Microdosing

A new album from On U Sound legends African Head Charge was hinted at last year by Adrian Sherwood and last week the first fruits of it appeared online in the shape of a single titled Microdosing. Percussionist and drummer Bonjo Nyabinghi Noah formed African Head Charge in the early 80s, a wide cast of players, contributors and musicians joining in across a multitude of albums, most released on On U Sound- many of them have been re- released in recent years along with a box set. From 1981's My Life In A Hole In The Ground to the classic Songs Of Praise in 1990, Sherwood and Bonjo set about fulfilling a vision to realise a psychedelic Africa, 'outernational' rhythms and drumming crossed with dub. In 2020 an album of outtakes from 1990- 1993, the Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi, was released and the box set Drumming Is A Language pulled together the recordings from 1990 to 2016 across five CDs. You can't go wrong with anything with the African Head Charge name on it really. 

Healing Father's Dub was on Churchical Chant... a very mashed up, dubbed out version of a track from the mighty Songs Of Praise. 

Healing Father's Dub

New track Microdosing  comes ahead of the album A Trip To Bolgatanga, out in July, inspired by a trip to Bonjo's current home in Ghana. Stringed instruments, chanting, hand drums, organ, Sherwood's dub space and echo- a deceptively complex track too, each listen revealing more. Hearing it in the context of the album with a further nine songs around it promises to be one of summer's highlights. 

Monday's Long Song

The newest release on Mighty Force is by a duo named M- Paths, the latest in a line of impressive albums coming out on the Exeter label. Marcus Farley and Nick Murray met at school and came together through backgrounds in DJing and drumming and have pooled their experiences and influences- chill out rooms in early 90s clubs and the meditative ambient/ indie of the 4AD bands. One of the tracks on Hope is titled M- Paths By Name, Empaths By Nature- as well as this and the names of some of the other songs (Grow, Calm, The Connection, The Path, Autumn's Safe Haven) the music, ambient techno and warm electronica, feels like it is facing the sun after a long winter. M- Paths want to feel connected to nature and to people and the thirteen tracks on Hope all point in an optimistic direction.

Grow (Part Two) is a perfect example of what can be found on Hope- shimmering, colourful synths, pulsebeat drums and sparkling melodic toplines, unfolding over seven minutes. Natural feeling ambient techno, full of warmth and and done with a real lightness of touch. 

The last track on Hope, The Colour Of The Trees, is another long one, clocking in at over eight minutes, and worth giving the time to fully. It starts out slowly with what sounds like a deep exhalation of breath. Repeating synth lines work their way in with some piano, running water and rumbles of distant thunder, building gradually, the rippling melodies circling over the backdrop of found sounds, birds and rain. Hope can be bought/ listened to at Bandcamp. 

Forty Five Minutes of Sonic Boom

Pete Kember's music in Spacemen 3 and afterwards as Spectrum, E.A.R. and Sonic Boom, sometimes looks like one long blissed out haze of analogue synths, shimmering waves, drones and endless repetition. Nothing wrong with that. His back catalogue has a wealth of songs, albums and remixes. The three quarters of an hour below contains nothing from his 1994 masterpiece Highs, Lows And Heavenly Blows, a treatise on meditative, tranced out, hypnotic guitar and synth drones with Sonic's trademark lethargic vocals, and that's solely because I don't have any of the songs from it in digital format. Pete currently lives in Sintra, Portugal which is clearly good for his work rate- he's released two new albums since 2020 and toured to promote them, along with last year's album with Panda Bear, as well as producing albums by Cheval Sombre, Beach House and Moon Duo. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Sonic Boom

• Tremeloes
• True Love Will Find You In the End (Alternate Version)
• How You Satisfy Me
• Just Imagine
• The Horizon (Sonic Boom No Drums Version)
• Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough
• Frozen (Sonic Boom Mix)
• Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)

Tremolos and True Love Will Find You In The End were both released as Spectrum in 1992, the former a four minute wobbly, two note drone and the latter a gorgeous cover of  Daniel Johnson's most well known song. They were also on a 1997 compilation called What Came Before After which is where this version of True Love Will Find You In The End is from. 

How You Satisfy Me is from 1992's Soul Kiss (Glide Divine), an album that came with a translucent, liquid sleeve. Rare and expensive second hand and prone to bursting/ degrading. 

Just Imagine was the lead song from 2020's All Things Being Equal. Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough was a follow up a year later, with a remix of Just Imagine and some new songs.

The Horizon is by Sinner DC, a Swiss ambient/ electronic/ drone group who have made a dozen albums since the 1990s.

Frozen, not from the Disney film about a snowman of the same name, is by The Insect Guide, a duo from Leeds who formed in 2005 and released two albums between 2007 and 2010.

Warmth Of The Sun is by Pye Corner Audio from last year's Let's Emerge album, a track with Andy Bell on guitar. Sonic Boom remixed three of the songs for an EP titled Let's Remerge.  

Saturday Live

1991, A Man Called Adam (Sally Rodgers with a superbly '91 bowl cut and body warmer, Steve Jones on keys, synths, samples and long sleeved t- shirt and Leftfield's Paul Daley on congas, bongos and bucket hat) kicking up a Balearic storm at The Town And Country Club. Part One opens with Barefoot In The Head, the song that when all's said and done is the one they'll be remembered for, a genuine classic. 

As ever with these things, the crowd are as much the stars as the performers on stage- lots of dilated pupils and baggy jeans, bobbing and shuffling from left to right, hands pumping and shoulders rolling. Part Two raises the temperature with Ameoba, 808s, warm synth sounds, jazzy/ Latin melodies and some very late 80s/ early 90s sentiments in the lyrics- 'All we want/ and we need / Is something better to believe'.

Ameoba

Part Three is only a couple of minutes completing things, Sally and the crowd frugging to the beats and piano. Weirdly but brilliantly, the YouTuber's upload suddenly cuts into N- Joi doing Anthem on Top Of The Pops, that video cassette that he kept by the VCR ready to tape anything of interest turning into a long compilation of late night TV and early evening music programmes. We all had some of those didn't we?

