Where Do I Begin?

San Pedro Collective, the new musical vehicle combining the talents of Rikki Turner, Suddi Raval and Simon Wolstencroft among a floating cast of members, have a new single out. Where Do I Begin? features the vocals of Sarah Bouchier and mines the warm, progressive house sound of the early 1990s to striking effect. It feels good and is a floor filler but the vocals hint at darker times, Sarah singing ‘it’s a crisis’ over the swirling hypnotic groove. There’s an eye watering breakdown too for that arms in the air moment.

Proud To Be A Fool

I spend quite a bit of time at the moment having conversations about music with people online. In one such exchange yesterday this track came up, a blast of optimism from 2009 by Phoreski,  a chunky, chugging Italo, grin inducing, floor filler with drum pads, throbbing synth bass, guitars, keyboards and bells and the button marked ‘euphoria’ turned all the way round. It’s Friday and tracks like this make it feel like Friday.

Proud To Be A Fool

 

Uptown Approach

Some more Andrew Weatherall for your delectation. First is a reader request…

Uptown (Long After The Disco Is Over)

In 2008 Primal Scream released an album called Beautiful Future, an album I bought but have hardly played. I seem to remember Bobby Gillespie saying this was an album which had ‘sugar coated melodies’ or something similar. It came after Riot City Blues which was where I drifted away from the Scream- Country Girl was a pastiche of  pastiche and the rest of the album bar a couple of songs didn’t sink in. Having said that Beautiful Future’s follow up, More Light, five years later was the best Scream album since Evil Heat for me. Looking at the tracklisting for Beautiful Future now I can’t recall much about any of it, there are several collaborations (Josh Homme, Linda Thompson, Lovefoxx), but the bonus/ freebie cover of Urban Guerrilla and the instrumental Time Of The Assassin were both ok. Where Beautiful Future achieves its status is as the source material for one of Andrew Weatherall’s greatest remixes and in 2008 a sign that after a few quieter years he was back in the game. Uptown on the album is a Bobby Gillespie Saturday Night Fever tribute song. In Weatherall’s hands it becomes 21st century gold, a alchemist’s calling card. Opening with dub FX, echoes bouncing around and then Bobby cooing ‘you feel so good you never wanted to leave’, Uptown becomes a disco odyssey, clipped guitar, a sweet melodica line, four on the floor drums and a bassline from the centre of the club. Weatherall builds it over the ensuing nine minutes, layering sound, the riffs and melodies circling, noises ricocheting left and right, Bobby occasionally whispering ‘uptown’ and those melancholic, sweeping strings. At the heart of this disco is the eternal sadness of the hedonist, the realisation that the lights have to come on, the night will be over, the morning will come- the knowledge that chasing the magical moments on the floor cannot last forever but that while they last, they are bliss. Short lived bliss. It’s all in there.

Before his tragic passing just over a week ago Andrew and Nina Walsh had already lined up the second of the monthly Woodleigh Research Facility digital only e.p.s following January’s Into the Cosmic Hole. The second one is called Facility 4: Approach and brings us three more tunes from the end times soundsystem- Fume Homage, The Approach and Servant. The e.p. comes out tomorrow at all the usual digital places. The ghostly noises, the cavernous echo, the steam powered drum machine rhythms, the deep sea bass, the long synth sounds and little arpeggios, the sense of slight dislocation, all lingering on in his absence.

Witches

This song by Low took me by surprise the weekend before last. I was sorting through a pile a freebie CDs that had built up near the pile of records that has built up. I’ve got several albums by Low but not the one this song is on (an album called C’mon released in 2011). Having listened to and skipped a few songs on the CD I let Witches play. The opening guitar chords, clanging and distorted were enough on their own, but then the ensuing menace coming through the speakers, Alan and Mimi’s vocals, and the natural echo provided by the Sacred Heart studio in Duluth, Minnesota (a former church). There’s what sounds like a banjo in there too.

Witches

I don’t know what Witches is about, facing your fears maybe. Like the music the lyrics are foreboding and full of shadows.

