One of the songs Sean Johnston expertly wove into his ALFOS set at The Golden Lion last Saturday was this 1982 classic from Arthur Baker and Donnie Colvin, Walking On Sunshine by Rockers Revenge (an Eddy Grant cover). Walking On Sunshine is post- disco/ early electro/ freestyle, a song which has New York running through its grooves like the writing in a stick of Blackpool rock. Jellybean Benitez was involved in the final mixing of Baker's production and Colvin's vocals. The full length 12" version is nine minutes and thirty seconds of effortless, genre busting early 80s fun, making the long trip from the streets of NYC in 1982 to a pub in the Calder Valley in 2023
Last Saturday afternoon and evening three of The Flightpath Estate DJ team played some tunes at The Golden Lion in Todmorden, warming up on what was already a very hot day before Sean Johnston took over for A Love From Outer Space. ALFOS at The Golden Lion is always a special occasion, the pub being one of its spiritual home, much loved by Mr Weatherall and Mr Johnston, and always draws a beautiful crowd of enthusiastic dancers and revellers.
Martin went on first, then me and then Dan. Martin played some dub, some leftfield stuff, some disco edits and some electronica. I went in a Balearic/ indie/ dub direction. Dan went full Balearica. After that we switched to playing three songs each in rotation and then a quick burst of one each, back to back, before handing over to Lion resident Matt Hum who played an hour ahead of Sean. Lion regular Tommo took a picture of us outside the pub. Apologies for the unexpected appearance of our knees (left to right, Martin, me, Dan).
We've spent this week trying to recreate out sets- they weren't recorded live from the booth so these have been done afterwards. The entire thing, our individual three hours in the afternoon and then another two hours of us playing back to back, is at Mixcloud here.
Martin
John Grant: Day Is Done
Kevin Morby: Bittersweet
Horace Andy backed by The Welders: Straight To Hell
B:Dum B: Dum Sound: There Is No Question
King Tubby: We Rule
Om Unit + TM404: Praha
Marshall Watson: High Desert
Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Our Patagonian Friends (Balearic Ultras Brooking Bass Remix)
The Rolling Stones: Rain Fall Down (Ashley Beedle's Heavy Disco Vocal Re- edit)
Diskjokke: Panatup
Flamingods: Dreams (On The Strip)
Curses: This Is The Day
Adam
Kate Bush: Nocturn Coyote Dub Edit
Manic Street Preachers: If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (David Holmes Remix)
Peaking Lights: Beautiful Dub
Verve: One Way To Go (10:40's So High It Hurts Edit)
Julian Cope: They Were All On Hard Drugs
The Charlatans: Opportunity 3
Marshall Watson and Cole Odin: Just A Daydream Away (Space Flight Mix)
Jazxing: Fala
Matt Gunn: Lost In The Drohn (Rude Audio Remix)*
Dan
Say She She: Prism
A Certain Ratio: Tombo In M3
Bugatti and Musker: Fate Demo
HF International: I Can't Go For That Disco Dub
Donald: A Ver A Ver (Ric Piccolo Edit)
Marcel King: Reach For Love
Manolo: Amalfi Drive
Alex Kassian: Strings Of Eden
Fila Brazillia: A Zed And Two Ls
Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright: Heroes (Merry Prankster Dub)
Martin
Gates Of Light: Embrace The Night
Bozart: The Dark The Light
Black Bones: Keep Dancin'
Adam
Cabaret Voltaire: Yashar (John Robie Remix)
New Order: Everything's Gone Green
Yargo: Marimba
Dan
Sworn Virgins: RWA
X- press 2: Muse
Dolle Jolle: Balearic Incarnation (Todd Terje Extra Doll Mix)
Martin
Depeche Mode: Enjoy The Silence (Rich Lane A&E Cotton Dub)
Heavy Disco: Running Up That Hill (Heavy Disco Edit)
Black Bones: B.E.E.F.
Adam
The Vendetta Suite: Purple Haze Yellow Sunrise (David Holmes Remix)
Jo Sims: Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
Dirt Bogarde: Heavy Blotter
Dan
Roberto Rodriguez: Mustat Varjot
Round: Glass
Bodika: Over Not Over
Martin
The Twilight Sad: Videograms (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
For an idea of what ALFOS was like last Saturday night, this six hour set of Sean playing at Phonox, Brixton, came online this week, the first Stream From The Booth in a series from Phonox. Sean is in imperious form, a slowly, insistently building set that is impossible not to want to move to, utterly compelling dancefloor action. Sean says that ALFOS is about 'charting journeys that pay off gradually but powerfully... an antidote to our culture of instant gratification'. It's evident in this six hour mix and it was there too at The Lion last Saturday night- and then some. Worth giving up some time too and then enjoying time and time again.