Anthem (Original Mix)

Back At The Facility

More from the wider Weatherall connected world and some fine oompty- bumpty disco music to end the week. The Woodleigh Research Facility dates back to 2015, Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh creating an album The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories) in their recording facility in deepest south London, a collection of long tracks that find their own weird space somewhere between dub and deep house/ disco. In 2018 the very limited, vinyl only, 127 To Facility 4 album saw the light of day being sold from the back of a truck, each with it's own hand crafted sleeve, ten shorter slices of minimal, dystopic modern techno. It was followed in 2020 by a series of monthly emissions from Facility 4, twelve EPs of three tracks. 

Last week Nina released Apparently Solo, three tracks from the vaults and the W.R.F. sound library (much of which is samples made up from recordings from Nina's late partner Erick Legrand. His guitar is on this newest release). Lead track Shlap is a homage to the Detroit techno of London's late 80s clubs, a sound that is part of the W.R.F. DNA, the drum machine crunching away as only a 303 can. Crack- Ed follows, bouncing rhythms, springs and whirrs, and a bubbling bassline that can be felt as well as heard. Crack-Ed is also, in title, a response to the streets and environment outside Facility 4.

The third track on Apparently Solo is Mistress Ploppy, a Black Adder reference- you can't go wrong with Black Adder can you? Half the proceeds from Apparently Solo will go to Shelter, one of  Andrew's chosen charities. One of the W.R.F. monthly releases in 2020 contained Somnium, an elegiac recording with guitar, viola and eventually those familiar chuggy WRF drums. 

Somnium was originally a tribute to Droog, Nina's faithful dog. A different version of Somnium, Goodnight Sweet Droog, can be heard at Nina's Bandcamp page, a lush and affecting piece of music, part of a three track EP celebrating the life of her canine friend. 

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

Back With Me

My collaboration with reader Spencer, an irregular series where he sends me a song and I write about it, has focussed recently on the output of Cornish DJ/ producer Luke Vibert. In previous weeks I've posted the Hammer House of Horror/ drum 'n' bass of Mr. Jones And Me, the sampledelic Doozit and the funked up sci fi of Kerrier District. After a break of a couple of weeks, I'm back on the Vibert trail today with a 2017 rave/ house thumper, Back With Me. It was a track that was new to me, from a 2020 compilation album out on Hypercolour Patterns along with artists such as DMX Crew, A Sagittarian and Alphonse. Back With Me is a perfect spring pick me up, filled with energy and a desire to nothing me than make you smile/ dance. 

Back With Me

There's a lot going on here although it sounds very simple- a well chosen vocal sample, some hyperactive rave stylings, breakbeat drums, rising early 90s synth chords and a piano part that hits hard. Although Back With Me sounds very simple, basic even, there's lots going on and the production is superb. The breakdown and re- entry just before the three minute point and subsequent siren send this into orbit.

The vocal sample is from a 1986 underground electro single by Petria, I Miss Your Love, a record that conjures up all kinds of 80s- isms. 

Tidal Love/ Seen From Above

We spent last weekend on the western coast of northern England and the weekend just gone on the east coast, a few days in a caravan north of Hartlepool. The beach north of Hartlepool is dramatic and beautiful, a little wild and both unspoilt and post- industrial. The beach has coal mixed into the sand, the coal seam surfacing in the sea and lumps of coal and coal dust being washed up on the beach. The view above was taken on Monday evening at high tide, standing at the edge of the north sea looking out towards Europe at dusk. The one below was on Saturday morning, much bluer and brighter skies.

I love a beach with bits of the industrial past half buried in the sand, the tide wearing it away slightly more every day. The coast is good for the soul. 

Two new songs for Tuesday. First is new from Andy Bell, a frequent visitor to these pages in solo form, as GLOK and as a member of Ride. He has recorded a four track with Masal, out in May, with the first track from it being available to listen to and buy now. Tidal Love Conversation In That Familiar Golden Orchard is described at Bandcamp as 'ambient, astral jazz' and that fits perfectly. Andy's wandering, cosmische guitar lines are underpinned by brushed drums, analogue synths and harp, a light, floating psychedelic exploration. 

Also out last Friday is the latest from Pye Corner Audio, who has previously worked with Andy, remixing six songs from The View From Halfway Down, with Andy returning the favour by playing guitar on last year's Let's Emerge album. The new Pye Corner Audio track, Seen From Above, is at Bandcamp (a pay what you want deal) and is a return to the darker, dystopic sounds he's known for with a kick drum and hi hat adding some propulsion to the menace. Dark techno, the flipside to Andy and Masal's Tidal Love. 

Bank Holiday Monday Long Songs

Richard Norris' latest Music For Healing came out on Friday, a beautifully relaxed twenty minute voyage titled Equinox 4 Alban Elir (translation- spring solstice). The stone above is one of the forty- two stones at Castlerigg stone circle, situated at the centre of an enormous natural bowl near Keswick, constructed roughly 5000 years ago in the Neolithic. We visited last weekend while driving home through the Lake District and it never fails to impress. 

Equinox 4 Alban Elir comes in two versions, 3 and 4, and can be listened to or bought at Bandcamp. Slowly rippling synth lines, a background haze, some pops and bubbles, a calming drone- an ideal start to a bank holiday, twenty minutes of brain soothing, guided meditation music an dedicated to Andrew Weatherall for his 60th birthday too. 

At the other end of the bank Hholiday scale is the Bacchanalian excess of Flowered Up's 1992 epic Weekender. Andrew Weatherall remixed it twice, the first one a fifteen minute excursion of juddering bass loop, backing vocal turned into main vocal, synths, crunching drums, breakdowns, echo effects, Liam Maher stuttering, sirens, bongos and congas, time shifting tempo changes, not a little mania and general sense of excess. It's your bank holiday- make your choice.

Weekender (Audrey Is A Little Bit Partial)

Half An Hour Of King Tubby

The beach at St. Bees, Cumbria, has some interesting features as well as its own natural beauty. These two rings up the cliff face, presumably for mooring boats to, both well worn by the sea and time. The soft cliff face and rocks have been a haven for graffiti artists and people wanting to scratch their name, leave a reminder of who visited and when. There are lots of names from 1985 and 1986, the traditional so- and- so loves so- and- so (do they still? ) and some much older graffiti, some dating back to the holiday makers and day trippers from the 19th century (as seen below). 

