A few days ago I revisited Andrew Weatherall's 2nd January 2020 show for NTS, a largely ambient and instrumental two hour mix he famously described as 'dusting the ornaments on the mantelpiece of your mind'.
It's a deeply affecting two hours that sets off with Prana Crafter's guitar ambience and goes deep into the psychic world of sound with a perfectly selected and sequenced set with tracks from Vito Ricci, G.S. Schray, Machete Savane, Anu Luz, Luke Sanger, Karen Gwyer, Neptune, Stephen Legget, Ana Bogner, Constantine and Christos Sakerillaridis, Felsmann and Tiley, Dream Diary, Terry Riley and Don Cherry, Ryan Teague, D.A.R.F.D.H.S., Luca Bacchetti, and Darryl Parsons. The list of artists alone indicates the range and scope of the man's musical knowledge and crate digging. Sonic adventuring leading to catharsis.
Andrew didn't create a huge amount of ambient music but it's definitely there throughout his back catalogue, one of the many strands that made him. When you listen to the ambient tracks from his Sabres Of Paradise or two Lone Swordsmen days and then play some from later on, the solo and Woodleigh Research Facility years, there's a striking coherence, the drones and synth sounds all fitting together into one larger whole. At least, that's the way it seemed to me when I put some of them together in a fifty minute mix. It's not entirely ambient- Andrew was never far away from a drum machine or drum sample- but it's an ambient inspired mix for Sunday.
Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith: The Deep Hum (At The Heart Of It All)
Two Lone Swordsmen: Hope We Never Surface
Two Lone Swordsmen: As Worldly Pleasures Wave Goodbye...
Two Lone Swordsmen: It's Not The Worst I've Ever Looked... Just The Most I've Ever Cared
Woodleigh Research Facility: Gardens Dub
Woodleigh Research Facility: Emancipation Garage
Woodleigh Research Facility: Alma Coogan
The Sabres Of Paradise: Chapel Street Market 9AM
The Crescents was originally only to be found on a small circulation promo CD in a tie in deal with a Japanese clothing brand from 2003, some otherwise unreleased Weatherall and Tenniswood tracks plus the A and B- side from Hidden Library 002 (a 7" release from 2002). It was then given its first vinyl release on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1 in 2024 and then when Rotters Golf Club put Still My World out on vinyl for Record Shop Day the same year. It's Andrew and Keith ambience and a very lovely track.
In 2013 as part of his artist in residence period at Faber and Faber Andrew collaborated with Hartlepudlian author Michael Smith on a version of Smith's novel Unreal City (a novel about modern life, art, commerce and London). Andrew and Nina Walsh put together a seven track soundtrack to accompany a new edition of the book with Andrew's annotations in the margins, a CD of the soundtrack and a 10" single. Andrew and Nina's ringing drones and Smith's East Yorkshire accent are made for each other. If you'd like to hear the whole Unreal City, you can find it at my Mixcloud where Michael popped in with a link to an article he'd written about making it.
1998's Stay Down seemed like a slightly subdued Two Lone Swordsmen album on release, twelve short pieces of sub- aquatic, downtempo, somewhere between ambient and underwater techno. It's grown over the years and has become my favorite TLS album, a full piece that has its own sound, ebb and flow, perfectly captured by its pair of deep sea divers on the cover. It's bookend by Hope We Never Surface and the lilting, gorgeous As Worldly Pleasures Wave Goodbye... (the latter is as good as any ambient electronic music made by anyone in the 90s, ambient music with dolphin chatter). A languid, strange and atmospheric album.
It's Not The Worst I've Ever Looked... Just the Most I've Ever Cared was on side six of 2000's Tiny Reminders, a three disc record that goes deep into bass, purism and experimentation. It's Not The Worst.. was the album's outlier, a three minute moment of calm, a guitar riff loop, some gentle synth sounds, a dusty rhythm, and acres of space.
Woodleigh Research Facility began life in Crystal Palace in 2015, Weatherall and Walsh recording in Youth's garden shed. The first results were an album, The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories), a double vinyl album in 2015 with Emancipation Garage the most ambient sounding track on the record. At some point in 2015 they sent Garden's Dub out to everyone who'd ordered the Moine Dubh series of 7" singles as an apology for the non- appearance of one of the singles- pressing plant problems I think.
Alma Coogan is an unreleased WRF track- it's on Youtube, a twelve minute ambient excursion which was done as part of the Faber residency. Andrew had worked again with Michael Smith to produce three tracks/ video poems about the English coast. In 2018 at Festival No. 6 WRF performed Alma Coogan as part of Andrew's Psychedelic Faber Social. WRF performed Alma Coogan live at a Durham literary festival where Andrew was a judge on the Gordon Burn Prize. Burn wrote Alma Coogan, a 1991 novel reprinted in 2004, set in an alternate world where Alma did not die of cancer in 1966 but lived to recount various seedy and unpleasant experiences in the entertainment industry, all based on real events, with the imagined Alma narrating the novel from retirement by the sea in 1986.
Sabres Of Paradise's second album Haunted Dancehall came out in 1994, a double disc masterpiece that followed the adventures of one Nicky Maguire. Side four concludes things in largely ambient style with Maguire at dawn in London as the city wakes up, first on Jacob Street and then at Chapel Street Market. The second of these is an Sabres at their ambient best, seagulls and wobbling synth sounds, Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns following Maguire through the streets, just a few steps behind.
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