‘One night I got up and told my father there were witches in my room
He gave me a baseball bat and said here’s what you do…

All you guys out there trying to act like Al Green…’

 

Son Sur Son

This came out only a few weeks ago, the first Andrew Weatherall release of 2020 but what will now be one of the last with his name on it- two remixes of The Venetians. The band was the studio only project of Rik Swinn who arrived in Sydney in late 1982, having recorded the tracks with Vic Coppersmith- Heaven. They became a touring band and their sound is very left of centre early 80s, groovy post- punk synth pop. The 12″ came out a few weeks ago and includes two Andrew Weatherall remixes, the first a swirly, percussive vocal remix and the second an instrumental, spacey affair, much further away from home. This is the first of the pair, A.W. Edition Uno.

While we’re here last week in the rush of articles, obituaries, mixes and appreciations of the great man his friend and musical partner in Woodleigh Research facility Nina Wash posted up some links to some playlists on Youtube. These playlists were Weatherall’s work but weren’t widely known about because as Nina says ‘he wasn’t very good at the internet’. Collectively they are called The Black Notebooks and are a treasure trove of songs, from The Blue Aeroplanes to Townes van Zandt, Durutti Column, Willie Nelson, The Triffids, Pink Military, Moon Duo and Alan Vega and all points in between. You can find them all, volumes 1 to 9 at Ban Ton Ton.

Coping

Julian Cope played the second of two nights at Gorilla on Saturday night, a wide ranging one man show with songs from his back catalogue (from The Teardrop Explodes through to the new Self Civil War) and plenty of story telling and comedy in between. Cope is announced on to the stage by his roadie and appears in Luftwaffe cap, shades, sleeveless hooded top, shorts and biker boots, promising us that he won’t talk too much and then proceeds to do exactly that- not that anyone is complaining. Cope is an accomplished raconteur as much as anything else. He kicks off with a long story about buying the title Grand Prince of Pomerania off the internet and then goes into Soul Desert following that with a new one, Your Facebook My Laptop. We get Read It In Books, interrupted by Julian filling us in on the genesis of that song, what he calls ‘the writing group’ he was a member of (The Crucial Three of legend), the birthplace of both the Bunnymen and The Teardrops, it’s riff borrowed from a Fall song (Mark E Smith and Martin Bramah are both nodded to) and Ian McCulloch’s role in it, with some gentle piss taking of Mac. It’s not nasty or personal- he takes the piss out of himself and out of us too.  All the songs bar one are played on acoustic guitar and fleshed out by FX pedals including an epic Autogeddon Blues, a brilliant They Were All On Hard Drugs (which has a lengthy preamble, as you can probably imagine, which finishes with him describing finding four different types of magic mushroom within a few hundred yards of Stonehenge), Cromwell In Ireland, Drink Me Under The Table, The Greatness And Perfection of Love, a sparkling run through World Shut Your Mouth, and Treason. When all his songs are presented like this, one man with his guitar, they seem more and more part of the same story- there’s real no separation between the Teardrops pop hits and his current cottage industry album. He jokes about the Teardrops, that he approached the others about putting them back together but the rest of the band were just too out of it. He jokes about the stream of near hits he had as a solo artist, all of them peaking at number 42. He tells us about painting a Messerschmidt- a model not a real one- and having some deep grey paint left over at the exact moment a brand new Fender guitar is delivered. He then plays the next song with the guitar he painted. He mentions his poor promotion of his new albums and then repeatedly remembers to promote Self Civil War. He reminds us of the criticism that his songs are ba- ba- ba songs, then plays the ba- ba- ba songs, proving what a great songwriter he is. There’s a long discussion about folk music and his issues with it and then we, the folk, are encouraged to join in with the ‘Oi’ backing vocals.  For The Great Dominions he moves onto the synth with his roadie accompanying him and then goes back to the guitar for a marvellous Pristeen and finally a crowd pleasing Sunspots. He hams up the leaving of the stage, revelling in the applause while undercutting it too, and then returns to play Out Of My Mind On Dope And Speed. There’s not really anyone else quite like him- so esoteric, so open, so poppy but so versed in the underground. Long may he run.

Autogeddon Blues

 

Special One

A list of records that I love out of all proportion to their importance or impact would include Special One by Ultra Vivid Scene, a single from the New York band’s second album (released in 1990 so nothing to do with the self- proclaimed special one Jose Mourinho). Ultra Vivid Scene were largely the work of one man, Kurt Ralske, who made two albums for 4AD, both packed with alternative guitar songs, Velvets inspired melodies and Mary Chain style drums and bass. Special One is a brilliant little song, instantly bringing Vox teardrop guitars, valve amps and wraparound sunglasses to mind and has Kim Deal on backing vox singing the ‘how do you think it feels?’ line.

