AW61

I can’t remember who took this photo, maybe the wonderful Claire Dollers or possibly Neil Overall, Todmorden’s Golden Lion illuminated by the heavens, a rainbow the least we could have expected for the AW61 weekender that happened last weekend. There’s was so much that went on it’s difficult to piece it all together, so many people gathered in one place to pay tribute to the departed Andrew Weatherall, to dance and enjoy the music of the various DJs and live acts, lots of people where we were able to put faces to names, lots of familiar faces from previous outings at The Lion, and many magic moments which could only take place in that particular pub in Todmorden. 

Friday 

Rotter and Rusty were in the DJ booth. Rusty designed the artwork for our Sounds From The Flightpath Estate album, a copy of which sat centre stage on the booth (as pictured here with me behind the decks on Saturday afternoon). 

Rotter and Rusty played all sorts- country, funk and soul, cosmic stuff- perfect Friday afternoon sounds. As afternoon turned into evening and the pub filled, Matt Hum took over downstairs, some heavy sounding electronics, superbly mixed and sequenced. Upstairs a capacity crowd filled the live room as Keith Tenniswood aka Radioactive Man and former Swordsman played behind a bank of kit, mixer, synths, drum machines, FX devices and kicked up a storm of electro/ techno, basslines thumping and filling the room. The room was heaving, dark and sweaty, the floor bouncing, the kind of space and music that are perfectly suited for each other. I’ve no idea what tracks Keith played. This one is from his self titled 2001 Radioactive Man album.

Gone Forever 

Downstairs Matt Hum handed over to David Holmes, a man who has played the Golden Lion several times recently. He hit the ground running, a set that started out with music for dancing to and kept it going for four hours, plenty of deviations into disco in the first half, the second half having some crossover with sets played last year (a Galloping Horse remix, Rich Lane’s edit of Jackie by Sinead O’Connor) but filled with new tunes, 80s electro- pop and acid house, Can’s I Want More and the giddy synth ecstasy of Figures by Absolute Body Control from 1983 standing out, reaching a crescendo after 1am, the pub’s mirror ball spinning, red lights dancing around the stone walls, the place filled with dancers and revellers. 

Saturday 

We arrived at 2pm for our marathon Saturday afternoon and evening sessions, five Flightpath Estate DJs taking an hour each and then playing back to back, two or three tunes each in rotation. The sets weren’t recorded but we aim to recreate them at some point. Baz went on first, chilled afternoon sounds building to an end with White Williams’ Route To Palm (first heard on an Andrew Weatherall BBC 6 radio show in 2008) and Andy Bell’s cover of Smokebelch from our album. Martin followed, his usual eclectic and inspired selection of tracks. I played from 4pm to 5pm. You spend so long preparing for these sessions, selecting tracks, planning what to play and what to put next to what, and it’s over in a flash. My afternoon set was woozy electronic music, ambient sounds and spaced out stuff- Coyote, Durutti Column, Psychederek, Four Tet, Rick Cuevas, Biosphere, Underworld, The Long Champs/ Weval/ Sonic Youth threeway edit/ cover, an edit of Song To The Siren, Bjork and James Holden. I had just cued up GLOK’s spaced out remix of Stars by A Mountain Of One when the auction and raffle began, Gig (the Golden Lion’s legendary landlady) and Lizzie (partner of Andrew at the time of his death) auctioning a select set of Andrew Weatherall connected items, accompanied by Sofia Hedblom (dressed as a cupcake). 

Playing support act to this auction and raffle was a brilliant way to spend part of the weekend, bizarre and utterly Golden Lion. A mug from Andrew’s studio was bid for and won by Moggieboy (Alan McGregor who used to write the superb Ripped In Glasgow blog, one of the inspirations for this blog back in 2009/ 2010). Among the lots there were a pair of Andrew’s cufflinks, a Boy’s Own bag with incense in it, a photograph taken by Lizzie and used for the sleeve of Andrew’s The Bullet Catcher’s Apprentice EP and a metal tin from Andrew’s studio that used to contain his stash. The auction and raffle raised over £800 all of which went to Todmorden’s Incredible Edible charity, a local urban gardening project growing, celebrating and  sharing locally grown food. As the raffle ended I put David Holmes’ Emotionally Clear on and handed over to Dan. 