* The last track in my afternoon section was actually a different one, a Bedford Falls Players remix of Matt Gunn which I was sent a few weeks ago and have been playing loads, but it's currently unreleased so I've replaced it here with a different Matt Gunn track and remix which I had in my bag. My hour is here if you'd like it as a single download.
Galaxie 500- Dean Wareham, Naomi Yang and Damon Krukowski- made all sorts of waves with a trio of albums between 1988 and 1990 (Today, On Fire and This is Our Music) before splitting up in 1991. On Fire in particular got acres of coverage the music press, Dean's high pitched vox and slowcore psychedelic guitars matched by the gentle push of the bass and drums, from opening song Blue Thunder through to the closing Isn't It A Pity (a George Harrison cover), forty minutes of reverb- laden, spectral, fragile splendour.
In 1990 while in London they were filmed playing for MTV's 120 Minutes, a three song excerpt here opening with a cover of The Velvet Underground's Here She Comes Now, a brief bit of self- conscious interviewing, Tell Me and finally Strange (both from On Fire).
The same year they played Club Lingerie in Hollywood where they performed their cover of Ceremony. On the whole, New Order's songs don't end up being covered well but Galaxie 500's version of Ceremony is stunning, a slowed down version that summons the spirit of both Joy Division and early New Order. A studio version came out on the Blue Thunder EP in 1990
As an extra, in 2021 Dean released his first solo album since 2014, a record titled I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of L.A. which had everything you'd want from a Dean Wareham album, warm indie guitar songs, good lyrics, Dean casting his eye over the state of the USA under Trump (among other topics) and Dean's distinctive voice.
When I started this series the idea was to focus on some lesser known Andrew Weatherall remixes, the less celebrated or widely known ones. That's pretty subjective and my idea of less well known may be different from yours or from the man in the streets. I'm also jumping around in a fairly haphazard fashion rather than working in any logical order. When I posted my Hardway Bros mix last Sunday Cal Gibson, the man behind The Secret Soul Society, left a comment saying 'Sean [Hardway Bros] works on advice from Mr. Weatherall when remixing: pick 3 or 4 elements from the original and go from there'.
Andrew's remixes from c.2009 onwards are cases in point, where usually either with Timothy J. Fairplay or Nina Walsh as studio engineer/ assistant, he'd select a few of those elements from the source track and add his own, extending them out for several minutes longer than the original. In 2012 he remixed Brighton five piece Toy, a group who were already fairly psychedelic/ krauty/ shoegaze.
Andrew sent Toy further into motorik, cosmische, 1970s West German heaven than they'd previously been- a buzzing synth/ organ riff, a meandering, wobbling synth part, and maybe some distorted guitars are joined by Andrew's echo- clap drum track, cavernous space and FX. A two finger keyboard part that picks out a melody at three minutes in and at five minutes a very Michael Rother- esque lead guitar line takes up the foreground. Delightfully absorbing, head nodding, transportative stuff, that glides on and on towards eight minutes before ending.
Dot Alison's new album, Consciousology, is out at the end of July and to date the only song available to listen to from it has been Unchanged. Andy Bell in Glok mode has remixed that song, a deeply mashed up, weirded out and dubby take on Unchanged, a sort of fractured folk/ dub/ psychedelia that makes everything feel like its happening very slowly but speeding up too with echo, dub bass, cymbal crashes, stuttering drums and Dot's voice floating in and around. It has a similar feel to Brendan Lynch's epic 1993 remix of Paul Weller's Kosmos and some of Adrian Sherwood's productions.
The original version of Unchanged has Andy playing guitar alongside Dot, a song that manages to take in British folk music and The Velvet Underground.
I came across this clip recently and thought it might make a good starting point for an irregular series- bands performing in places they really shouldn't be. This is Echo And The Bunnymen in their 1985 pomp, miming to their then current single Bring On The Dancing Horses on The Wogan Show.