Special One

The Special One single was a four track e.p. Of the three B-sides this is the best, a slow crawl through the streets at dawn.

Lightning (72 BPM/4 A.M.)

Nothing really happened for Ultra Vivid Scene. Apparently they played some gigs in London to support the second album, Joy 1967- 1990, that were terrible, 4AD’s staff begging the room full of journalists not to review them. The first self titled album still gets played round here from time to time as does Joy 1967- 1990. There was a third in 1992 called Rev which I’ve never heard.

Just What Is It That You Want To Do?

Loaded was the starting point for Andrew Weatherall and in the mainstream it is what he’ll be remembered for I guess. He’d been in the studio before as a remixer- his first named credit was on the Happy Monday’s Hallelujah Club Remix but Loaded is where the story begins. He’d given Primal Scream a positive review of a gig in Exeter at a time when no- one was interested in them. He also raved about their self titled second album, a rock ‘n’ roll, Stooges inspired guitar record that had managed to alienate the fans of their first album without really finding any new ones. In the summer of 1989 I saw Primal Scream touring to promote Ivy Ivy Ivy at a venue in Liverpool called Planet X in front of about thirty people. The Scream gave it their all, Bobby occasionally complaining about the low ceiling. We were right at the front next to Throb and they finished with I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have, Bobby on his knees screaming into the mic. A few months later Weatherall turned I’m Losing More… into Loaded.

Loaded

The first version of Loaded was in Weatherall’s own words ‘too polite’ and Andrew Innes encouraged him to go back and ‘fucking destroy it’. Primal Scream had nothing to lose. At this point Gillespie, Innes and Throb were still unconvinced about acid house despite Alan McGee’s enthusiasm but had met Weatherall at a rave and were happy for him to remix the song. Weatherall set about taking the song to pieces and remaking it.

I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have

Taking the horns from the end section of the original song and Henry Olsen’s rolling bassline Weatherall stitched Peter Fonda’s famous dialogue from The Wild Angels, a 1966 biker film, to the start of the song.

The question, ‘Just what is it that you want to do?’ is asked by Frank Maxwell. Fonda replies with his rallying call- ‘we want to be free, we want to be free, to do what we want to do… and we want to get loaded and we want to have a good time’. The part about riding ‘our machines without being hassled by the man’ was cut. I’ve often thought there should be a version with that part included. Fonda’s declaration had been used before, not least by Psychic TV (Weatherall was a big PTV fan). It sums up the spirit of the times perfectly.

The drumbeat with its massive crash cymbal came from Edie Brickell And The New Bohemians, a bootleg version of their hit What I Am, which in turn had been borrowed from a Soul II Soul record (and that was sampled from elsewhere).

What I Am (Bootleg)

The ‘I don’t want to lose your love’ vocal part, the bit where on a dancefloor or at a gig everyone is singing in unison regardless of their ability to hit the notes, comes from a 1976 song by The Emotions.

The only bit of Bobby Gillespie that made it onto the record is the vocal part at 3.09 where he sings ‘we’re gonna get deep down, deep down, woo hey!’ in response to Frank Maxwell’s repeated question. Gillespie’s vocal is from a cover of a Robert Johnson song, Terraplane Blues, presumably something the Scream had recorded but never released. There’s an ‘ah yeah’ bit at about five minutes which sounds like Bobby, some ace slide guitar and acoustic guitar, some lovely Italo house piano and Innes’ crunchy guitar parts that make the breakdown before we are launched back in.

The song was pressed up onto acetate and then some promos for DJs and as summer turned into autumn people began to notice the impact it had on dance floors. The rhythms evoke Sympathy For The Devil, the shuffling groove, and crowds in clubs began to chant the ‘woo woo’ part spontaneously. Loads of people have described their reactions to being told this monster rave anthem was the work of Primal Scream, the disbelief, the shaking of heads and then the wide eyed joy of becoming a believer. Members of Primal Scream have recounted being phoned by Weatherall and others in the small hours excitedly describing the effect Loaded was having on a floor right there and then. It was finally given its full released in February 1990, Creation finding themselves with a hit on their hands. Loaded reached number sixteen in the UK and propelled the band into the Top of The Pops studios where Gillespie wriggled with his maracas, black leather and long hair, feet seemingly glued to the spot. Ride’s Mark Gardener was drafted in to mime on the keyboards, Throb is resplendent in teddy boy red and Innes pulls all the moves, Les Paul, hippy shirt and long curls. For a song that has such deep roots, that sent thousands of indie kids hurtling to the dance floor and still raises the roof when played at parties, it’s an odd TV performance that doesn’t quite nail it. And of course, the man who made it is nowhere to be seen.