The cross in the photo above is my concession to Easter. Happy Easter. Sunday, whether Easter or not, is always a good day for some dub and dub doesn't get more serious or better than when King Tubby is at the controls. I put this mix together with hundreds of King Tubby tracks, dubs and songs in front of me, hours and hours worth and almost all of it as good as anything that came from Jamaica in the 70s. 

Half An Hour Of King Tubby

• Tommy McCook And The Aggrovators: Disco Rockers
• King Tubby: We Rule
• Tommy McCook And The Aggrovators: The Dub Station
• Yabby You and King Tubby: Warning Version
• Augustus Pablo: 555 Dub Street
• King Tubby: Dub From The Roots
• King Tubby: A Better Version
• King Tubby And The Aggrovators: Dub Fi Gwan
• King Tubby: Declaration Of Dub
• Augustus Pablo: King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown

Tommy McCook and The Aggrovators' Super Star- Disco Rockers came out in 1977, the year two sevens clash. Tubby engineered it. Tommy McCook and The Aggravators Dub Station album came out two years earlier, one of the best dub albums there is- lush, melodic, dramatic, Tubby manipulating volume, mix and FX at the desk. It bounces. 

Yabby You and King Tubby's Conquering Lion dates from 1977. An expanded edition from 2021 on Pressure Sounds with all the dubs is serious summer music. Listen with a glass of rum and ginger on ice. 

555 Dub Street and the title track that closes the mix above both come from Augustus Pablo's classic 1976 album, King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown, one of dub's definitive texts with a line up of the best dub musicians at their peak- Robbie Shakespeare and Aston Barrett on bass, Carlton Barrett on drums and Earl 'Chinna' Smith on guitar. 

Dub Fi Gwan- clattering drums, endless rhythms, rimshots, echo and bassline- was the final track on Dub Gone Crazy, a 1994 Blood And Fire compilation of Tubby tracks from the 1975- 1979 era. It turned me on to King Tubby and dub in a big way. 

A Better Version is from an expanded version of King Tubby Presents: The Roots Of Dub, a King Tubby album from 1975, Horace Andy's Skylarking twisted inside itself and dubbed out into space. Strangely I've missed including anything from the original version of that album in this mix- a Tubby Mix Two will have to follow at some point. 

Dub From The Roots and Declaration Of Dub are both from 1975's Dub From The Roots, his first full length, self- titled album, dubwise versions of Bunny Lee songs. 

Saturday Live

Last Saturday's Saturday Live post was Husker Du in blistering form in 1985 in London. Today brings Minnesotan contemporaries The Replacements (also included in Thursday's Andrew Weatherall post and mix). The Replacements- Paul Westerberg, Tommy and Bob Stinson and Chris Mars- were by all accounts a raucous and chaotic live experience, often self sabotaging, screwing their own songs up, lurching into fragments of covers and often too drunk to stand up never mind play. At a showcase set up specifically for them to impress record label bigwigs they got pissed and pissed everybody off. When they appeared on Saturday Night Live they were so drunk/ stoned (backstage with Harry Dean Stanton) Bob Stinson fell over making his way to the studio and broke his guitar. The programme banned them from appearing again. 

On the other hand Peter Jesperson saw them in 1980 at a local venue and signed them on the spot. He became their manager and cheer leader, keeping them going when the only person in the audience at the gig was Jesperson himself. In February 1986 they played at Maxwell's, Hoboken, New Jersey. Their label Sire (and RIP Seymour Stein, Sire's label boss and guiding light, who died just this week) recorded the show for a possible live album. It finally saw the light of day officially in 2017, a double CD set of twenty nine songs. It is a fine document of the band on a good night, a band with enough great songs to fill much bigger venues and a counter to Bob Stinson's assertion that 'there are no good Replacements live recordings'. In one eight song run in the first half of the gig they play these songs, guitars trebly and fuzzed up, the four players locked in, Paul singing his self- deprecating lyrics, raw and good voice...

I Will Dare (Live at Maxwell's 1986)

Favourite Thing (Live at Maxwell's 1986)

Unsatisfied (Live at Maxwell's 1986)

Can't Hardly Wait (Live at Maxwell's 1986)

Bastards Of Young (Live at Maxwell's 1986)

Kiss Me On The Bus (Live at Maxwell's 1986)

They also play Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out and Takin' A Ride as part of that run of songs and then follow Kiss Me On The Bus with Black Diamond. Occasional dropped notes and tuning issues but they sound great, alive and far from the sloppy mess they're often portrayed as. 

Five years earlier they played this set, filmed at 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis. Husker Du headlined- imagine seeing both bands on the same night in 1981. This is faster, punkier stuff, mainly focussing on songs from Sorry Ma, I Forgot To Take Out The Trash. Fast and furious, twelve songs in twenty five minutes.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

Ryuichi Sakamoto died earlier this week aged seventy- one. He was a member of legendary Japanese group Yellow Magic Orchestra and a master in many areas of electronic music. He's probably best known in the UK for his soundtrack work- Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and The Last Emperor (and The Sheltering Sky too to some extent), records that crossed over from the rather niche world of soundtrack albums into the popular consciousness. In the 80s soundtrack albums had an appeal to me that were a little at odds with the rest of my listening habits. I bought quite a few and found something in them that records by bands didn't offer. The Last Emperor was one of those albums. 

The Last Emperor (Main Theme)

R.I.P. Ryuichi Sakamoto. 

Here are a pair of bonus tracks from his vast back catalogue as tribute, that work well together as well as individually. First is Aqua, four minutes of Ryuichi playing piano, taken from his 2020 album Playing Piano For The Isolated, an artistic, poetic and emotional response to lockdown and isolation. 

Aqua

Second is a remix of Massive Attack from 2010, Fatalism, where Massive Attack's creeping 21st century unease is underpinned by some ghostly piano, fractured beats and chopped up, distorted vocal by guest singer Guy Garvey which eventually becomes clear and to the fore- an unearthly and singular remix. 