In 2023 this maybe doesn't seem so odd, a big alternative act taking advantage of early evening television to sell their new single to a wider audience. In our post- irony world Terry Wogan is looked back on fondly, the man with the chuckling commentary at Eurovision. In the mid- 80s Wogan had no cool at all. The show was as mainstream as you could get. The Bunnymen approach it with customary insouciance, Mac all in black and miming his croon through his fringe, pale, beautiful and with those legendary full lips. Will, also all in black but with leather trousers and customised guitar. Les looks like James Dean with a bass guitar. Pete, again all in black, playing to the side not at the back, as they often set themselves out. Dry ice gathers round their ankles and the BBC's Wogan set flashes behind them. They do give the impression that they'd be somewhere else.
Bring On the Dancing Horses is a shimmering single with tons of hooks, Ian's vocals gliding on top of the synths and Will's gorgeous guitars. It's a real favourite of mine, a tug at the heartstrings song, one they still play live today. Some Bunnyfans are less enamoured with it- too poppy for some, too covered in Laurie Latham's slick production. The 12" version add two extra minutes, extending the intro with more guitars, more synths and FX.
Aphex Twin dropped a new track last week, fairly unexpectedly, ahead of an EP out at the end of July. Blackbox Life Recorder 21f has much to recommend it and it's definitely a grower too, revealing a little more on each listen. The drums are superb, joined by a low key synth part and then there's a shift in rhythm at one minute six, the drums picking up and more layers being added. Lots going on, some of it very subtle and some more upfront- there's pause at two and a half minutes, even more drums/ percussion and what sounds like a voice, taking us through to the fade out.
There's some real beauty tinged with melancholy in the track, a trick he's been pulling off since Selected Ambient Works. You can order it digitally or physically here. I do baulk a little at the £21 price for a 12" single but suspect it will sound very deep and rich on black plastic.
This is from Syro, his return record back in 2014, a track that is both minimalist and has lots going on.
In August 1994 Future Sound Of London released Lifeforms as a single, an edited version actually ending up being played on Top Of The Pops with a none- more 1994 computer graphics video. Lifeforms was recorded with Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser on vocals- but Liz ended up expressing some dissatisfaction with the final result, saying she sang her heart out for 'eleven fucking hours' but her vocal ended up sounding like a sample. FSOL's Brian Duggan disagreed.
The full EP release came in seven parts, Paths 1- 7, sequenced as one long ambient piece. The original version was Path 3 (coming in with a tempo change at eleven minutes forty in the download below and the edited single version Path 4 (about twenty minutes in). It was also judged by the Guinness Book of Records to be the first to be the first internet download.
Lifeforms is a very good piece of ambient/ ambient house- experimental, futuristic, ambitious and richly layered, a little time locked to the mid- 90s maybe but very enjoyable and engaging with tribal drums, birdsong, thumping kickdrum, tabla courtesy of Talvin Singh, piano and synths and multiple shifts in pace, tone and tempo.
After A Love From Outer Space at the Golden Lion in Todmorden last night and yesterday's ALFOS post I thought Sean Johnston in Hardway Bros mode would be a good subject for a Sunday mix. I first attempted it weeks ago but for some reason lost the mix- the lost mix is always the best version. Then, trying again more recently, I tried to bite off more than I could chew, including remixes old and new and some of Hardway Bros original music, while trying to keep it around forty five minutes (much of Sean's music, remixes and original, comes in at ten minutes long). I went back to the drawing board, decided to only use remixes this time around and sling together a bag of cosmic chug, house/ disco/ dub and indie- dance- there's a transition in this which is a bit untidy but I've left it as it is. There are so many more remixes that could have been included here. Something to come back to at a future date.
The Secret Soul Society x Hardway Bros: Yo We've Landed (Hardway Bros Remix Redux)
Islandman: Godless Ceremony (Hardway Bros Remix)
Marshall Watson and Cole Odin: Just A Daydream Away (Hardway Bros Remix)
Out Cold: Lovin' Arms (Hardway Bros Remix)
Peak High: Was That All It Was (Hardway Bros Remix)
Aimes: A Star... In The Sky (Hardway Bros Remix)
The Secret Soul Society Yo We've Landed came out in 2021, one of many remixes Sean did that year, Secret Soul's Cal Gibson's head spinning psychedelia bent into disco- dub shapes.
Islandman's Godless Ceremony came out earlier this year, psychedelic Turkish folk/ dance music turned into wobbly, chiming indie- dance.
Marshall Watson and Cole Odin's Just A Daydream Away came out just a few weeks ago, another slice of indie- dance Hardway remix heaven.