Gold Road’s Sure A Long Road

It’s amazing how the internet throws things up- this clip is The Stone Roses performing Fools Gold on Dutch TV in 1989. We’ve all seen the the famous Top Of the Pops performance, some of us many, many times, but until the other night I’d never seen this clip before. I didn’t know it existed. Ian, John, Reni and Mani at the height of their cool, all four giving it the insouciant, hair growing out, swagger that was a massive part of their appeal. The crowd, considering this a mimed performance, are going for it too. Dutch kids clearly knew the score.

Lord Sabre

I could probably go on posting Andrew Weatherall related music all week and into next but I’ll make this the last one for the time being, a third celebration of his life and music following his passing earlier this week. The further I go into the remixes he did in the early 90s the more of them I recall that I didn’t write about yesterday- West India Company, Word Of Mouth, Deep Joy, That Petrol Emotion all spring to mind. The mid 90s Two Lone Swordsmen period is so full of music and remixes that it would take years to go through it all and then there are the ones done under other names from that time- Rude Solo, Lino Squares, Basic Units, the wondrous deep house recorded with David Harrow as Deanne Day, his partnership with Harrow as Blood Sugar, the beautifully chilled piano dub of the Planet 4 Folk Quartet track (also with David Harrow). There’s also all the minimal techno, dub and electronic weirdness released on the various Emissions labels in the 90s from people such as Blue, Conemelt, Turbulent Force, Alex Handley, Technova (David Harrow again) and Bionic.

Released on Emissions Audio Output in 1996 Hardly Breathe is fifteen minutes of sumptuous deep house, bass to shake your speakers and a breathy vocal from ‘Deanne’.

Hardly Breathe

In the same year Weatherall went back to the BBC and recorded his second Essential Mix. The first was a groundbreaking charge through Weatherall’s record box three years earlier, opening with Killing Joke and Sabres and taking in Brother Love Dubs, Smokebelch, Plastikman, LFO, Black Dog and Innersphere along the way, two hours of techno that was taped and shared and re-taped. In 1996 his second Essential Mix was possibly even better, a journey into the heart of the Two Lone Swordsmen sound- minimal, bass led, crisp machine drums, on the button, Andrew re-working the material including four of his own records as he plays it. Two hours of the art of the DJ.

Jumping forward to 2009 and a mix he did for Fact Magazine which I listened to endlessly at that time and plundered for posts at Bagging Area in its early days. Fact Mix 85 skips from genre to genre in an effortless manner, playing post- punk, rockabilly, Stockholm Monsters, Durutti Column, Mogwai and Pete Wylie. The tracklist is here. Earlier on in 2009 he did a 6 Music show where he’d played Wayne Walker’s All I Can Do Is Cry (also on Fact Mix 85), a song that I heard for the first time there and that then became the subject of the first ever piece of blogging I did (a guest slot at The Vinyl Villain).

Fact Mix 85

This one is more recent, the man playing at Terraforma near Milan in Italy, a Music’s Not For Everyone style set and is the best fifty two minutes of audio/visual fun you’ll have today. Songs from Fujiya Miyagi, The Dream Syndicate, Moon Duo, AMOR, played a field full of dancing Italians half his age.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/248061647

In 2003 Primal Scream released a greatest hits called Dirty Hits, a version of their history that opened with Loaded, Weatherall’s mangling of the Scream’s I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have, with steals from Peter Fonda, Edie Brickell and The Emotions. Loaded, in a piece of timing that is remarkable, came out thirty years ago yesterday. Anyway, the sleeve notes to Dirty Hits were written by Andrew Weatherall and conclude thus…

‘Feeling humble, having served… now carry me home.’

Now you’ll have to excuse me because I’ve got something in my eye again.