Raise Your View Of Heaven

There's nothing like coming back to a grey northern English August to bring a holiday abruptly to an end but as people say, 'don't be sad it's over, be happy it happened'. Italy was a delight in every way from the busy streets of Napoli to the epic nature and scale of Pompeii, the Bay of Naples and everything around overshadowed by Mount Vesuvius, to the beauty of the Amalfi Coast and its seaside towns. The picture at the top of the post was our view for five days, across the valley from or accommodation on the hillside in Pukara, Tramonti, the road to Maori way below us. 

Naples is a busy city with an energy very much its own. It's also filled with reminders that their football club, SSC Napoli, won Serie A in June, only the fourth time they've done so. Two of the previous championships were in the 1980s and due to the feet and brains of Diego Maradona, a man who has attained the status of deity in Napoli. 

Rock Section (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

In 2014 Julian Cope wrote some music to go with the fictional bands in his novel One Three One, 'a time shifting, Gnostic hooligan, road novel', set partly at the Italia '90 World Cup. It's a brilliant and wild read. The fullest realisation of the music came with the track named after the book's main character, Rock Section, which came with an Andrew Weatherall remix as a result of Weatherall's status as artist in residence at Faber and Faber, a post created for him by Lee Brackstone. Weatherall and Cope- what's not to like?

Rock Section was credited to Dayglo Maradona (a cover of a 1979 song by the also fictional Skin Patrol). For that name alone, Cope is a genius. The remix is one of those ones from his purple patch in the 2010s with Tim Fairplay as assistant knob twiddler and engineer. Faber and Faber released 250 copies on white vinyl. It's very rare but there's a copy on Discogs currently priced at £164.95 (plus shipping). Synth arpeggios, motorik drum machine beats, endless forward progression.

I could write about Pompeii and Herculaneum at length- maybe at some point soon I will. Both are awe inspiring places and to stand in their streets, at the shop counters, in the entrance halls and rooms of the villas and houses, to walk up the steps of the theatre and stand in the Forum, is to feel a direct link with the people of two thousand years ago who were surely just like us in many ways. They worked, they went to the shops to buy bread, spent their money on entertainment and wine, and if they could afford it bought paintings and pictures for their walls. The sheer scale of Pompeii is on its own mind blowing. We spent four hours there, wandering round the streets of the city and found something to discover on every corner. 

After a couple of days on the outskirts of Napoli we rented a car and after a stop off at the two Roman sites drove south to the Amalfi coast. Driving in Italy is not for the faint hearted and the roads over the mountains to Amalfi are an experience in themselves. Maiori and Minori are seaside towns, popular with the Italians as holiday destinations and we loved both (Maiori was closest to us and our main base for five days). I could have stayed longer- much longer. Italy is a beautiful country. 

More to follow. In the meantime this record celebrated thirty five years since its release this week in 1990. Thirty five years is ridiculous isn't it? It sounds too modern, too recent, to be three and a half decades old. And if you want to really fry your head thirty five years before that, it was 1955- the dawn of rock 'n' roll. 

Raise was the debut release by Bocca Juniors (and there's another Napoli/ Maradona link- Bocca Juniors are the Argentinian club Diego played for before his move to Europe in 1982, first to Barcelona and then to Napoli). The musical Bocca Juniors were Andrew Weatherall, Terry Farley, Pete Heller and Hugo Nicholson with vocals by Anna Haigh and a rap by Protege. 

Raise (63 Steps To Heaven) (Redskin Rock Mix)

Raise is summer of 1990 writ large, a huge dance tune with massive piano riff (cribbed from Jesus On The Payroll by Thrashing Doves but I think that that riff was re- purposed and beefed up from elsewhere, a house record whose name I've temporarily forgotten). Weatherall wrote the lyrics, partly borrowing from Aleister Crowley- 'do what they wilt shall be the whole of the law'- and partly a stand up and be counted throw down, 'Raise your hands if you think you understand/ Raise your standards if you don't'. It's a fantastic, huge sounding, grin inducing record. Bocca Juniors would go on to make another single, Substance, in 1991 and then Andrew split, deciding to go it alone and 'not make records by committee', choosing a different, less well trod and less well lit path. Not the last time he did that.

 

Monday's Long Songs

Hugo Nicolson's return to musical action has seen him land at Brighton's Higher Love Recordings, a thoroughly reliable source of Balearic and electronic music. His new EP, Black Stick, came out last week, three tracks, all over seven minutes long and all first rate. The lead track is Little Kind, nine minutes of acid madness with burbling 808s and crunchy drums, a seabed- depth bassline and some of those wiggy melodies that send dancefloors off into orbit. You can get all three at Higher Love's Bandcamp. 