Out Cold's Lovin' Arms came out back in 2013. Out Cold is Simon Aldred who was also Cherry Ghost. When I posted this remix about a decade ago Sean saw the post and said he'd forgotten he'd even done the remix. Classic house sound and feel on this one.
Peak High's cover of the Jean Carne's disco classic Was That All It Was came out at the tail end of last year and I played it and both of Sean's remixes to death including on a car journey at Christmas where my daughter Eliza said she'd heard it, all three versions, so much she never wanted to hear it again.
Aimes' A Star... In The Sky was a 2020 release about which I know very little other than it came out on 12" and Sean's remix kicks like a mule- dark, spaced out cosmic techno.
Tonight three fifths of the Flightpath estate DJ team- me, Martin and Dan- are back at Todmorden's Golden Lion (Baz and Mark are at Glastonbury). Sean Johnston is headlining tonight, the A Love From Outer Space travelling discotheque returning to one of its spiritual homes, the Golden Lion. We have been asked to play some records this afternoon/ evening between three and eight. When we DJed there to support David Holmes last October and at the Andrew Weatherall birthday celebrations at the end of April, we were somewhat nervous. AW60, two months ago, went really well and we're a bit more relaxed about this one. So, watch us mess it up today.
Back in 2010 Andrew and Sean hatched a plan to start a club night that would be 'an oasis of slow in a world of increasing velocity', tracks never exceeding 121 BPM and to be held in small, intimate venues. The first was in a basement at The Drop in Stoke Newington. ALFOS then travelled round the country popping up in Glasgow, Belfast, Manchester, various London venues, a few other places besides and in Todmorden. Since Andrew's death in February 2020 Sean has flown the ALFOS flag solo. This is a mix by Sean that was given away as a free CD to first few punters through the door at ALFOS in Stoke Newington back in 2010, an hour and twelve minutes of cosmic chug that opens with a voice saying, 'sure you want to trip into the future...'
In 2020 Sean put this mix together, three hours to celebrate ten years of ALFOS. If that's not enough, here's one from 2013 at Islington Mill, Salford, five and a half hours of DJ excellence recorded live.
1990's Andrew Weatherall output is pretty definitively Weatherall- Loaded, Come Together, Soon, Come Home, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Hallelujah, Bomba- technicolour, widescreen, everything thrown in, acid house/ indie- dance madness, era- defining stuff. There are a few outliers from 1990 though, remixes that don't quite fit into the ecstatic nature of the list above, like this remix of Meat Beat Manifesto, with The Orb's Thrash assisting on studio technical duties...
Bass heavy skanking with dub- techno rhythms, a scratchy vibe with a fragment of female vocal, a moan. It's got an underground, afterhours, everything gone south feel that prefigures the Sabres sound by a few years and some of his DJ sets of the mid 90s that had a hip hop groove. There's some of the Two Lone Swordsmen Virus With Shoes minimalism in there too.
Meat Beat Manifesto's industrial hip hop was trip hop before it was a thing, before it had a name, massively influential. Main Meat Beat man Jack Danger's released Radio Babylon in the same year, a destroyer of a record, with a huge rapid fire breakbeat, the chant of 'Babylon' and fuzzed up bassline capable of causing mayhem. Combining samples of Cheryl Lynn, Boney M, The Troggs and Mikey Dread on one record is genius enough in itself.
I posted Matt Gunn’s Learning Through Loops, a track from his album Mostly
Fiction, a week ago, last Monday. Coincidentally, the following Friday Matt
released a new EP called Bad Toys, containing two new tracks Sun Mobil and Wonky Tonka. Both are jammed full of those lovely, feel good, uptempo, summer sounds, the sort of songs you like to imagine you might hear in the hour before sunset at Glastonbury, not on the main stage but somewhere further afield, one of the stages/ tents at the fringes of the festival. Again, not necessarily coincidentally, quite a few people I know are heading to Somerset today or already there.
Sun Mobil rides in with a bounce, an urgent drum sample and repeating
synth part, the bassline thumping in after thirty seconds. There are long waves of synth
chords and a choppy rhythm guitar followed by a lovely, sunlit lead guitar. A squiggly acid topline enters and starts to do its work. Then there's a piano breakdown at four
minutes, sending everything higher followed by a vocal, lines about chasing the warmth of
summer, ‘Come on and find the sunshine/ Come on and find the
sun’. It repeats and then everything crashes back in- drums, bass, guitar, synths, joined by a long,
keening melody line.
