill Time, has all the familiar elements- Dot's breathy vocals and that dubby, delay drenched space.



There are a few others on the Soundcloud page- their trippy cover of Simon Dupree's Kites, Waltzbaby, the spectral and sparse Sister and this beautiful underwatery song called Drowning.



These songs are how they were when the band split, not necessarily final versions. Listening to them, it's difficult to see why they were rejected by London Records other than MDW hadn't sold and they thought this was more of the same. There are other bits and pieces floating around the internet- it's probably too much to expect someone to put everything together in one place and release it properly but we can hope. Stranger, less obvious things have been released. Fansite onedove.net has a few mp3s of tracks recorded for radio shows. It hasn't been updated since 2012 but all bar one of the mp3s are still working.

This appeared on Youtube earlier this year with a user made Blue Velvet video. What Can You Do To Me Now sounds more trip hop, a little indebted to Massive Attack, but fairly sumptuous all the same. However band member Ian Carmichael has said this one was not intended for the second album but was written after that and presented to the record company just before Dot left the band. It was, he says, the last song they all worked on together although he doesn't recognise the mix posted.

If You Want To Know The Truth

More Sabres related stuff for Sunday. I was rooting through a box of cds (home made ones I burned and made covers for when I first started downloading mp3s, going back to 10 years ago). In the box was a cd of Sabres Of Paradise remixes of One Dove's 1992 song Transient Truth, one of many standout songs from their Morning Dove White album. Sabres remixed Transient Truth not once but six times. Two of the versions were officially released, The Old Toys Mix and Old Toys Dub, on the 12". The other four remixes turned up on a four track promo white label- the Paradise Mix, The Sabres Fuzz Dub, the Squelch Mix and the Death Of A Disco Dancer Mix. And that is how I soundtracked my journey to work on Wednesday and Thursday this week just gone, the variations of remixes making the miles pass by, repeated bits of bassline, synths and the Sabres rhythms and dub production flowing into one another. There are worse ways to spend forty minutes of listening time. The Paradise mix is possibly the pick, ten minutes and five seconds of 1992.

Transient Truth (Paradise Mix)

Straight To Your Heart

There was a time when I didn't really see why One Dove's beautiful and mysterious Why Don't You Take Me needed remixing, even though it was Underworld (and Secret Knowledge) doing said remixing. Weatherall's production and Dot's vocal were so right mucking around with them or removing the vocal seemed wrong. But the first Underworld remix, a slow one and a long way from the usual throbbing pulsing Emerson sound, is really good, building slowly over eleven minutes with a repeated synth part.

Why Don't You Take Me (Underworld Remix)

And the second one is nearly fifteen minutes of throbbing and pulsing and dark corners and dry ice- those hi hats and kick drums keep pushing it on and on.

Why Don't You Take Me (Underworld Up 2 Down Remix)

And while neither of them are as wondrous as the original, they exist to do a different job.

I Want To Keep Hold Of This For You

The Vinyl Villain has been hosting a long running series where different contributors suggest a ten track Imaginary Compilation Album for an artist or band, running the gamut from The Smiths to Massive Attack, from Durutti Column to Captain Beefheart. Now totalling over one hundred posts I finally pulled my finger out and wrote an Andrew Weatherall ICA. I cheated- it's a double disc compilation. You can read it here.

This One Dove song didn't make the cut but probably should have.

White Love (Guitar Paradise Mix)

The Small Hours Are Hard To Face

I've no doubt I will keep coming back to One Dove as long as I have the strength to lift the arm onto the vinyl or press play. Morning Dove White is one of the 90s high points, one of Weatherall's too. This was their poppiest moment, soft, sublime and enveloping- even Stephen Hague can't ruin it. It doesn't have as many of the gorgeous dub textures that are all over the album but it should have been a big hit. I don't remember seeing the video before, Dot and the boys miming in a pub/club. The bit where they get projected onto the pool table is a tad dated but no matter.

Residential

Tonight, while you are uncorking the wine and enjoying Friday night, I shall be enjoying/enduring the horrors of... the work residential. Hotel, meeting from 4 until 7, dinner, drinks and then another round of meetings on Saturday morning all the way through until 12.

As a result they will be no rockabilly tonight- I'm not having you grooving to the sounds of the Bagging Area Friday night while I'm suffering. I know that sounds selfish but that's the way it is.

Some songs recently appeared on Soundcloud- unfinished versions of songs for a second One Dove album, scrapped as the band split up while recording it. Shame. One Dove's Morning Dove White is a lost 90s gem, flawed maybe but a gem nonetheless.



If you go here there's a few more, tasters of what might have been.

Transient Truth

Posting that Death In Vegas song on Monday night prompted me to think that it's been ages since I posted any One Dove. So, plucking a track fairly randomly from the hard drive we get the Old Toys Mix of Transient Truth. There are half a dozen different mixes of this song, most of them by Weatherall and his Sabres Of Paradise cronies Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns. This one is a killer- 120 bpm with a deep dubby bassline, pulsing synthlines, squelches and bleeps, a bit of Dot. They used to call it Progressive House. It still sounds like progress.

Transient Truth Old Toys Mix

Skanga

A reader called Anthony James has made a request, 'on bended knee' no less (quite fitting with all this reverence for our dear Queen)- One Dove's Skanga. I'm only too happy to oblige with this majestic 12" B-side slice of dub-house with Dot's wonky vocals. Wonderful record.

Skanga

I think I've mentioned this before but I can't understand why this song and their cover of Jolene weren't on Morning Dove White, instead of the multiple versions of Breakdown and White Love- they would have made it a different and better album.