Another Andrew Weatherall sample spotting post, my continuing attempts to try to identify and pull together the sounds that made the remixes. Today, the monumental, ground breaking, juddering dance/ rock remix of My Bloody Valentine's Soon. The long gestation period that led to the release of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless album has been well documented and is the stuff of indie legend- the record that broke Creation, the album that illustrates the manic attention to detail and difficulties of working with Kevin Shields and his single minded drive and obsession with the process and art of recording guitars, the failings of various London recording studios, the hand to mouth cash existence of Creation Records, the poor health of various participants (tinnitus not surprisingly given the volume the group played at) and so on. David Cavanagh's My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize book describes the myths and the reality in detail.
Soon first saw the public light of day as the lead song on 1990's Glider EP (along with Glider, Don't Ask Why and Off Your Face. David Cavanagh speculates in his book that the song titles from MBV's releases at this point can be seen as ripostes to Alan McGee and his frequent requests to give him some music to release). Soon is arguably the pinnacle of Shields' famous 'glide guitar' sound and technique- playing the strings and bending them using the tremolo bar. That underestimates Soon somewhat- Soon swirls and shimmers, disorientation and delight in equal measures, a riot of melodies and feedback, ghosts of guitars and washes of vocal. It rattles in with some percussion and then a storm of guitar chords, the queasy topline melodies (one that sounds very like a flute and may well be), echoing feedback and Belinda Butcher's barely there vocals. Soon is vaguely danceable and the guitar sounds, the vertigo inducing tremolo chord changes, give it a swirling, slightly out of control feel- you've had one too many, the edges of your vison and hearing are fuzzy, you're spinning and not in control. The video version here is under four minutes but the version on Glider and different mix that made it onto Loveless are seven minutes long, an ecstatic headrush of sound.
When it came to remixing it Andrew Weatherall entered the studio armed with the records he wanted to sample and MBV's master tapes. It seems that the band were a little reluctant to hand over control to a DJ/ producer/ remixer (this was before Screamadelica had been released so Andrew's reputation in the studio wasn't established). The resulting remix, released in 1990, turned the highwater mark of shoegaze into a stomping, shuddering leftfield dance record, one that as much as any is where his reputation as a remixer rests. MBV accompanied him in the studio, either to keep an eye on him or to see how the process of remixing worked (or both). Indie- dance would quickly become tainted as a label, used more in derision than admiration- people use the term to describe Weatherall's remix of Soon, but there's a lot more going on in it than just sticking the Funky Drummer underneath the guitars and adding some cowbell. There would be plenty of guitar bands queuing up to have their feedback and four square rock refashioned but no other remix of a guitar band from this period comes close to Soon in its execution or the effect it can have on a dancefloor.
The Geiger counter intro, impossibly loud in the mix, is followed by a very un- MBV voice declaring, 'Here we go'. Then one of those guitars, stripped from the original song, appears high and centre. A thumping bassline and percussion hit in. The flute/ guitar part is punched in, on its own. 'Here we go' again. More layered guitars. The drums thunder away, the guitars are looped round and round. The 'aaah aaaahhhh' vocal sample is dropped along with a guitar part that sounds like wire being wound very tight and hit. It sounds like Soon but moreso, the drift and ghostliness of the original snapped into focus, equally narcotic but a different drug. The ending is dramatic too- the elements being stripped out one by one, faders, pulled down until there's just a voice, 'aaahhh aaahhhhhhhh/ aaahhhhh aaahhhhhhhhhh'.
West Bam's Alarm Clock, a manic 1990 breakbeat/ house 12", provides some of the feel of the remix and the clattering rhythm that Andrew uses to underpin Shields' wall of noise.
West Bam had already borrowed guitars from this, Gang Of Four's What We All Want, from their 1981 Solid Gold album. Stentorian, Marxist funk rock which Andrew would surely have recognised instantly when he first heard West Bam.
Some of the vocals are taken from this song- Tides- by Claire Hamill, released in 1986, an entirely acapella album, Hamill's voice overdubbed to produce all the sounds. Go to 44 seconds in and you'll find the vocal part Weatherall dropped in- it repeats throughout the song.
Hugo Nicolson, Andrew's assistant, engineer and studio whizz, tells us that some of the voices were sampled from a Volvic advert (I can't find any trance of the advert on the internet). If you go to 3 minutes 15 seconds in this 1975 song, Funky Music Is The Thing by Dynamic Corvettes, you'll find a rhythm break that appears in the remix too- or one that sounds very like it.
The website Who Sampled Who says that Weatherall's remix takes elements, the bassline probably, from this- The Rhythm, The Feeling by Rich Nice, a 1990 hip- house single.
If anyone knows where the 'here we go' sample comes from, write in to the usual address and I'll add it to this post.
The remix came out first as a white label 12" and was labelled the Andy Weatherall Remix. Later versions would by credited to his full name. It also appeared on Creation's superb 1991 compilation Keeping The Faith (and if you're after a vinyl copy now you'd be better off finding a copy of the compilation- cheaper and containing a slew of other era defining tracks to boot). Soon in Andy/ Andrew's hands is a record and remix in a class of its own. It still sounds like Soon but it's a Soon that My Bloody Valentine hadn't imagined and one that blurs all the lines and boundaries that existed at the time- not rock, not dance, not indie dance, not shoegaze but something new built from all of these but something else as well. 'Here we go'.
1 comment:
Brilliant post, Adam. I only bought the 12" specifically for the Weatherall remix so I had not idea what the original sounded like, but I never tire of listening to it. A wonderfully evocative post, I was picturing Weatherall in the studio, dipping into his sample bag and playing around with the shape of the song. Did he realise he was creating a historic moment? Probably not, but what a tune.
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