In 2013 a beautiful package came out from Faber, a novel by Michael Smith, loose leafed and unbound with annotations and scribblings in the margins by Andrew Weatherall, with a cd and a 10" single. The book, available as a paperback for a few quid now in the usual places, is the semi-autobiographical tale of a man returning to London after living in a beach hut in Kent, and finding London changing, being gentrified before his eyes. Smith's writing is shot through with loss for Soho and Shoreditch as they were and the partying of the 90s but also recognising that cities change, they move on. He sees bars selling Belgian beer and artisan food shops and both likes them and loathes them. It's loose and conversational in tone, much of it like being up at dawn with a hangover and flashes of memories from the night before.
Andrew Weatherall provided a soundtrack with Michael Smith reading sections of the book in his softened northern accent. Weatherall's music is mainly tone pieces, washes of sound and noise with some folky picked guitars. Try this one.
Weatherall's done a mix for Resident Advisor that you can download for free here, with tracks by Vermont, Prins Thomas, Flash Atkins, Simon Says, Duncan Gray, Club Bizarre, PPF, Vox Low and Boot and Tax. In the Q and A on the website, he is asked what the idea behind the mix was. Weatherall's response is 'to sequence some records together without the joins being too apparent'. Arf.
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