Fatalism (Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi Remix)

AW60

Today would have been Andrew Weatherall's 60th birthday. His absence is felt very strongly among his family and friends and in the corners of the culture he inhabited. His presence is there too I think, in the open minded spirit of adventure, of finding new music and doing things your own way. Fired up by youthful rebellion, the DIY spirit of punk and acid house and an interest, often obsession, in what was happening on the margins, he was a singular character. In the end, by the time he died in February 2020, he was approaching national treasure status. At the start he was an inexperienced DJ asked to bring his box of 'weird records' down to Shoom. Then he was a novice remixer asked to make something new from an indie rock 'n' roll record (in fact his remixes of Happy Mondays and That Petrol Emotion both pre- date Loaded, as do his remixes Word Of Mouth, Deep Joy and West India Company- the chronology is not entirely clear but all those were released before Loaded). In between 1989 and 2020 he took us on a ride from the Balearic network to techno, from Sabres to Swordsmen, from deep house to rockabilly and 60s garage to the multi- coloured cosmic chug of the 2010s, all of it underpinned by dub. He moved on, working quickly and always looking forwards. The way he became a master in not just one form of electronic music but several is largely unparalleled- not many of his peers could play several hours of dub one night, techno the next and house the third and do it well, brilliantly in fact. 

With Andrew you weren't just buying records either, you were getting into something deeper- he left clues scattered throughout his back catalogue, in song titles and remix names, references to books and artists that you might not pick up on until many years later. You also were not just buying a record. In 2007 he released Wrong Meeting, an album of rockabilly, garage rock and experimental rock 'n' roll with the man himself singing. The album came out on vinyl (at a time when virtually no one was buying vinyl never mind releasing new albums on it), in a box with an illustrated lyric booklet, a t- shirt and a hand signed print (a print of a Weatherall linocut of guitarist Chet Atkins from the cover of his Workshop album). 

There are a series of events taking place during April to celebrate his 60th birthday. Tonight at Fabric in London a host of names will play records/ CDs in several rooms, starting at 11pm and going through until dawn- David Holmes, Daniel Avery, Sean Johnston, Dave Congreave, Adrian Sherwood, Miss Kittin, Fantastic Twin, Radioactive Man, Ivan Smagghe, Manfredas, Optimo and Fi Maguire will all play to rooms full of friends and fans, trying to capture something of the spirit of the man in music. 

Later on this month, in a turn of events which still baffles me at times, I will be part of the birthday celebrations at The Golden Lion in Todmorden. On the Saturday afternoon and evening myself and four other fans/ DJs (Martin, Mark, Dan and Baz) will play support to Timothy J. Fairplay and Justin Robertson as The Flightpath Estate DJs. This blog and my repeated writing about Andrew Weatherall and his music led to this- I like to think in some way reflecting the spirit of Andrew, do what you want to do, create something you love, do it yourself. 

I've put together a mix of songs inspired by Andrew for today. There's so much variety in his life and work you could put together ten mixes and only scratch the surface. His radio shows at 6 Mix and NTS, his Music's Not For Everyone banner that took in goth, garage, rockabilly, 80s indie, cosmic blues and country, rock 'n' roll and punk, where endlessly inspiring and I've tried to reflect some of that in the hour of songs below with one of his songs in the middle. 

AW60 Mix

• The Triffids: Wide Open Road
• Chuck Prophet: Play That Song Again
• Forest Fire: In Shadows
• Grant Hart: You're The Reflection Of The Moon On The Water
• The Dream Syndicate: John Coltrane Stereo Blues
• Dennis Wilson: Carry Me Home
• The Replacements: Sadly Beautiful
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Get Out Of My Kingdom (Demo)
• Rowland S. Howard: She Cried
• White Williams: Route To Palm
• Rose City Band: In The Rain
• The Jesus And Mary Chain: Darklands
• Cowboys International: The 'No' Tune

Wide Open Road was on The Triffids' 1986 album Born Sandy Devotional, an album widely seen as the band's masterpiece. The song is on Andrew's The Black Notebooks YouTube playlists, Volume One of which you can find here. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. You'll find plenty in there to keep you going. 

Chuck Prophet was the guitarist in US roots rockers Green On Red. His solo career included a 2012 album called Temple Beautiful and this song is built around a cracking guitar riff and a load of good one liners- 'You go fight the power/ I'm fighting off a cold'. Andrew played it on one of his Music's Not For Everyone radio shows for NTS that year, a series that were a monthly treat and are missed beyond words, his voice, his wry sense of humour and his song selection. 

Forest Fire were an experimental rock band from New York whose second album Staring At The X came out in 2011. The song here, In Shadows, is superb and much played in my house. The way the rhythms, FXed guitars and vocals merge into one rush of sound hits me every time. Andrew played it on his third Music's Not For Everyone in 2011. 

Grant Hart, ex- Husker Du drummer and solo artist, features in Andrew's Black Notebooks and radio mixes. You're The Reflection Of The Moon On The Water is a blistering wall of guitars and drums with words inspired by the sayings of the Buddha and came out in 2009. Andrew played it while at 6 Mix in March 2010, a show he did with Fuck Buttons as guests. 

The Dream Syndicate's John Coltrane Stereo Blues is an eight minute epic, from their 1984 album Medicine Show. Andrew played it memorably while doing a MNFE set at Terraforma, a music festival held in Italy, in 2017. The fifty minute film of him DJing in sunglasses and 1940s work clothes to a crowd of young, beautifully lit Italians is here. The song appears alongside Fujiya and Miyagi and Moon Duo, sequencing only Andrew would attempt. 'I got some John Coltrane on the stereo baby/ Make you feel alright/ I got some white wine in the freezer mama/ I know what you like/ We gonna learn about love on a three ply rug'

Dennis Wilson's Carry Me Home was recorded in 1973 but didn't make it onto Holland, The Beach Boys album of that year. It is a broken, beautiful funeral blues for a soldier dying in Vietnam. Andrew produced Primal Scream's cover on their 1992 Dixie- Narco EP, ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson. 

Sadly Beautiful is a Paul Westerberg song from The Replacements' 1990 album All Shook Down, a song he wrote with Marianne Faithful in mind. She was supposed to sing it but that never happened so Paul recorded it for All Shook Down instead. By 1990 The Replacements were to all intents and purposes a Paul Westerberg solo project although Tommy Stimson plays bass on much of the record. Sadly Beautiful shows up in Andrew's Black Notebooks and on various tapes he made for friends in the early 90s along with songs from the previous Replacements album, 1989's Don't Tell A Soul. That album is not the group's best, marred by a glossy radio friendly production but some of the songs are classic Westerberg, Achin' To Be, Rock 'n' Roll Ghost and We'll Inherit The Earth among them. Talent Show is a song I've had a weird soft spot for for thirty- five years. 

