Fifty Five Minutes Of Andrew Weatherall v Primal Scream

Andrew Weatherall's 1989 meeting with Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes changed the lives of all involved. Andrew travelled to Exeter to review the band while they were on a last ditch tour to promote an album no- one was interested in. This led to Loaded where under the band's encouragement, he (to quote Innes) 'fucking destroyed' the source material- the emotionally wrought ballad I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have and built a dance floor, indie- dance crossover monster. From there they went to Screamadelica, much of which Andrew produced in the studio with Hugo Nicolson as his right hand man and a series of remixes that defined 1991 for both him and Primal Scream. 

Andrew's work with Primal Scream went on after that for the rest of his life. He went to Memphis with them where they made thee more songs together, remixed Jailbird from Give Out But Don't Give Up as Sabres, remixed numerous tracks from Primal Scream's bunker years with Keith Tenniswood as Two Lone Swordsmen (where the 'just fucking destroy it' attitude was taken to the nth degree- the TLS remix of Kill All Hippies is a razing to the ground of the original song), produced songs from Evil Heat and then remixed several Scream songs under his own name in the 2010s. 

There is way too much to fit into one mix but this one is a starting point, almost an hour of tracks from the AW v PS back catalogue, starting and ending with the Screamadelica era and in between visiting some outliers and lesser heard ones.

Fifty Five Minutes Of Andrew Weatherall v Primal Scream

• Inner Flight
• Higher Than The Sun (American Spring Mix)
• A Scanner Darkly
• Substance D
• Some Velvet Morning (Disco Heater Dub)
• Stuka (Two Lone Swordsmen Instrumental Mix)
• Jailbird (Sweeney 2 Sabres Of Paradise Remix)
• Goodbye Johnny (Andrew Weatherall's Nyabinghi Noir Mix)
• Don't Fight It, Feel It (Scat Mix)

Inner Flight is from Screamadelica, one made in the studio when the run of remixes from Loaded to Don't Fight It, Feel It turned into an album. Inner Flight is gorgeous, an acid house crossed with Pet Sounds glide through the outer reaches, with samples that dig deep  into combined Weatherall/ Gillespie record collections-  Brian Eno (The Great Pretender), Dr John (Gris Gris) and CB Cook and Alan Lomax (Whoa Buck). It's virtually an instrumental. There are some cooing backing vocals early on but Inner Flight is all about the music which swirls and floats around your speakers. 

Higher Than The Sun was the third pre- Screamdelica single, a breakthrough for everyone involved and had lots of involvement from both Andrew and The Orb. The lesser heard American Spring Mix was produced by Andrew, a spooky harpsichord and echo- drenched led version takes the ecstasy and rhapsody of the original versions into a darker, morning after place. Named I've always assumed after the 60s girl group duo American Spring, produced and co- written by Brian Wilson. I think it's fair to assume Hugo did a lot of the work on this under Andrew's direction- he was very much the man with the studio knowledge and expertise at this point. 

A Scanner Darkly is from 2002's Evil Heat, a follow up to 2000's blistering XTRMTR (which the band are touring currently- live review to follow this week). Evil Heat is a bit scatter shot with tripped out blues, Stooges style rock 'n' roll, synth- rock and at its best Andrew Weatherall and Keith on production. They produced Autobahn 66, a soaring kraut/ cosmische song, and A Scanner Darkly, included in this mix. Named after a Philip K. Dick book, A Scanner Darkly is a fairly demented electronic rock instrumental. Numb Motorik drumming, synth squiggles, a huge Mani bassline and guitars that push their amps to the edge. Andrew and Keith keep all of this in check and manage to streamline it into a hypnotic kraut/ synthpunk track. Substance D (from the Autobahn 66 CD single) is Andrew's remix of A Scanner Darkly that takes the numb, endless drum beat and fucks everything up a bit more. Including it in this mix along with A Scanner Darkly is probably a tad gratuitous.

Stuka was on 1997's return to form album Vanishing Point. Andrew and Keith remixed it, an electro TLS remix peak with Bobby's vocal transformed into a nihilistic Dalek. Deep and dark electro with bonus World War II dive bomber flirtations.

Some Velvet Morning is from Evil Heat and a bit of an opinion splitter, some reviews/ fans hating it and some not. Kate Moss sings the lead, the Nancy Sinatra part and Bobby plays Lee Hazelwood. The Disco Heater Dub is the Two Lone Swordsmen remix and came out on the 12" in 2003. The album version was co- produced and mixed by Jagz Kooner. David Holmes, Lydia Lunch and Rowland S. Howard all get thanked on the sleeve- Rowland and Lydia covered the song themselves in 1982. 

Sweeney 2 was one of two remixes Sabres Of Paradise did of Jailbird, a single from Give Out But Don't Give Up era. Primal Scream and Weatherall had gone off in different directions at this point, Andrew deeper into techno and Sabresonic and the Scream into Rolling Stones- esque rock. The music press labelled the band Dance Traitors on the release of the album, a tag that stuck for a while. Whoever came up with the line clearly hadn't seen the band on the 1989 pre- Loaded tour. Sweeney 2 takes the drumbeat, isolates it and goes downbeat 70s cop show crossed with King Tubby over the top of it. The 12" came with other remixes- a Dust Brothers one and a Kris Needs version and there was a second Sabres remix, the superb, speaker rattling twelve minute dub odyssey of Weatherall Dub Chapter 3.

Goodbye Johnny is from 2013's More Light, the first album they made after Mani left to rejoin The Stone Roses and one with David Holmes at the producer's desk. Goodbye Johnny is a cover of a Jeffrey Lee Pierce song originally on The Gun Club's seminal debut album Fire Of Love. Andrew's remix, the Nyabinghi Noir Mix, came out on a Jeffrey lee Pierce tribute album and is a bit overlooked in the 2010s Weatherall remix world. Starts out as slowed down rockabilly and becomes a seven minute African Head Charge inspired psychedelic dub excursion. We're definitely not in Kansas any more.  

Don't Fight It, Feel It needs no real introduction from me. The fourth of the singles that led into Screamadelica, one that saw Bobby not even on the song with the much missed Denise Johnson on vocals. For the Scat Mix Andrew and Hugo chop Denise's vocal up into kaleidoscopic fragments and the music is a long long way from Ivy Ivy Ivy of only eighteen months before. Rama lama lama fa fa fi....