Wonky Tonka is even giddier, a buzzing synth part, sirens, bumping rhythm and vocal sample, A funked up guitar part moves to the foreground and then the whole thing switches, percussion and drum breaks and a fully wigged out distorted synth sound, rising and falling. The way Matt keeps switching between the different sections has a bit of an old school hip hop vibe, the DJ cutting back and forth between the breakdown from two different records to keep the party going, the decks and speakers powered by electricity from the street lights. On it goes, the funky guitar riff cutting in and out and the twitchy synth part twisting itself round and round. Get Bad Toys here.
Today, 21st June, is the summer solstice, the midpoint of the year and the time at which it's lighter longer and later than at any other point- something worth celebrating. It therefore also has to be noted that we start crawling back after tonight, we can't have one without the other. Something Rich Lane noted on his chuggy, slow mo Balearic classic from 2020 titled Solstice.
According to the Christian church midsummer is officially 24th June, six months before/ after Christmas, but given that any midsummer celebration almost certainly pre- dates Christianity let's go with today.
In 1990 Saint Etienne's glorious second single, their shuffly indie- dance cover of The Field Mice's Kiss And Make Up was remixed twice by Pete Heller, the Midsummer Madness and Midsummer Dubness versions, both versions arguably superior to the original single. They didn't release the remixes until October 1990 which seems a missed opportunity. Both are full of the spirit of the times, that joyous sense of freedom and possibility that the period had- although maybe that's partly because I was just twenty and everything was in front of me. The world was changing though. Thatcher gone, people power across the eastern Europe contributing to the fall of the Eastern Bloc, Nelson Mandela's release. Let's kiss and make up.
Room for one more? This is Midsummer's Dream by DJ and producer Massimiliano Pagliara, southern Italian by birth but resident of Berlin. This track, seven minutes of thumping drums and trancey synths and acid toplines, came out last year and sounds much more Berlin than Lecce.
The phrase Hardway Bros remix is turning into a weekly thing at the moment- recently Sean Johnston's applied his magic remix touch to tracks by Marshall Watson and Cole Odin (psychedelic indie- dance gold from California), Islandman (psychedelic indie- dance gold from Istanbul) and Holy Youth Movement (shuffly indie- dance gold from Bristol).
Now we get two remixes of Nuremberg's Konformer, a group mentioned here at the weekend in my Bagging Area/ Ban Ban Ton Ton mix after I reviewed Konformer's album. The title track of Konformer's album is a ten minutes of instrumental, cosmische splendour, synths, bass and drums combining, all seductive dark grooves and circling melodies.
Sean's Hardway Bros remixes don't mess about. The Hardway Bros Remix is ten minutes of mayhem, tempo doubled and rhythm toughened, the sort of thing that wears the carpet out at parties. The Hardway Bros Techno Remix is even more so, a jacking house groove, nagging hi hat and snare rolls kicking hard. The third remix of the package, the Iron Curtis remix is courtesy of Berlin DJ Iron Curtis, a wiggy, tripped out workout, crashing cymbals and acid squiggles. The three track remix EP can be bought digitally here.
AP Organism is Torquay based musician/ producer Andy Pitman, one half of Deep Space Organism who released several singles and an album back in the early 00s. On his own AP has just released this two track EP on Mighty Force, Space Docks And Moon Rocks, a twenty minute exploration of space- analogue ambient/ ambient techno. The first track is Space Docks, a blissed out eleven minutes of floating, dubby ambience, a never standing still, constantly evolving piece of music. Headphones music for long walks.
Second track Moon Rocks, nine minutes of bleeps and drum pads and an insistent rhythm, synths firing off sci fi sounds into the furthest reaches. Get both at Bandcamp.
For some time now Dr Rob, the man who runs the standard setting blog Ban Ban Ton Ton, a one stop shop for all things Balearic and otherwise, has been asking me to write reviews for him. Since the new year I've written some album reviews which I don't think I've linked here, so today's Sunday mix post pulls those reviews from the first half of 2023 together for those who might be interested in them, and provides a sampler in the form of a forty three minute long mix below.
Jon Hassell was a pioneering New York based trumpeter/ composer. His Fourth World music fused primitivism and futurism in the late 70s and 80s and led him to work with Talking Heads, David Sylvian and Carl Craig among others. Psychogeography is a compilation of late 80s recordings combining avant- jazz, soundtracks, psychogeography, ambient music and Situationism, which sounds off- putting but is great fun. My review is here.
