Forty Five Minutes Of Sabres Of Paradise

The day after the night before. I wrote this in advance so have no idea how yesterday's DJ extravaganza at The Golden Lion went- let's assume for the sake of argument that it was a massive success, that the tune selection and mixing was flawless, that we pitched the music and the crowd perfectly throughout the afternoon and evening and set it up beautifully for Justin Robertson to come in and take us all higher. 

I thought seeing as today is till part of the AW60 celebrations and there's plenty to see and enjoy at The Golden Lion today that today's mix should be Weatherall related but also a little downtempo and chilled to ease any sore heads and bodies into the day. This is the result, a forty five minutes Sabres Of Paradise mix, some of the more ambient, downtempo, dubbier and beatific tracks from the Andrew Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns back catalogue.

Forty Five Minutes Of Sabres Of Paradise

• Jacob Street 7AM
• Siege Refrain
• Return Of Carter
• R.S.D.
• Theme 4
• Edge 6
• Flight Path Estate
• Haunted Dancehall (Performed By In The Nursery)
• Smokebelch II (Beatless Mix)
• Chapel Street 9AM

The bookends of this mix, Jacob Street and Chapel Street, are both from the 1994 Haunted Dancehall album, a Sabres masterclass. Ambient tracks to listen to as the city wakes, Jacob Street is serene and wobbly, while Chapel Street's synths sound like seagulls and the shimmering haze they conjure is quite beautiful. Theme 4, a short dub noise interlude on the album is a version of the single Theme, also from 1994. Flight Path Estate comes from Haunted Dancehall too. 

Siege Refrain is a short experiment is delay and distortion, calmed ambient sound with some a little edge. It was track three on the Wilmot CD single.

Return Of Carter and Edge 6 were the twin B-sides from Theme, two of my favourite Sabres dub outings, wonderfully early 90s revisioning of the King Tubby sound. 

R.S.D. appeared on the 1993 album Sabresonic, propulsive dub techno. The initials stand for Red Stripe Dubs, an advertising tie in brokered by Mark who DJed last night as one of the Flightpath Estate DJs. He swears somewhere he has a cassette with three different versions of this track but alas to date he has been unable to put his hands on it. 

In The Nursery's modern classical cover version of Haunted Dancehall's title track came as part of a triple vinyl remix set, on 7", 10" and 12" along with remixes by Depth Charge, The Chemical Brothers, Nightmares On Wax and LFO. It's a very beautiful few minutes, a new version rather than a remix. Weirdly the BBC's plans for the death of a monarch that were drawn up decades ago stipulated that it would be the only music to be played on Radio One in the event of the Queen dying. It was broadcast repeatedly in the immediate aftermath of the death of Diana back in 1997. I'm not sure it's what anyone involved in creating it intended. 

Smokebelch II (Beatless Mix) is a gorgeous ambient version of the Sabres 12" single from 1993, Smokebelch II. It's become an ambient/ chill out classic and been subjected to advertising mobile phones in the past but that shouldn't blind you to its beauty. It was originally available as a one sided 7" single with limited copies of Haunted Dancehall. We played it at the graveside at Isaac's funeral in December 2021 and I can still listen to it now, so that's something.