Get Out Of My Kingdom was perhaps the pinnacle of the final incarnation of Two Lone Swordsmen, the live band, garage/ rock 'n' roll, Andrew on vocals version of the band. I saw them play at Sankey's Soap in 2008 supporting the Wrong Meeting album, the full live band tearing it up in a corner of the club. Sankey's was once the only thing you'd head into Ancoats for, a maze of streets and dilapidated buildings north of city centre Manchester. Andrew commented once that artists are the vanguard of gentrification. Now Ancoats is the place to live/ work/ socialise.

She Cried was on Rowland S. Howard's Teenage Snuff Film, a 1999 album. The former Birthday Party/ Bad Seed was joined by Mick Harvey. They covered Billy Idol's White Wedding on the album. She Cried is itself a cover of a 1961 melodrama single by Teddy Daryll and has been covered by others including Johnny Thunders, Del Shannon and David Hasselhoff (insert your own joke here). The Horrors also borrowed from it on Who Can Say in 2009. She Cried is in Andrew's Black Notebooks playlists. 

Route To Palm is by White Williams, a song that somehow combines both rockabilly and krautrock and is therefore perfectly Weatherall. White Williams is from New York and released the album Smoke in 2008 (on Domino). Andrew played it on his 2009 6 Mix, a legendary show in the Bagging Area which took in Wayne Walker, La Dusseldorf, Andrew's remix of Primal Scream's Uptown, The Glitter Band, his remix of David Holmes' I Heard Wonders and much more besides. Route To Palm turned up on FACT Mix 85 too. 

Rose City Band is one of three groups headed by cosmic guitarist/ singer Ripley Johnson- Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo are the other two. Ripley's music is all over Andrew's radio shows. In The Rain was played on Music's Not For Everyone in 2019. 

Darklands was the title track on The Jesus And Mary Chain's 1987 album and has been selected by Andrew on various occasions- when on tour in Australia and asked to compile his formative influences in 2018 and in an internet article called Five Songs For The End Of The World (or similar) which I can't find right now. 

The 'No' Tune was on a 1979 album by Cowboys International called The Original Sin, a band that included Keith Levene, Terry Chimes and Marco Pirroni in its number. The 'No' Tune was the theme to Andrew's Music's Not For Everyone shows, the chiming guitar line announcing the start of two hours of adventure, two hours of Andrew's Gnostic Sonics. As the guitar notes faded, The 'No' Tune's space lullaby would be replaced by Andrew's voice. 'Huddle round your devices, don your ceremonial robes and headgear...', he would advise, and we'd be off into new territory, music from the past and present sewn together in ways only he could do. 

As such, rather than have the two minutes and forty seconds of The 'No' Tune as an ending, in the spirit of Andrew it should be a beginning, the gateway to music new. Go and find something new today, something from the margins, the edges, the sidelines- and when you do, raise a glass to the man. Happy 60th birthday Andrew.  

Backroom Sunrise

We spent a few days over the weekend up in the western Lake District, on the Cumbrian coast. This is a world away (if only twenty miles) from the tourist honeypots of Ambleside and Windermere. On the Saturday evening we went down to the beach at St. Bees just before sunset and saw the sun dipping behind the headland. The Isle of Mann was clearly visible on the horizon. 

The following day we headed to Ravenglass, a small village on the coast with a Roman bathhouse a little inland and an archaeological dig taking place. Two thousand years ago there was a Roman army camp and town inhabited by several thousand Roman and Roman- British people. We stopped at a spot overlooking the estuary and had our lunch on a bench in the sunshine.

All was well, with some very welcome spring warmth, our picnic, a new place to be and a great view. An old woman was hovering nearby, looking out at the two boats moored in the river. She said hello and pointed to the boat (in the pic above). She said her son and husband built it from scratch, had recently brought it back from Portugal and were giving it a spring clean up. We nodded and chatted while eating our sandwiches. 

'Have you been out in it much?' we asked. 'Oh yes, all weathers, very rough sometimes, over to Ireland. My son's been to the Caribbean in it', she replied. 'Once, we were off the coast of Ireland and my son shouted up, ''Don't come up on deck Mum''. There was a body in the sea. He called the coastguard. They said 'can you get it on your boat?'. We didn't want to do that obviously so we just stayed with it where it was until they arrived. They found a Romanian passport in his coat pocket. His head had been caved in so it became a murder inquiry. Sorry, I've interrupted your lunch haven't I?'

Yes. Yes, you have a little, yes. 

This came out at the end of March, nothing to do with boats or bodies or murder- but it is to do with sunrises, loveliness and chugging, throbbing cosmic acid Balearica. Backroom Sunrise is by Dirt Bogarde and is magnificent life enhancing, life affirming stuff, in the way that music and sunrises can be. You can buy it at Bandcamp. Dirt has more coming out later this month. 

Against The Backdrop

If you want some slow motion machine music, acid tinged, widescreen emotive techno on a Tuesday morning in early April- and why wouldn't you?- then you need look no further. Against The Backdrop is the closing track on a five track EP, The Long Tail by Inigo Kennedy, out at the end of last month and ticks all the boxes. The chugging rhythms and lovely lysergic acidic squiggle are almost enough on their own but when the deep synth string chords hit, the track provokes some serious moments. It would sound equally good pushed through a big sound system in a cavernous space, played on crappy car stereo speakers or through headphones while walking. 

Against The Backdrop and rest of The Long Tail can be bought at Bandcamp. It can also be found towards the end of the first hour of Daniel Avery's Morning After mix, recorded at Ramona in Manchester a couple of Sundays ago for a BBC Radio 6 weekend festival. You can listen to it here.

Monday's Long Song

James Holden's new album, Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities, came out last Friday. I've not heard it in full yet but the second single from it which I posted a couple of weeks ago, Common Land, has been on regular repeat play round here and is firmly one of the year's highlights to date. Two Fridays ago a long, eight minute third single/ track came out ahead of the album- In The End You'll Know- written in almost one take in the studio on his wonky Prophet 600 synth.

In The End You'll Know is a lengthy ambient piece, twinkling synths and waves of sound, ebbs of space dust, gently joined by whooshing noises and a very distinct lysergic flow. At three minutes thirty eight seconds another more urgent and bubbling synthline comes in followed by drums and we're off into somewhere with more energy- still very trippy and bendy- but moving emphatically forwards.  Very lovely stuff indeed. 