The two that follow- Spanner and Zombie- are equally good. Spanner is percussive, thumpy and has a voice talking about destiny. Zombie is swampy and tribal, lots of FX and a squeak at the top end. The descending synthline sounds a little like a distant relative of Don't Fight It, Feel It, a record Hugo produced with Andrew Weatherall many, many moons ago. 

Back in 1991 Hugo remixed Julian Cope's Beautiful Love, a track that came out on bright pink vinyl. The drums are a slowed down sample from a jazz record- someone told me which record once but was ages ago and I've forgotten. Hugo drops in a wobbly bassline, some FX and gets Copey into a very '91 groove. 

Love L.U.V. (Beautiful Love)

Field Of Dreams

I've been excited about this EP for some time and it's finally out today. Hugo Nicolson is the man who learnt his trade engineering at On U Sound with Adrian Sherwood, went on to ably assist Andrew Weatherall on his groundbreaking early productions and remixes, and then produced several of Julian Cope's most significant albums (Peggy Suicide and Jehoavakill). He recently moved home from LA and has got an EP out today on Brighton's Higher Love label, a  label that knows its musical onions. Hugo's EP kicks off with his own track, the nine minute extravaganza that is Field Of Dreams. Chanting voices, a big kick drum, tumbling reverb- laden piano, and an amazing snaking horn line, the sound of the souk over a thumping four four. All manner of sonics follow- distorted, buzzing bass, rattling percussion, dancing synthlines... everything swirling around and swaying with those horns and the voices in unison. There's a four minute radio edit which does the job as a taster but you going to want the full nine minutes for maximum joy...

There are remixes, three of them from Bagging Area repeat offenders/ heavyweights David Holmes, Hardway Bros and Rude Audio. 

Holmes' remix judders and spins with an energy all of its own, the beats coming on strong and those chanting voices isolated before they're joined by a kaleidoscopic whirl of percussion and sounds, like being trapped on a rotating dancefloor, giddy and heady fun that threatens to tip over into madness. There's a pause at three and half minutes for a breather, a breakdown and some piano but those horns re- enter, summoning you back to the dance. The chanting section at five a a half minutes is equally hypnotic and then the horns work their magic again. A friend's partner said Holmes' remix made her heart race and made her feel a tad anxious and I can see what she means. 

The Hardway Bros Cosmic Interpolation Mix sets out as Hardway Bros remixes often do, a cosmic disco drum pattern and Sean's trademark s-p-a-c-e-d production. The chanting voices make an appearance in this remix too as Sean keeps things more linear, a propulsive and driving remix that gets on the train tracks and heads relentlessly across the expanses of the desert with the occasional bleepy breakdown and face melting synth whooshes. Like Holmes' remix, it doesn't do things by halves, both clocking in north of nine minutes. 

Rude Audio usually use ten minutes as the standard length for a remix. Surprisingly this one is closer to seven minutes, a blinding dub- dance version with bass that will shake your clothing and rattle your ribcage, synths that ricochet left and right and those chanting voices swirling around while the Arabian horn pulls us back into the dance. The entire EP is a trip, one of this year's best releases thus far, and should be soundtracking many an event. Build it and they will come. 

Hugo Nicolson's Field Of Dreams can be bought and heard at Bandcamp. 

2024 In Dub

The list making has started. Some of my blogging compadres have already pressed the Best Of 2024 button. At some point before Christmas I will post an end of year review and list. In the meantime, here's some of 2024's highest quality dubwise sounds wrapped up in an hourlong mix- there's much more that could have fitted into this mix too but in the end I wanted to keep it to under sixty minutes. Repetitive, bass heavy, echo- laden and spacious sounds for Sunday. 

2024 In Dub

• Coyote: Living In Heaven
• BTCOP: Sabre 540 (Rude Audio Remix)
• Five Green Moons: Garbage Van Exhaust
• Uj Pa Gaz: Roxy (Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown)
• David Harrow and Little Annie: End Of Times (Rude Audio's Immutable Remix)
• Hugo Nicolson and David Harrow: Revolvalution (Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio VIP Remix)
• Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s: In Minus Shadows
• The Woodentops: Dream On (Rolo's Dub)
• Richard Norris: Fever Dub
• Coyote: OMG

In early December Coyote released a dub 12", two huge dub tracks,Living In Heaven and OMG,  that are in their own description 'light as a feather- heavy as lead'. 

