Monday's Long Song

Sabres Of Paradise have re- issued the pair of albums they originally released in the mid 90s (Sabresonic in 1993 and Haunted Dancehall in 1994). They played a handful of gigs in the summer (Fabric in May, Sydney Opera House a few days and half a world away and then two festival appearances- Primavera and Dekmantel) and have rrecently announced a UK tour for late November with gigs in Bristol, Salford, Sheffield, Leeds, Brighton and London. 

The two remaining members of Sabres, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, have done several interviews to accompany all this Sabres activity, three decades on from the last time they played live and released records. This interview at Ransom Note is a short one but very illuminating- Jagz lists and explains eight records that him, Gary and Andrew Weatherall were listening to when they made Sabresonic, the tracks that fed into the sound they were creating back in 1993. Andrew was DJing nationwide at the time and doing his monthly Sabresonic club night in Crucifix Lane, London Bridge station. The eight tracks include some earsplitting, seminal mid- 90s techno, the huge dub techno masterpiece that is Killing Joke's Requiem (A Floating Leaf Always Reaches The Sea Mix),  a legendary Plastikman drum machine massacre, Dub Syndicate and Colourbox, the hip hop production/ rap skills of Cypress Hill and Beastie Boys and this fifteen minute ambient epic...

Ob- Selon Mi- Nos (Repainted by Global Communication)

Mystic Institute was a one man outfit, Cornwall's Paul Kent. He pitched up in Mark Pritchard's studio and wrote and recorded two tracks. Global Communications' Tom Middleton was invited round and built an entirely new track around a third Pritchard track that took on a life of its own. Time stops, space expands, the clock hands tick and tock, synths play everlasting melody lines, the heavenly choir's voices drift in and out... 'pure blissed out distortion' as Jagz describes it. 

Monday's Long Song

Fluke's 1997 12" single Squirt came with a remix of Slid,  a track from 1993. The Modwheel Mix is ten minutes of late 90s progressive/ deep house, a track that has some of Underworld's DNA running through it. Modwheel is Tom Middleton of Global Communications, a man whose work is always worth listening to. This is a dancefloor number, easily slipped into any part of a late 90s DJ set, the vocal providing a slight contrast to the soaring, sunny day drums and synths. Never mind all that pre- millennial tension, this is infectious and optimistic dance music. 

Slid (Modwheel Remix)

Monday's Long Song

More shoegaze/ ambient techno crossover music for Monday, this one possibly the pinnacle of this run of posts (previous posts have featured Curve remixed by Future Sound Of London, Slowdive remixed by Reload and Spooky's remix of Lush). In 1991 shoegazers Chapterhouse released their debut album Whirlpool. The band were from Reading, the hotbed of shoegaze in the early 90s, but they'd been gigging since 1987 and had played alongside Spacemen 3- they also followed Nirvana on stage at the Reading Festival in 1991. 

In 1993 Chapterhouse released the follow up, Blood Music. Early editions of the album came with a second disc of remixes by Global Communications titled Pentamerous Metamorphosis. Chapterhouse had handed over the entire album to Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton, rising stars of ambient/ ambient techno. Global Communications constructed a five piece album, an electronic ambient trip that stands among the best work of the period and the scene, five tracks named Alpha Phase, Beta Phase, Gamma Phase, Delta Phase and Epsilon Phase, each ten or more minutes long. There are occasional sounds or samples that come from Chapterhouse's original recordings, a guitar part here and there say, but largely Mark and Tom constructed something entirely new using something else as a starting point. 

It was re- released in 1998 with a litigious sample from Star Wars removed- George Lucas may have made nine films about a group of freedom fighters rebelling against an evil empire but he's a bit touchy about single lines of dialogue being used by obscure ambient artists. The offending line was C- 3PO saying, 'I am fluent in over six million forms of communication'. Global Communications had a side project named Jedi Knights and were feeling the Lucasfilm heat a little by 1998. 

This is Alpha Phase, sixteen minutes of progressive futurism- long synth chords, twinkles, echoes, percussion, metallic clangs, bass thumps and then more and more layers and elements, a breakbeat and laser beams, a kick drum, and eventually as we head towards the ten minute mark, strings and piano-  celestial music, not drifting or aimless but heading ever onwards. How this album isn't better known and more praised is a mystery. 

Alpha Phase

Bank Holiday Monday's Long Songs Guest Post

Dr. Rob's blog Ban Ban Ton Ton has been the standard setter for all things electronic and Balearic. The Ban Ban Ton Ton and Bagging Area tie in continues today with a post that follows on from Dr. Rob's bumper Andrew Weatherall funk, soul and jazz post I hosted last week. 

Dr. Rob writes...

Late one night, early one morning, in 1993, Andrew Weatherall played The Chi-Lites` The Coldest Days Of My Life on London’s Kiss FM. A sad, strung-out soul symphony, from 1972, smothered not only in strings, but otherworldly reverb and field recorded tides and seabirds. Due to the hour, and the station being a pirate, I’m assuming that he was a little drunk, and / or a tad stoned. I know I was. Weatherall said that The Chi-Lites` orchestral oddity reminded him of Reload`s Le Soleil Et La Mer, which was what he span next. A piece of brand new IDM - “Intelligent Dance Music” - “ambient techno”, produced by Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton - a duo perhaps better known as Global Communications - and released on Creation Records` short-lived electronic off-shoot, Infonet. A label run by the Abbott brothers, Tim and Chris, who went on to work super closely with Oasis. 

I suspect it was the synths, mimicking wave after wave of crashing surf, and the soaring minor key melody, that brought about Andrew`s comparison. Probably not the broken breakbeats. The track is a classic of its genre, coolly managing to convey the rush, life’s urgency made plain, intensified, of a high head speeding while standing, or laying, perfectly still. 

Le Soleil Et Le Mer

Taken from Tom and Mark’s long-player, A Collection Of Short Stories, the tune later picked up a remix by The Black Dog. The triumvirate of Andy Turner, Ed Handley, and Ken Downie, turn the track into a bustle of busy bleeps and circuitry, clipped electric current. They shoot the strings into outer space, but keep the introspective, melancholic undertow. If anything it`s now even more of a mirror of a mind blown on Ecstasy, so that listening, flat on my back, I`m staring at the stars. It`s a thing of beauty created from seemingly random collisions. Sublime sonic serendipity. 

 Le Soleil Et Le Mer (Black Dog Remix)