Fifty Minutes Of ACR

In 1987 a friend made me a compilation tape which included two songs by Mancunian band A Certain Ratio- Shack Up and Do The Du. I've been listening to ACR ever since. They released their latest album, 1982, last Friday and it's fair to say the group have been re- energised in recent years, the result partly of a deal with Mute to re- issue all their albums. I'd been thinking of an ACR Sunday mix for some time and just as I ended up doing a pair of One Dove mixes a while back, I think I may need to come back to ACR for a second go. The mix here contains none of the punk- funk sound of their releases on Factory, the nervous, minimal, scratchy, demob suits and army shorts songs that made their reputation. Instead I've gone for a mix of dancefloor oriented songs spanning three decades.  The core trio of Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson have regrouped several times since 1979, not least following the deaths of Rob Gretton in 1999 and singer Denise Johnson in 2020, but they're still creating and producing new music and are getting stronger and stronger. If they're playing near you, go and see them. ACR are a good night out guaranteed. 

Fifty Minutes Of ACR

• Dirty Boy
• Music Control
• Mello
• Be What You Wanna Be
• Night People
• Wedge (ACR Rework)
• Emperor Machine
• Taxi Guy
• Won't Stop Loving You (Bernard Sumner Remix)

Dirty Boy came out in 2018 ahead of the group's acr:set compilation, with vocals from Barry Adamson and the sampled voice of one- time mentor, manager and label boss Tony Wilson.

Music Control was a collaboration between ACR's alter ego Sir Horatio and Chris Massey, DJ, producer and promoter from Stretford, a squelchy collision of punk- funk, acid house and mutant disco.

Mello came out in 1992 on Rob Gretton's new label Rob's Records, a slice of loved up Mancunian house.  

Be What You Wanna Be is from 1990's acr: mcr, a renewal of the group's sound and fortunes. They left Factory for A&M but 1989's Good Together failed to shift many copies  (a shame as it's an album with much going for it). acr: mcr is wall to wall brilliance, from Spirit Dance to Good Together to Tribecca, rhythms and pianos inspired by the records playing in the Hacienda. Personnel changes at A&M saw them leave not long after for Rob's Records. I saw them at Manchester Academy in autumn 1991, a gig packed to the rafters and with a crowd up for it from the moment ACR appeared on stage. A few songs in my then girlfriend decided this was the ideal opportunity to have an argument and walk out of the venue.  

Night People was on one of three EPs ACR released in 2021, thirteen tracks, with no filler, following the comeback album Loco, on Mute, from the year before. Night People was on the third of the three, ACR: EPR, and has a swampy Bowie/ Iggy in Berlin groove. 

Wedge is by Number, Ali Friend and Rich Thair's spin off from Red Snapper, a 2020 punk funk trip. The two bands swapped remixes, this being ACR's remix of Number. Number's Binary album came out in April 2020 and probably got a little overlooked with everything else that was going on in spring 2020.

Emperor Machine was a collaboration between ACR and Emperor Machine (Andy Meacham, who found fame first time around in Bizarre Inc). The self- titled track was on EPC in 2021 and is supercharged mutant disco/ punk funk. 

Taxi Guy is the closing song on 2020's Loco album, an album that showed they were right back on it and fired up. Jazzy, samba grooves and a mass drumming finale. Their vie gigs over the last decade have sometimes finished with the group ending up leaving the stage and walking into the audience, drumming and blowing whistles, as happened at Gorilla in early 2020.

Won't Stop Loving You is a remix of a song from acr: mcr by Bernard Sumner from 1990. Sumner stripped the song back to Jez and Denise's vocals, whipcrack 808 drums and house piano. Something of a desert island disc for me. 

Saturday Live

Husker Du, live in 1985 at the Camden Palace. Fifty- seven minutes of melody, feedback and speed, verse/ chorus songs shredded and sandblasted with utter conviction. They blast their way on stage with New Day Rising, Grant's drums double fast, triple fast even, Greg Norton bouncing round the stage, his basslines so much more present than they sometimes were on the recordings and Bob Mould playing guitar and singing those three words like there is nothing else on earth that matters more at that moment. They then career intensely through their back catalogue of recent records, the Flip Your Wig and New Day Rising albums and the Metal Circus EP. Grant's It's Not Funny Anymore is followed with barely a pause by early song Everything Falls Apart and then The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill, Grant's song about a friend dying of cancer and alcoholism, trailed by Bob draining his amp of feedback. It's breathtaking stuff, song after song, walls of sheet metal noise, fast tempos and Grant throwing in drum parts that are almost jazz- hardcore punk jazz- but jazz all the same. 

Part of Husker Du's magnificence lies in their presentation, their punk taken to a fast, loud, noisy melodic extreme versus their demeanour. Bob, tall, short hair, t- shirt and jeans, eyes closed. Grant, long hair, a barefoot singing drummer. Greg, lanky, bouffant hair and handle bar moustache. They look unpunk, non- punk. To underline their rejection of the Stalinist approach to punk with which they had no truck, they play Ticket To Ride towards the end, the Beatles transformed into bright white noise but with those melodies at the heart of it. Two minutes later they're into Recurring Dreams, an epic by Husker Du standards, six minutes of wordless psychedelic punk rock, guitar strings bending and stretching. They soar into their cover of Eight Miles High, so high now they've cleared the ozone layer and entered escape velocity. Bob, still with a thousand yard stare to the back of the Palace, launches the three of them into Love Is All Around, the theme to the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Most of the audience look stunned, blown away. Credits roll. 

Big Companies, Large Tentacles

This is new from Edinburgh's Eyes Of Others, a one man outfit making music he describes as 'post- pub couldn't get tin the club'. It's definitely leftfield enough although the thump of the kick drum and the 303 acid squiggle both hint that there are clubs where this could be played. Big Companies, Large Tentacles is doomy and unsettling with a vocal suggesting a man at the end of his tether, with screaming and squealing in the background and mutterings about love and Freud's chaise longue. Organ from a horror film cuts in before the acid goes off at the three minute mark. The video does little to lessen the general unease,  existential dread and rising anxiety either. Happy Friday!

