Back in November we (The Flightpath Estate team) and Waka at The Golden Lion put on an event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of Sabresonic, the debut album by Sabres Of Paradise. We invited former- Sabres Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns to a Q&A at the Lion and Jagz promised to do a DJ set. The evening went really well and the chat was enjoyed by everyone there, as was Jagz’s set that followed.
Pete Lawton, Andrew Weatherall’s manager, arranged to have the Q&A filmed and both this has been uploaded to Youtube, split into two halves. I haven’t managed to watch to watch the whole thing yet- I’m the one hosting the Q&A and asking the questions. I needn’t have worried as much as I did in advance- both Jagz and Gary were superb guests, chatty and helpful and full of the kind of stories and details we were hoping for. But watching yourself on film is an uncomfortable experience and hearing yourself even more so (especially when you click play and think, ‘do I really sound that Manc?’). You can click the links here for Part One and Part Two.
In the week running up to the event Jagz messaged me to ask if I had an mp3 or WAV file of Andrew’s remix of S’ Express’s Find ‘Em, Fool ‘Em, Forget ‘Em, one of the remixes that sealed Andrew’s reputation in the early 90s as the remixer of the scene and period, a technicoloured, ecstatic, breathless, dancefloor deconstruction of what a song and remix could be. I sent my mp3, a fairly small file, to Jagz saying it might not stand up to being played through the Golden Lion’s soundsystem. Jagz said not to worry, he’d give it a remaster and a boost in his studio. This is that remastered, boosted file, as played at Sabresonic 30.
Andrew Weatherall died three years ago today and his presence continues to be felt in the culture he was part of though his absence does too. In April there are a series of events taking place to celebrate what would have been his 60th birthday including one at The Golden Lion in Todmorden which I am involved in, about which more later. It would be remiss of this blog to let today pass without a mention and it’s best to do it by celebrating his life and work. Three links today then to remember him by, from three different phases of his life and work. I was going to say career but I think Andrew would have spat out his tea at the suggestion that what he did was as planned as a career.
In 1991 when Andrew was becoming the remixer he did a remix for S’Express, the biggest flop single Mark Moore’s hyperdelic house/ disco outfit had. Andrew and Hugo Nicolson’s remix is however an absolute beauty, seven minutes forty nine of day- glo acid house, smiley face synths blaring over a crunchy breakbeat, Sonique’s ‘yeah yeah yeah’ vocal, various grunts and oohs and ahhhs buried deep within and some jubilant house piano chords. It’s a remix which is a bit overlooked among his early ones but is right up there among his best- an admittedly a crowded field.
If you always suspected there might be a link between Andrew Weatherall and Wham! but couldn’t quite put your finger on it, the bass player on this remix was Dion Estus, a Motown trained bassist and session musician, who also looked after the bottom end for Wham!’s touring band and then George Michael’s too.
In 2001 when Two Lone Swordsmen were at their most electro/ techno purist, they released a double pack of vinyl titled Locked Swords. The four sides contained a series of locked grooves, tones and samples, all used on their Turntables And Machines tour, designed to be used by DJs and bedroom DJs. It’s one of the few TLS pieces of vinyl I don’t own and I missed out on one that came up on Ebay recently. The tracks are numbered Black 1- 15 and White 1- 13. All are in the folder below as mp3s, for you to add to your collection and/ or muck about with if you have the software and inclination. I saw Andrew and Keith Tenniswood on the tour at Manchester’s Music Box, a fairly sparsely attended affair. They set up their Technics 1200s and laptops down the side of the room and began spitting out a few hours of bass heavy, breakbeat driven electro/ techno, much in the vein of the Tiny Reminders album which came out a year before.
In the mid- to-late 00s Andrew became a regular radio presence, first at BBC’s 6 Mix and then at NTS. His shows were a delight, never failing to introduce listeners to new music, sending them scurrying to websites and record shops to hunt down what he’d just played. Often he’d drop his own music in, much then unreleased (some still unreleased today- hopefully this can be rectified in the coming months and years). His chat was very good too, amusing, sardonic and self- mocking. Equally there were times when he’d shut up and just play the music, with thirty minute mixes a regular feature at the 6 Mix shows and the occasional NTS show being two hours of music non- stop.
This one here is from August 2019, the last time he darkened the BBC’s doorway, standing in for an absent Iggy Pop (I can imagine a young Andrew being amazed at that turn of events). The tracklist below shows all manner of delights, his beautifully dubbed out remix of Meatraffle, a still unreleased Woodleigh Research Facility track conjured up by him and Nina Walsh and some favourites from his youth in the shape of Be- Bop Deluxe and The Dream Syndicate.
Meatraffle: Meatraffle On The Moon (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
Krokakai: Bodhran Beat
Dust to Dust: Cantillate
Psycho & Plastic: Black Hole Acid Test
La Decadanse: Bardo State
The Woodleigh Research Facility: Vous Du
Llewellyn: Remote Scope
Enkidu: Shinkansen
Sansibar: Home
Photonz: Emerald City (Almaty Remix)
Felix Leifur: Brot 6
Ghost Culture: Meltwater
Fabio Monesi: Strings Of Love
De Sluwe Vos: Trans Magnetic Stimulation (Dexter Remix)
Alfie: Coasting
Be-Bop Deluxe: Electrical Language
The Dream Syndicate: Treading Water Underneath The Stars
Bagging Area 