Konformer are a three piece from Nuremburg, signed to Manchester's Jason Boardman's new label Before I Die. Five lovely synth- led cosmische instrumentals. Reviewed by me here and highly recommended (the album I mean not the review).
Tolga Boyuk and Kenneth Bager wrote and recorded a soundtrack to a film that hasn't been shot yet, East Is North, in two days. Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and John Carpenter all feature as reference points. Read my review here.
TECWAA is from York and has released an EP on New York's Throne Of Blood, a label on something of a hot streak. My review said something like 'sci fi, deep house, cinematic psychedelic dub'. Here.
Roe Deers were one artist on a compilation put out by Parisienne label Lumiere Noir, twelve previously unreleased slices of 'deep and dark electronics'. Read my review here if you've got this far down.
Yargo were a Manchester blues/ funk/ dub group who missed the boat in the late 80s Manchester boom but are fondly remembered. Their proto- house/ Latin B-side features on the new compilation from DJ Luke Una, E- cultura soul Vol. 2, a multi- artist tribute to late nights, dancing and the widest spread of music you can imagine. Eloah's Logan Ede comes from the same album, Brazilian soul from the late 1970s. My review is here.
Sorcerer is from Califronia and his second album Bubble Funk is a blast of short, funky instrumentals celebrating skateboarding, cassette culture, home studios, 70s funk and Balearic pop. Reviewed here.
I also reviewed Reinhard Vanbergen's Meditation On Modern Modes, an hour long ambient tour de force from Belgium's multi- instrumentalist but couldn't work any of the ten minute pieces onto the mix above. Read and listen here.
Spiritualized offer a full on live experience, Jason at the microphone and with Fender guitar and a group of musicians- drummers, bassists, guitarists, keys, horns, strings, backing vocalists- capable of transforming the expansive sounds of his albums on stage, starting softly and quietly and building. This is a full performance from the end of August 2019, Spiritualized live at Nox Orae in Switzerland.
The set opens with Hold On and then catches fire with Come Together, a reliable live favourite with Jason's story of Johnny and the ape who lives on his back. From then it's one after another- Shine A Light, Soul On Fire, She Kissed Me (And It felt Like A Hit)- Jason's cut and shut of guitar rock, drug addiction and gospel blues seeing us through to the end an hour an half later with Oh! Happy Day. Emotional and epic stuff.
A lot has changed since the days of 2019. The album And Nothing Hurt came out the year before but it's follow up, Everything Was Beautiful, recorded at the same time and really sounding part of a whole rather than two separate records, was delayed until 2022 due to Covid and all that came with it. Jason's taking the band out again this autumn, a gig at Manchester's New Century Hall already in my diary.
I've got quite a lot of Spiritualized live tracks on my hard drive. Here are three. First, I Think I'm In Love from the Royal Albert Hall in 1997, the band touring the then just released Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space album that remains their high watermark, a version floating in on free jazz sax and discordant guitar, twelve minutes inside Jason's burning world- 'Sun so bright I'm nearly blind...' he coos with the choir singing softly behind him. It all kicks off later as you'd expect.
Finally, seventeen minutes of Spiritualized live at the Hultsfred festival in Sweden in 2002, bootlegged as an album titled Light Of The Sight Side, a run of three songs as one, overloaded fuzz guitar and frazzled psychedelic rock as standard.
In 1992 Andrew Weatherall made the move from being the solo remixer and DJ, ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson on many of his genre- busting, name- making early remixes to becoming part of a group. In part this was a desire to head away from the light, away from the Balearic and indie- dance scenes and mine something darker and deeper and less obvious. Rumours in the NME (often placed there by his friend Sherman who edited the dance music page) suggested Weatherall was forming a new band- Sabres Of Paradise- with a record label of the same name and the similarly named Sabresonic club night under a railway arch at Crucifix Lane, London. Hugo had become a part of Primal Scream's onstage set up and Andrew had begun working with Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner. The trio would become Sabres Of Paradise, putting out several key singles- Smokebelch, Theme, Wilmot- and two albums- Sabresonic and Haunted Dancehall before Andrew shifted things around again and formed Two Lone Swordsmen with Keith Tenniswood.