You can buy Big COmpanies, Large Tentacles, together with an instrumental version and Fantastic Man remix, at Bandcamp. Eyes Of Others album is due in May on Heavenly. 

Thrill Me

The recent Unloved album, Polychrome is a succinct addition to last year's The Pink Album, the murky, moody girl group/ Wrecking Crew/ Serge Gainsbourg noir sound bent a little further out of shape. From the jerky and disorientating 60s pop of I Did It to the slow motion melancholia/ drama of Thank You For Being A Friend, You Know, The One You Never Want To Say Goodbye To it's an album I've been back to often. A remix EP has been released with new versions that take the songs further and deeper. Justin Robertson's rocking dub version of Thrill Me (Towers Of Wonder Remix) is a delight, thumping echo- laden drums, spaced out FX and a bassline conjured up straight from King Tubby's stockpile of bass. Jade's voice competes with the sounds reverberating around the mixing desk. 

Manfredas takes I Did It and warps it into a very long and strange trip indeed, a six minute first half with percussion, drums, stuttering sounds and chopped up vocals, then a pause and an equally distorted, psychedelic second half with organ, whirring noises and echoes of vocals. 

In complete contrast to both Justin and Manfreda's remixes, London duo Raw Silk refit the album's title track Polychrome as sleek sci fi acid techno. 

Double Avery

As well as my ambient/ cosmische gig on Friday night I spent much of Sunday in two different venues enjoying DJ sets by Daniel Avery. The first was at Ramona on Swan Street, an indoor/ outdoor venue with a DJ booth inside a large teepee. The appearance, billed as The Morning After, was part of BBC Radio 6's weekend long festival in Manchester. Avery is riding high on the back of four albums since 2020 (Illusion Of Time, Love + Light, Together In Static and Ultra Truth) and a career high in the single Lone Swordsman (written and recorded in the immediate aftermath of Andrew Weatherall's death in February 2020). Lone Swordsman got an airing at Ramona and the chilled industrial ambient sounds were a part of the lunchtime set but by the time we'd finished our pizza he was upping the tempo and found a sweet spot of lovely 110 bpm thump, big warm basslines and fizzing topnotes, entrancing grooves- intense and hypnotic stuff.  

Daniel had agreed to play at Yes too, a venue a hop across town in a converted three storey Victorian house near the old Factory offices/ Paradise Factory building. Free entry and a five hour set from 5pm through to 10pm. Daylight raves are a thing now. We wandered across town, stopping off in Ancoats for a drink, in time to see him start his second set of the day, tipping his hat to the city by starting with Everything's Gone Green, New Order's 1981 classic melding of rock and dance. The crowd, a mix of the young and the middle aged, were onboard straight away and the room became a mass of dancing. He followed it fairly soon with Peak High's Was That All It Was, a disco/ chug/ Balearic highlight from the end of last year and not much later spun a very chunky edit of Primal Scream's Don't Fight It, Feel It, presumably his own work. Both venues were graced by what sounded like his own, as yet unreleased, remix of Depeche Mode along with lots of modern acid techno. Avery sets have plenty of thump- this is techno after all- but with peaks and troughs, moments of euphoria and release. 

We left around seven, it being Sunday and a school night (and having been out for several hours by this point). Somewhat amusingly, while on the dancefloor at Yes, clutching my pint and jigging around, I was approached by a woman who said hello and then asked if was 'Mr Turner'. I nodded. 'You teach my child', she said, and we both laughed, a little nervously. 

Lone Swordsman

Yard Gig

Friday night in Cheetham Hill, just north of Manchester city centre with Strangeways prison dominating the after dark skyline, is a part of the city that stubbornly refuses gentrification. A ten minute walk up the main road from the back of Victoria Station brings you to a relatively new Manchester gig/ event venue, The Yard. Friday night's bill saw Wigan guitarist Mark Peters and Manchester ambient techno three piece Marconi Union playing. Mark stepped up to the low stage, clips from 1950s Western films playing behind him, in line with the North West England meets the wide open spaces of the prairies psychogeography of his albums (2017's Innerlands and 2022's Red Sunset Dreams). 

With backing tracks playing through the laptop, Mark plays a wonderfully chilled set of tracks. The songs and his playing reflect the cosmische guitar sounds of Michael Rother, the delay and chorus fretboard work of Vini Reilly and his own ambient guitar styles. The opening song is a new one, Cinder Flower, and there are the windswept but beautiful soundscapes of Innerland songs Ashursts's Bridge, May Hill and Twenty Bridges. Alpenglow and Magic Hour, both from a just released EP, sound full and rich as the notes fill the converted 19th century building. Alpenglow is chiming krauty bliss, as if Neu! had been from Winstanley rather than Dusseldorf, and Magic Hour is indeed magical, understated but gently heroic, the spirit of early Verve intact. Towards the close of the set, just before Alpenglow, Dot Allison's voice drifts through the PA as her vocal from Switched On The Sky floats on top of Mark's guitar and then he soars into the spaced out version of the song, Switched On.

After a short break Manchester trio Marconi Union take the stage, three figures lined up behind a bank of keyboards, synths, laptop and machines. The laptop and synth stage right kick into life and the dark, brooding sounds fill the room, lots of texture and atmospherics but with melodies and purpose too- no floating ambient drift here, but tracks with intent. There is guitar centre stage, the notes another layer of sounds on top of the machine music, along with the sometimes mournful keys/ piano.

The films projected behind them- skyscrapers shot from below, a Manchester Metrolink tram gliding slowly past from left to right-  add to sense of motion. Everything happens without explanation. There's no chat between the songs. It's impressive and weighty stuff and the room, pretty close to being sold out, is an appreciative audience. This is Strata Alt, from May last year, giving a good idea of what they do. 

Back in 2011 they recorded a track called Weightless, an eight minute collaboration with sound therapist Lyz Cooper, field recordings, piano and guitar with tones specifically designed to induce a trancelike state and aid relaxation and sleep and reduce anxiety. It has been streamed millions of times on Youtube and if you want more there's a slowed down and stretched out ten hour version here. 

On my way home, through a sequence of events I won't bother to go into right now, I met my wife (out on a separate night out) and we ended up at a party on Swan Street in the city centre, a party in a former chip shop now cocktail bar, and were dancing until 2am, the oldest people in the room. Later on we were wandering the wet streets of Manchester city centre looking for a taxi in the rain. 

