Lord Sabre

I could probably go on posting Andrew Weatherall related music all week and into next but I'll make this the last one for the time being, a third celebration of his life and music following his passing earlier this week. The further I go into the remixes he did in the early 90s the more of them I recall that I didn't write about yesterday- West India Company, Word Of Mouth, Deep Joy, That Petrol Emotion all spring to mind. The mid 90s Two Lone Swordsmen period is so full of music and remixes that it would take years to go through it all and then there are the ones done under other names from that time- Rude Solo, Lino Squares, Basic Units, the wondrous deep house recorded with David Harrow as Deanne Day, his partnership with Harrow as Blood Sugar, the beautifully chilled piano dub of the Planet 4 Folk Quartet track (also with David Harrow). There's also all the minimal techno, dub and electronic weirdness released on the various Emissions labels in the 90s from people such as Blue, Conemelt, Turbulent Force, Alex Handley, Technova (David Harrow again) and Bionic.

Released on Emissions Audio Output in 1996 Hardly Breathe is fifteen minutes of sumptuous deep house, bass to shake your speakers and a breathy vocal from 'Deanne'.

Hardly Breathe

In the same year Weatherall went back to the BBC and recorded his second Essential Mix. The first was a groundbreaking charge through Weatherall's record box three years earlier, opening with Killing Joke and Sabres and taking in Brother Love Dubs, Smokebelch, Plastikman, LFO, Black Dog and Innersphere along the way, two hours of techno that was taped and shared and re-taped. In 1996 his second Essential Mix was possibly even better, a journey into the heart of the Two Lone Swordsmen sound- minimal, bass led, crisp machine drums, on the button, Andrew re-working the material including four of his own records as he plays it. Two hours of the art of the DJ.




Jumping forward to 2009 and a mix he did for Fact Magazine which I listened to endlessly at that time and plundered for posts at Bagging Area in its early days. Fact Mix 85 skips from genre to genre in an effortless manner, playing post- punk, rockabilly, Stockholm Monsters, Durutti Column, Mogwai and Pete Wylie. The tracklist is here. Earlier on in 2009 he did a 6 Music show where he'd played Wayne Walker's All I Can Do Is Cry (also on Fact Mix 85), a song that I heard for the first time there and that then became the subject of the first ever piece of blogging I did (a guest slot at The Vinyl Villain).

Fact Mix 85

This one is more recent, the man playing at Terraforma near Milan in Italy, a Music's Not For Everyone style set and is the best fifty two minutes of audio/visual fun you'll have today. Songs from Fujiya Miyagi, The Dream Syndicate, Moon Duo, AMOR, played a field full of dancing Italians half his age.



In 2003 Primal Scream released a greatest hits called Dirty Hits, a version of their history that opened with Loaded, Weatherall's mangling of the Scream's I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have, with steals from Peter Fonda, Edie Brickell and The Emotions. Loaded, in a piece of timing that is remarkable, came out thirty years ago yesterday. Anyway, the sleeve notes to Dirty Hits were written by Andrew Weatherall and conclude thus...

'Feeling humble, having served... now carry me home.'

Now you'll have to excuse me because I've got something in my eye again.