I missed most of Dan’s set having moved to the restaurant area to get some food, a stomach lining being important ahead of the evening. Mark took over from Dan and played a customarily superb set of tracks, dubby and chuggy, pushing things up a gear. By a bit after 7pm we were ready to go back to back, four of us taking it in turns to entertain a by now busy and keen pub. Sons Of Slough played upstairs, an hour long live set with lots of new material. Downstairs we were pushing the tempos up a little- after Martin played a three, I went back and played Anzu by C.A.R., David Holmes’ remix of Lisa Moorish’s Sylvia (I think Mark played this earlier too, always a risk with so many people involved at the decks) and Orbital and Mike Garry’s Tonight In Belfast, before handing over to Dan and then Mark and round again, but there were so many tracks that didn’t get played sitting in my bag. Hearing The Light Brigade’s Human : Remains pounding out of the sound system was a bit of a moment. In the run up to Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray taking over Dan, Martin and Mark nailed it, a blend of well known and obscure, Rich Lane’s edit of New Order’s Vanishing Point and Bedford Falls Players’ Beautiful Chaos both pumping loud and clear through the speakers. 

After 9pm Sean and Duncan took over and took the roof off. Often when they play together they play a lot of dub but this set went to chunky, pumping and spaced out, ALFOS style sounds quickly, thumping drums, synths, lots of vocals and many tracks that people couldn’t place. Radio Slave’s recent remix of Fun Boy 3’s The Lunatics (HaveTaking Over The Asylum) caused some mayhem. 

My memories are admittedly sketchy but at one point Sean dropped this monster from 1991 by LaTour, People Are Still Having Sex (possibly an edit of it)…

Vox Low’s Something Is Wrong was played at some point and Awrite by Manakinz but there was so much going on its difficult to keep track. I spent some time down the front in the mass of dancers, a happy blur of faces and limbs. When the lights came on and people hugged and blinked and wiped the seat from their brows and grinned in the early hours of Sunday morning there was a pause and then Sean finished with one of his signature tunes from last years’ ALFOS sets, Yame’s As I Ran, a euphoric and giddy dancefloor gem from 2022, a squiggly topline, wayward synthlines and a section that breaks down into chanted vocals and then rattling snares driving back in and the synth melodies kicking back in. The sequenced bassline runs on and on, running round in your head long after the track has finished. 

As I Ran

Sunday

Remarkably there were still people back at the Golden Lion on Sunday for more, Curley on the decks all afternoon spinning ambient and some floor shaking dub and then Rico and Waka playing a Double Gone Chapel set of rockabilly, garage and punk. I was present for some of it, waiting around until I felt well enough to summon the strength to drive home. 

Quite the weekend. 

We had a blast, it was a great thing to be involved in and we, The Flightpath Estate team, all feel so honoured to be a part of it. Massive thanks to Waka, Gig and Matt at The Lion, Ian and Lizzie, all the DJs and acts. And a big thank you to the beautiful and brilliant Golden Lion crowd, all the dancers and fellow travellers. In no particular order and I know I’ll miss someone out so apologies to anyone whose name should be here and isn’t – Claire and Si, Annabel and Tessa, Rotter, Rusty, Emily, Sofia, Curley, Rico, Alan/ Moggie, Cat and Robert, Raphael, Dave Croft et al, James, John, Marc and Harriet and the Glasgow revellers, Ian, Hugh, Michael and the Liverpool contingent, Gill and Damo, Tommo and friends, Jono, Gary J, Dickie, Joanne and friends, Neil, Simon, Chris, Andy and Ruth, and all the people I bumped into on the floor, in the garden or around the decks whose names I can’t recall right now. Thank you each and every one of you. 

Straight To Your Heart

It is two years ago today that Andrew Weatherall died aged just 57 and it seems right that this blog pays tribute to him on the occasion- his work and music has contributed to 602 posts here, well over 10% of my postings. At The Flightpath Estate (a Facebook group that I’m co- admin of) there is a semi- regular feature called Sunday Social, a Sunday evening comment thread with a theme where anyone can chip in. A few weeks ago there was an event at the (real) Social in London with David Holmes DJing, a launch party for the pair of Heavenly compilations of Andrew’s remixes of the labels acts. Many of the Flightpath’s membership attended and on the Sunday night the Social was a thread where we suggested and posted links to songs and tracks that might make the ideal accompaniment for a hangover/ sore head/ comedown. The mix below is a group effort, the suggestions on the thread from the Sunday night. I’ve stitched them all together into one mix, an hour and a quarter of songs and tracks produced, written or remixed by Andrew plus one from Radioactive Man, Andrew’s collaborator in Two Lone Swordsmen, Keith Tenniswood, in solo mode. It’s slow and low, a downtempo mix, ambient in places, dubby in others and song based in yet more, laid out maybe rather than laid back. I hesitate to say it’s Weatherall in chill out mode but it’s definitely one for contemplation and reflection.  And I hope in some way it pays tribute to a man who is very much still missed.