Monday's Long Song

Out last Friday and the title track from his album The Strand Cinema this is Phil Keiran's latest release- a tribute to an art deco cinema in Belfast. The Strand Cinema is six minutes and forty seconds of gorgeous instrumental music with echoes of the kosmsiche groups of early 70s West Germany, rippling synths and cinematic strings with layers of cello and violin, that make The Strand Cinema an immersive and emotive listen. The album can be bought here. 

An Hour Of Weatherall Covers

We all love a good cover version don't we? The reconstructing of a familiar song in a new form, the buzz of hearing someone do a song differently, irreverently or lovingly, and the nodding of the head to influences and inspirations. At times cover versions can also seem a bit lazy, a way out of writer's block or something thrown together for B-side at a late hour and under pressure, but when done well and with the right intent, they're a joy. 

In two weeks time it would have been Andrew Weatherall's 60th birthday had he lived. There are a series of events taking place nationally throughout April to celebrate this- a full on night at Fabric in London with a huge line up of DJ talent together with nights in Glasgow, Belfast and Todmorden, all places with strong Weatherall connections and crowds. I'll come back to the Todmorden one nearer the time (29th April) with more details but it does include a second ride out for The Flightpath Estate DJ team (which includes yours truly). I expect to run several Weatherall posts over the next few weeks- that's probably not much different to usual round here, he does tend to feature fairly often- and thought I'd kick off with this one, a mix for Sunday of cover versions Andrew either recorded as an artist himself or other other artists he remixed. It is not surprisingly a fairly eclectic bunch of songs and artists. It now occurs to me that I should have put the originals together as a mix too so maybe that will follow at some point a companion piece.

Fifty Five Minutes Of Andrew Weatherall Cover Versions

• Carry Me Home
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves)
• Witchi Tai To (2 Lone Swordsmen Remix)
• The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• A Love From Outer Space (Version 2)
• Sex Beat
• Slip Inside This House
• Goodbye Johnny (Andrew Weatherall's Nyabinghi Noir Mix)
• Faux/ Whole Wide World

Carry Me Home is a cover of a Dennis Wilson song from 1973, a wracked funereal blues for a dying soldier in Vietnam that was written for the 1973 album Holland but was left off. 'Life is meant to live/ I'm afraid to die', he sings. Primal Scream's version which Andrew produced is from the Dixie- Narco EP, a very downbeat and beautiful way to pay homage. Andrew and Hugo Nicolson's mix of instruments and production is stunning, Duffy's electric piano at the start and the acoustic guitar and cello in the end section especially so. 

Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a Saint Etienne cover of a Neil Young song. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. Andrew's remix sent the song into a dubbed out bliss, Augustus Pablo- esque melodica in the first half (played by Pete Astor of The Weather Prophets), the Jean Binta Breeze dub poetry sample in the middle cutting the track in half, and then the song appearing in the second (along with the Jean 'cool and deadly' sample). 

Witchi Tai To was a 2007 single by X- Press 2, the Two Lone Swordsmen remix adding the live drums of their sound from that period and matching the Wrong Meeting albums of the same year. The original was a a 1971 single by Jim Pepper, a Native American singer and saxophonist who took a peyote chant his grandfather taught him and turned it into a hybrid jazz/ Native American song. X- Press 2's cover was sung by Tim de Laughter of The Polyphonic Spree. 

The Drum was a single for The Impossibles, an Edinburgh duo who made early 90s jangly indie- pop. The original is a Slapp Happy song from 1974. Weatherall's remix, from 1991, is a lesser known one from his early 90s hot streak, a tour de force of throwing whatever is at hand in the studio/ imagination at a remix and it working. Andrew was ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson on this one too. 

A Love From Outer Space was the calling card from the 2013 album by The Asphodells, the outfit he formed with Timothy J. Fairplay after they had bene working together on remixes and their own material and realised they had enough for an album. Andrew's vocals were a big feature of The Asphodells (following on from the Two Lone Swordsmen records of the previous few years where he stepped up to the mic for the first time since the early 80s). A Love From Outer Space also became the name of his traveling club night, with compadre Sean Johnstone, a night never knowingly exceeding 122 bpm. The original song is by late 80s one offs A.R. Kane, a duo of dreads who made spaced out dub/ dreampop. 

Sex Beat was a Two Lone Swordsmen single in 2004 and on the From The Double Gone Chapel album of the same year, a radical shift in sound and style after the pure electro of 2000's Tiny Reminders. Andrew and Keith Tenniswood becoming a garage band with Nick Burton on drums and Chris Mackin on guitar. Sex Beat was such a blast when it came out in 2004, an energetic swerve in the road to somewhere new. Sex Beat was on The Gun Club's 1981 debut Fire Of Love, a blues/ rockabilly/ Southern Gothic classic. Leader, singer and writer Jeffrey Lee Pierce pops up again in this mix in the form of Goodbye Johnny.

Slip Inside This House is a cover of The 3th Floor Elevators song from their 1967 album Easter Everywhere, the second song on Primal Scream's 1991 opus Screamadelica, a juddering statement of acid house intent after the rock n' roll opening of Moving On Up. Hypnotone's Tony Martin was involved in the production of this track too. It was sung by Throb. Bobby Gillespie is said to have bene suffering from 'acid house flu'.

Goodbye Johnny was on Primal Scream's 2013 album More Light. It came from a covers project that paid tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Weatherall's spaced out remix tips its hat to the Nyabinghi sound of African Head Charge, a big influence on Andrew. 

Faux/ Whole Wide World comes from a Radio One session from 2004. Faux was the first single ahead of From The Double Gone Chapel, a scuzzed up slice of electro- rockabilly, combining rapid programmed drums and fuzz guitars with Weatherall vocals and lyrics about the love of his life, Elizabeth Walker. As a touring band Two Lone Swordsmen had a habit of working Faux into Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World, a peerless 1977 single. At the time Andrew was recommending the new album then just released by Eric, Bungalow Hi, a record Andrew described as 'like Duane Eddy meets Aphex Twin'. The recording here is ripped from a radio session, never officially released. There was a version on the Rotters Golf Club website for a while too, part of a three song session they recorded playing at the Bloc Weekender. Of all the lyrics that swirl around Andrew's world and outlook, 'I don't do faux', is as good as any.