The First Mission

It's a bit late in the day to advertise this but we've been a bit tardy with arrangements-amateurish you might say- and it's always better late than never. The Flightpath Estate is a Facebook group that was formed nine years ago to share news, recordings and information about Andrew Weatherall. It grew fairly slowly and only numbered a couple of hundred members until February 2020 when it grew  suddenly and quickly following Andrew's death. It now has over two thousand members and has become something more than a Facebook group- it is a genuine community of fans and friends. It is also the front door to the Weatherdrive, an archive of Andrew's DJ sets and mixes lovingly curated and annotated. To listen to it all would currently involve over 1300 hours of listening time.  The five of us that run and admin the page (me, Martin, Mark, Dan and Barry) were asked to contribute to an article in last Thursday's Guardian written by Joe Muggs on the occasion of what would have been Andrew's 60th birthday and two of us, myself and Martin, were quoted in the article. You can read it here. When I started this blog in 2010 and then helped Martin to set up The Flightpath Estate group I didn't expect that I'd end up being quoted in The Guardian in reference to Andrew Weatherall and his legacy but we are where we are as they say. 

The Flightpath Estate managed to get ourselves a DJ gig at The Golden Lion last October, supporting and warming up for David Holmes. We're back at the Lion at the end of the month to do the same for Justin Robertson as part of the AW60 celebrations. Again, when I started this blog I really didn't expect it would lead to this. We've been keen to do something for the group in real life and knocked about the idea of doing a Flightpath Estate social, a monthly meet up where we can get together, play records and people from the group can come down and join in. The first Flightpath Estate social is happening this Sunday, 16th April, at Blossom Street Social, a bar in Ancoats. This time around, the first outing (or First Mission in Two Lone Swordsmen terms), the northern members of the admin team- me, Dan and Martin- are on duties. If you're Manchester/ north west based, fancy a pint and a chinwag and some good music, please feel free to come down and say hello. Entry is free. We're on from 2pm through til the evening. We've managed to choose a date which coincides with the Manchester marathon and the end of the Easter holidays- whether these will affect attendance at our shindig remains to be seen. We may end up playing long Weatherall remixes to a disheveled groups of runners with finisher's medals round their necks. We may end up playing records for the enjoyment of no- one except ourselves. 

In 1996 Two Lone Swordsmen released their first full length album, a triple vinyl, fifteen track opus (or eighteen track monster if you bought it on double CD). The album, The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate), gave our Facebook group its name and gives us our starting point, our first mission. On the album Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood cast a wide net, all manner of slow and mid- paced, downtempo, experimental, electronic music goings on, from the huge bassline and trip hop drums of Big Man Original to the stoned, filtered, distorted guitar of Enemy Haze through to the wonky Kraftwerk- isms of Beacon Block and the double time, two- step, double bass plus electronics of Rico's Helly, it's a wigged out journey through the night, experimental but accessible too. The Flightpath Estate of the title is a reference to the studio they worked in, a first floor flat above a dry cleaner's under the Heathrow flightpath. Weatherall had a knack for taking the ordinary and the mundane and giving it a glamour in song titles and names. On the CD there were three extra tracks. This one, Extended Branch Brothers, sounds like the experience of being dislocated and discombobulated after a night out, in the back of  a mini- cab in the early hours, wanting to be home and in bed but safe too in the warm environs of the taxi as it glides through the suburbs towards the dawn. 

Extended Branch Brothers