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. 

Saturday Live

Sons Of Slough, the duo of Duncan Gray and Ian Weatherall, were reborn in 2021 with an album called Bring Me Sunshine, seven new tracks of squelchy chuggy nu- disco/ acid house with a couple of remixes thrown in for good measure. Duncan and Ian had re- united previously that year to record a heartfelt cover of New Order’s In A Lonely Place as IWDG, releasing it as a 12″ for Record Shop Day with remixes by David Holmes, Hardway Bros and Keith Tenniswood. Following that burst of activity (and a remix of Primal Scream earlier this year) they played three gigs in 2023, one in their home town, one at The Golden Lion in August and one in late September at Convenanza in Carcasonne. If we apply New Order’s standards of what constituted a global tour in the mid- 80s*, then that’s a Sons Of Slough world tour achieved in 2023. 

An EP came out yesterday, three tracks recorded live completely as played at Convenanza, in the courtyard of the castle, straight from the sound desk with no overdubs. I saw them play at The Golden Lion, a night to remember with a full on performance from the duo and by all accounts Convenanza was even better. 

The first track is One Up From Five, thumping tom toms, an upfront bassline, a keening guitar line and some lovely melodica. A sleek, dark groove with a big dubby undertow. It’s followed by Boston Crab, a six minute thumper, a more urgent track with an always rising, distorted bassline and some Detroit inflections, synth toplines dancing about, as the rhythm pushes on and on. 

The EP finishes with Without A Plan, a low rumble of bass and skittering percussion, whooshes and rushes, lights glancing off mirror balls and 21st century acid chug bouncing off the stone walls of a Medieval castle in south west France. There are some synth/ vocoder breakdowns that set pulses racing and ominous keyboard parts. When the vocoder resumes at four and a half minutes, there’s a hint of Without A Plan turning into Man To Man Meets Man Parish’s Male Stripper, a cheeky nod to the early 80s perhaps, chug and throb and heavily distorted robotic voice coming together perfectly. 

The latter two tracks were both filmed in this clip from the live gig in Slough in July.

Sons Of Slough (Live EP 2023) is available at Bandcamp and other digital retailers. They’ve got t- shirts too.

* The story, possibly apocryphal, is that Tony Wilson demanded a New Order world tour to bring some cash into the Factory coffers. Bernard was unwilling to tour but eventually relented telling the Factory boss, ‘ok Tony ok, we’ll do a world tour. The first gig’s in Macclesfield, you choose the other three’.

The Lion, The Sloth, The Sons Of Slough And Hardway Meets Monkton

I’ve spent the last two Friday nights getting the train from Manchester Victoria up to Todmorden, a twenty five minute train journey that drops me off a two minute walk from The Golden Lion, a pub (run by the most brilliant and generous hosts Waka and Gig) in a small town in West Yorkshire variously described as a portal, the vortex and the best pub in the world. 

On Friday 12th August Paul Simonon and Dan Donovan were due to play a DJ set. I bought a ticket back in March, the prospect of being in a pub with the bass player from The Clash too tantalising to miss out on. The Lion was busy from late afternoon, the crowd eagerly anticipating an evening with former members of the Clash and Big Audio Dynamite. News came through from London that Paul was unable to travel due a back injury. Dan Donovan played a blinder, spinning reggae, dub and dancehall to the packed pub and later on some Clash songs. One of the many highlights of Dan’s set was this 1985 Barrington Levy song…

Here I Come

I missed the last hour due to the train times back to Manchester- last train out of Tod is at 12.06am- and the need to connect with the last tram out of the city centre but it was a very good night. Hopefully Paul can make the trek north at some point to play at The Lion. One of the sights of the evening was the appearance of a giant sloth working its way through the pub just before Dan took to the decks. It seemed perfectly natural and exactly as things should be. 

Last Friday, 19th August, was a long planned tenth birthday party for Duncan Gray’s Tici Taci label, a night with the mighty Sons Of Slough (Duncan and Andrew Weatherall’s brother Ian) playing a live set upstairs with a Hardway Bros/ Monkton DJ set afterwards downstairs (Hardway Bros being Sean Johnston and Monkton being Duncan). Chris Rotter and Rusty provided warm up DJ duties, chilled tunes for those in the back room and beer garden. 

Sons Of Slough played to a packed room, heat dripping off the walls and ceiling by the end. They kicked off proceedings with their cover of New Order’s In A Lonely Place, a song they released as a tribute to Andrew back in 2021 as IWDG, Ian dedicating the song and then taking up melodica. 

In A Lonely Place is a moody song, New Order finding their way out after the death of Ian Curtis. Andrew was a huge fan of Factory and early New Order. Ian and Duncan’s cover adds some hefty 21st century bottom end to the song and a slo mo acid house rhythm. The only line from Bernard’s original lyrics that made it into the final IWDG version is the ‘how I wish you were here with me’, a poignant one for obvious reasons. 

This footage shows Ian and Duncan playing In A Lonely Place a few weeks ago in Windsor, a live set in front of an invited audience. There are clips of the set on various people’s Facebook pages but one on Youtube to link to yet. 

After In A Lonely Place Sons Of Slough played a seamless, non-stop set of acid house, electro, oompty boompty music, songs from their 2021 Bring Me Sunshine album, synths, keyboards, vocoder, melodica, guitar and laptop put through the Lion’s top class sound system. 

Downstairs Sean Johnston had made a start playing songs, waiting for Duncan to join him. The whole pub becomes a club once night falls, the mirrorball bouncing beams around the stone walls and floor. The crowd at The Golden Lion are, without fail, friendly and lovely people, everyone up for a good time, a cross generational smiley crew who want to dance. 

Sean played Jah Wobble and Sinead O’Connor’s Visions Of You early on and some slow paced stuff before Duncan joined him and they started to ramp it up a bit, playing back to back, thumpy, wiggy acid house/ dub disco tracks spanning the last four decades including Secret Circuit’s Jungle Dogs (Tiago Remix), Liaisons Dangerueses, the new Rich Lane one, Mandrake, Rule Six’s The Ride (a summer 2023 Tici Taci release) and Peza’s edit of Mystic Thug and Rock The Casbah. And loads more that I can’t remember or didn’t know or was too lost dancing to to want to know.  

Jungle Dogs (Tiago Remix)

Bring Me Sunshine

Sons Of Slough (Ian Weatherall and Duncan Gray) first made music back in the 1990s and most of their recordings date back to the early 21st century. Now reunited they have put out a new album called Bring Me Sunshine, a six track dub techno/ electro/ acid house punch (plus three remixes). This one, Sonblind, is a low slung pleasure with piano melody lines and huge bass, the sort of thing that hits all the right spots if you ever spent part of your youth in dark, sweaty clubs with strobe lights going off around you and music frying your synapses. 

There’s loads more like it on Bring me Sunshine and it’s perfect music for travelling to as well, the kick drums ticking off the miles and the synths swallowing up road or rail. Much More Spark is chugging dub techno, Basic Channel via Berkshire. 

As well as a very tasty Rude Audio remix of the above there’s a Sons Of Slough remix of I Slip Away by Rich Thair. Rich is the drummer in Red Snapper, a group who have explored jazz, techno, and all points in between since the mid 90s. Their latest single The Warp And The Weft is a slowed right down head nodder, led by some really nice double bass, keys, trombone and a rap from Natty Wylah.