The Flightpath Estate Sunday Social Mix February 2022

• Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood: The Crescents
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Tiny Reminder No. 3 (Calexico Remix)
• Calexico: III (Two Lone Swordsmen remix)
• Percy X v Blood Sugar: -3 (Emissions 2)
• Beth Orton: It’s This I Find I Am
• Two Lone Swordsmen: It’s Not The Worst I’ve Ever Looked… (Lali Puna Remix)
• Sabres Of Paradise: Siege Refrain
• Radioactive Man: Goodnight Morton
• Woodleigh Research Facility: Somnium
• The Liminanas Ft. Peter Hook: Garden Of Love (Lundi Mouille Mix)
• Peace Together: Be Still (Sabres Of Paradise Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: The Big Clapper (CPIJ Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: As Worldly Pleasures Wave Goodbye
• Primal Scream: Carry Me Home
• One Dove: Why Don’t You Take Me

I Cry Glory And Wave My Flag

Back at the start of the year it was announced that Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh’s Woodleigh Research Facility would be releasing a year long series of three track digital only EPs, one a month. The first one at the end of January was an EP called Into The Cosmic Hole. When it came out it was a fascinating piece of work, three sonic messages from Facility 2- the weird, shamanic title track, the robotic machine science fiction- electro of Phonox Special No 1 (Outer Space) and the homage to Stockholm Monsters and Martin Hannett of Birthday Three. Eleven more of these would be a superb way to mark the passing of the year, a year long advent calendar of the weird, the wired and the wonderful. Sadly, by the time the second release came out at the end of February he was gone. 

2020 has been coloured by Andrew’s passing for me, even with everything else that has happened. It’s a strange thing to be moved by the death of a person you don’t know and it’s not anything compared to what his family and close friends felt and are feeling still. His sudden death on February 17th brought a stream of loss and grief across social media. My Facebook and Twitter timelines were almost nothing but Andrew Weatherall for days. The broadsheet newspapers and the BBC news covered his life and career (he always baulked at that word when interviewed). Then the world then shut down. Events to celebrate Andrew’s life were shelved. The Flightpath Estate (a Facebook group I co- moderate with another fan, Martin Brannagan) began to grow, from three hundred fans to well over a thousand. People from Andrew’s real life began to join the group, the boundaries between fans and family and friends dissolving. Part of the increasing membership came from some press interest in the Weatherdrive, an online resource of Weatherall DJ mixes spanning the period from 1990 to 2020, from the heyday of acid house to ALFOS. Mixmag picked up on it and asked The Flightpath Estate if we’d like to write an article about the 10 best of Andrew’s DJ sets on the Weatherdrive. 

The Woodleigh Research Facility release campaign continued, updates from Andrew’s studio life, a monthly reminder that he was gone but still there. The recordings present a vast range of sounds but are clearly the work of the same people, Andrew’s intuitive nature and vision along with Nina’s creativity and studio production skills. As the months have ticked by I’ve played these EPs, some more than others admittedly, and noticed how the W.R.F. releases seem to echo music he made in the previous three decades, reverberations from the past into the present. The lengthy running times, like the remixes of the early 90s where the music has space and time to unfold at its own pace. David Harrow said that when they were in the studio making music as Blood Sugar listening to what they’d done, he’d often be ready to change the drum pattern or bring a new element in, and Andrew would say, ‘let it go round again’, and the track would be extended out for another pattern/ 12 bars. The trademark hissing drum machines and mechanical rhythms point back to the music he released on his three Emissions labels in the 1990s and the stranger, more abstract, one off recordings he made, such as the Glowing Trees 12″ he put out as Meek. The topline melodies point to the sound of Sabres of Paradise, especially the Haunted Dancehall album, and the bass- heavy mutant electro of Two Lone Swordsmen records. The metallic hi- hats and rattling snares sound like the ones on the TLS remixes of twenty years ago. The dub influence resonates through the Woodleigh EPs and through so much of his previous work (and DJ sets). The esoteric song titles could come from any point in his back catalogue. 

The monthly EPs will have given us thirty six tracks by the end of the year, a huge amount of music from someone whose creative flow was clearly in full swing. Looking back, even if you pick four songs from completely different parts of his back pages, there’s clearly a line running through everything. He reinvented his sound and moved from one identity to another, zigging when others zagged, from the remixes accompanied by Hugo Nicolson to Sabres of Paradise to Two Lone Swordsmen to The Asphodells to his solo records to WRF, but it’s all part of a body of work with common themes and a unifying vision. Even the stuff that is outlying and on the fringes- the secret side projects, the machine funk aliases like Rude Solo and Frisch und Munter, the panel beating techno of Lords Of Afford, the odd folk music of his Moine Dubh label, the shadowy collective Fort Beulah N.U. who made five one sided white label 12″ singles- fits into the world he created. He’d often play it down, be self- deprecating and modest, saying he was just a grand amateur, but the music is endlessly inventive. Even when he seemed to have driven himself down a one way road he’d manage to pull off a deft three point turn and come back with something else, something new. 