Somewhat overlooked in the Weatherall/ Sabres back catalogue of releases and remixes is the debut release on Andrew's Sabres Of Paradise label, the 12" known as listed as PT001 in the Sabres catalogue numbering system. Discogs has this listed as a 1993 release but several people online recently have said it came out in autumn '92 (at least in white label version). The first run of twelves was on red vinyl (rare) with a black vinyl run following (less rare). It seems that PT001 came out before both Secret Knowledge's Ooh Baby and Pleasure by SYT (I appreciate this is probably unimportant to most people, unless you are compiling a comprehensive, definitive discography of Andrew Weatherall releases- hi Martin).
PT001 is a remix, or total reconstruction, of Throbbing Gristle's United (a 7" single, 1978). There are two versions, the A-side eleven minutes of 1992 Weatherall, the perfect marriage of the newest sounds and styles spliced with his influences, in this case the music of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. Repetitive bleeps, tribal drums, samples screeching, metallic cymbal crashes and then a crunching, thumping four- four kick. Three and a half minutes in the TG synth riff surfaces, loops round and then the tribal thumping returns. A piano run appears at five minutes thirty, giving that hands- in- the- air moment and then a proto- Sabres bassline joins in. Everything begins to pile back in again for the run in, building in layers and intensity, tempos and noises colliding. Thirty years old and still capable of causing strobe light flashbacks and goose bumps.
United Mix 2 is shorter, only brief five minutes and forty seven seconds, starting with the tsk tsk tsk of a hi- hat and then the drums, all about percussion and rhythm, harder and tougher. Eventually sirens arrive, wailing away on top, a techno alarm call from the early 90s.
I don’t believe in ghosts, at least not in the paranormal apparitions sense where the soul or spirit of the deceased, dressed in white, hang around the physical realm. There are times though, when I’m
in the house or the garden, that I can hear Isaac. I know it’s not him, either physically or astrally, he’s not actually there. But sometimes when I’m doing
something (usually something mundane and ordinary) I hear him (in my head) speaking, commenting
on what I’m doing, saying something he’d often say in those circumstances or asking me a question- 'Where you going Dad?' or 'What you doing Dad?'. Rationally I
know it’s my mind or my memory playing tricks on me but it can be quite bewildering because it comes unexpectedly and with no trigger that I can discern.
It’s a strange phenomenon and makes me realise that in the
past, in a world of dimly lit, smoky houses full of shadows, with a lesser understanding
of science and a more religious or superstitious mindset, that a belief in the existence of ghosts
was easy to have. The flicker of shadows, a door that was ajar closing and the
voice of the departed suddenly playing in a person’s head. Ghosts feature in almost all recorded human societies. I think this experience I have when I hear Isaac’s
voice must be universal.
In the kitchen on Sunday morning, his voice in my head asked
me why I was taking my breakfast outside. Because Isaac, it’s beautiful
out there and the sun is shining on the garden table.
It makes me stop in my tracks when it happens. And then it
goes away. It doesn’t carry on or turn into a conversation, it's just me hearing him, on occasions, at home.
Grief- it's a fucking weird, heavy and intense thing to live with.
Khidja are a Romanian duo based in Bucharest making experimental electronic music, trippy house and on this song, which is perfectly named for this post, strange, off kilter science fiction techno, Vangelis on mushrooms. The EP, released in 2022 and titled Something In the Water is here.
Twenty years ago today our daughter Eliza was born, arriving at five to four in the morning. I'd like to say she was kicking and screaming and causing a fuss but she was the most chilled baby. One of the nurses in the maternity ward said at only a few hours old, how alert she was. She's had a lot to put up with recently and continues to attack life with the alertness, wit and zest she's had since she was very small. All parents want to be proud of their children but Eliza truly continues to make us proud, every day. Happy birthday Eliza- have fun tonight. Slay.
This song is a twenty, from Mark Peters' beautiful 2017 album Innerland. This is Twenty Bridges in remixed form, remixed by German producer and DJ Andi Otto, with Mark's guitar FXed and reworked and Andi's self built instrument, the sensor extended cello bow, added.
Eliza wouldn't be much fussed by that piece of music- sorry Mark and Andi- she has a tendency to say that any of this kind of music I have on is 'just a load of weird noises' and calls it 'ambient shit'. This is much more up her street, Beyoncé twenty years ago with her debut solo song built around a Chi- Lites sample, performing Crazy In Love in July 2003 (when Eliza was a month old). When Beyoncé performs, it's a full performance, she doesn't hold back.