Jockey Slut, started in Manchester as a dance music fanzine and then became something much bigger, and interviewed the man many times. In the summer they announced they were going to publish a special edition book, Andrew’s interviews for the magazine compiled along with some new material (including an oral history of the acid house and Sabres years and a Richard Norris article). The book began to drop through letterboxes last week. Towards the back there is a double page spread about The Flightpath Estate and the Weatherdrive and its thousand hours of DJ mixes spanning Weatherall’s career, based around an interview with Martin. Towards the bottom of the page, and this was a surprise to me as I leafed through it for the first time, is my name and this blog’s name. 

Which, as that man on The Fast Show used to say, was nice. 

It was more than nice, it was incredible. A few people have since commented on social media that they were drawn back into the orbit of Andrew’s music because of this blog, which is amazing and lovely to hear. It’s what music blogging is for, to share the music and the world it’s created in with other people. In a way music blogs are just an updated version of the fanzines of the 1980s, but with far less photocopying and Letraset. That this blog has become a minor footnote in the story is crazy, humbling and when I think about it, a bit mind-blowing too. 

In an attempt to close the year in which he left I started to put together a mix of some of Andrew’s music. I wondered if I could somehow manage to summarise his vast and varied back catalogue into one handy hour long compilation but I realised almost immediately this would be an impossible task. In the end I chose a couple of  Two Lone Swordsmen tracks as a starting point and then went where it took me, throwing in quite a few of the ones he sings on, some remixes, some tracks that only came out on compilations and often just went with whatever the previous track seemed to suggest as a follow up. It ended up being a little over ninety minutes long and you can find it at Mixcloud.

Audrey Witherspoon’s Blues

• Two Lone Swordsmen: Constant Reminder
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Light The Last Flare
• X- Press 2: Witchi Tai To (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Patient Saints
• Andrew Weatherall: The Confidence Man
• Woodleigh Research Facility: Birthday Three
• The Asphodells: One Minute’s Silence (Wooden Shjips Remix)
• Andrew Weatherall: Kaif
• Michael Smith and Andrew Weatherall: Water Music
• Radioactive Man: Fed- Ex To Munchen (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• Andrew Weatherall: Youth Ozone Machine
• Andrew Weatherall: Cosmonautrix
• Andrew Weatherall: Saturday International
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Tiny Reminder No 3 (Calexico Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Sex Beat
• Andrew Weatherall: Privately Electrified
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Get Out Of My Kingdom

Tiers Mix

Another Bagging Area mix for you, an hour of old and new and fairly ambient/ drone/ instrumental based but with Mark E. Smith turning at the end to add his inimitable voice to proceedings. In fact the only other voice is Andrew Weatherall’s, heard briefly at the end of Prana Crafter’s Starlight, Sing Us A Lullaby, a moment that got to me the first time I heard it. You can find Tiers In December on Mixcloud. 

• Kams: Hopfen (Richard Norris Remix)
• Stray Harmonix: Mountain Of One
• Harold Budd: The Pearl
• A Winged Victory For The Sullen: Keep It Dark, Deutschland
• Lol Hammond and Duncan Forbes: Angel Hill
• Dreems: Shark Attack (Abyss Mix)
• Daniel Avery: A Story In E5
• Daniel Avery: Petrol Blue
• Prana Crafter: Starlight, Sing Us A Lullaby
• Radioactive Man: Goodnight Morton
• Harmonia and Brian Eno: Atmosphere
• Neotantra: Ataxy- Hills
• Woodleigh Research Facility: The Fallen
• The Fall: Bill Is Dead

Morton

One half of Two Lone Swordsmen and a solo artist in his own right Keith Tenniswood records as Radioactive Man, the name borrowed from Springfield’s most famous family. His debut self titled album came out on Rotters Golf Club back in 2001- I’m amazed that this record is nearly two decades old, I bought it close to when it was released, and I can’t fathom how it was nineteen years ago. Radioactive Man, the album, takes it’s cues from Detroit and from Dusseldorf. Tough kick drums and snares, subsonic bass, Kraftwerkian melodies on top, long synth notes and the energy of Britain’s underground club scene. It’s an album that sounds huge on a booming club system but that also works well in a car driving round in the night. Opener The Mezz is unsettling, a Geiger counter and a drum machine and some ominous synths. Closing track Uranium is a voice talking about elements, some metallic noise and a feeling of surfacing after being underwater. In the middle of the album is four minutes of beauty- some looped, rippling melodies ending with a burst of skronky noise. Goodnight Morton is a tribute to Keith’s beloved dog, named after the infamous Castlemorton free festival rave of 1992 that sent panic tearing through the UK government and Middle England, panic that resulted in legislation being passed to make it illegal to play music outdoors that is “sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”. 

Goodnight Morton