Living in Heaven sounds like it be from side six of Sandinista!, a massive compliment in this household- it also has a touch of the Sabres Of Paradise Ysaebud single. Rattling bassline, echo and vocal sample. Coyote add some strings. Lovely deep stuff

Rude Audio's remix of BTCOP's Sabres 540 came out on Tici Taci in February, a remix that Rude Audio's Mark Ratcliff thinks his among his best work. He's right. 

Five Green Moons is Justin Robertson's latest venture, a post- punk/ pagan dub excursion, an eleven track album that continues to reveal new depths with each play. Justin appears later on too, with a track from the EP he released on the excellent Pamela label in April, four tracks all to some extent infused with dub. 

Uj Pa Gaz is from Tirana, Albania, a Tici Taci recording artist, producer and DJ. Roxy came out in late July and appears here in Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown remix , heavy duty dub action from Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray. There is a very beguiling Middle Eastern melody line that plays out from the start, tumbling percussion, rimshots, delay and the deep hit of dub bass.

David Harrow has turned sixty this year and has celebrated with a release every month, a treasure trove of music emanating from his LA studio. His EP with On U legend Little Annie, the New York post- punk/ dub poet, had the original version of End Of Times, an instrumental, an acapella, and six remixes, two by Rude Audio- the Immutable and Protean Remixes. The Immutable is the dubbier of the two, a dubbed out rhythm underpinning Little Annie's poetry, 'this is not a happy hour'.

And Rude Audio turn up again, their third appearance here, now with the assistance of the wonderful Dan Wainwright. They took a track recorded by two former Andrew Weatherall cohorts- David Harrow and Hugo Nicolson and spun out into psychedelic dub complete with a brain melting ukulele solo. There are Sabres Of Paradise sounds scattered throughout it.

The Woodentops released a new album in April this year, Fruits From The Deep, a deep and rewarding trip under the sea. Dream On was one of the highlights, remixed in dub style by main Woodentop Rolo McGinty. Dream On (Rolo's Dub) starts and ends with an airplane taking off. Flying off to somewhere warm seems like a dream right now. 

Richard Norris' Bandcamp subscription service rewards on a monthly basis, a project that started with his Music For Healing ambient project but has blossomed into other areas, not least his Oracle Sound series of albums. Oracle Sound is (currently) three albums of superb, home grown dub. Fever Dub is from 2024's Oracle Sound Volume Three. 

Fifty Minutes Of Rude Audio

Rude Audio are a shadowy South London musical collective, specialists in dub techno and sleek chuggy cosmic disco. Based around the core of producer Mark Ratcliff, they've been pushing music my way for some time after I stumbled across some tracks in 2017. Since then Mark has become a friend, one of The Flightpath Estate team, and someone I've shared a DJ booth with on several occasions. Mark can actually do all the technical stuff, beat matching and mixing, and it's a pleasure to watch him play records/ CDs. Especially when in the middle of a set when he'll do something like randomly drop in Walk On by Neil Young from 1973's On The Beach amidst a bunch of dubby dance music and cosmic disco tunes. 

Mark's music as Rude Audio has been picking up the right kind of support in recent times. Andrew Weatherall was playing it in 2019 and early 2020. Don Letts has featured Rude Audio tracks in his sets. David Holmes played his and Dan Wainwright's recent remix of Hugo Nicolson and David Harrow at NTS last week, a show you can listen to here. Much of the Rude Audio back catalogue and the tracks below plus the ones mentioned but not included in the mix can all be found at the Rude Audio Bandcamp. 

Fifty Minutes Of Rude Audio

• Revolvalution (Dan Wainwright And Rude Audio VIP Remix)
• Early Morning
• Big Heat
• Big Heat (Bedford Falls Players Remix)
• Railton Ruckus (Bedford Falls Players Remix)
• Rumble On Arab Street
• The Grinning

Revolvalution came out on Higher Ground recently, a seven track EP from the combined talents of Hugo Nicolson and David Harrow- both former Andrew Weatherall right hand men. Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright turned in two very long dubbed out, Sabres style remixes, the VIP the further out there of the pair. Dub bass. Space echo. Bubbles. Backwards ukulele. Dan and Rude Audio have worked together a lot, most extensively on their Psychedelic Science album from 2023, an eight track dub odyssey with Ram Das, The Grateful Dead and David Bowie all featuring as part of their blissed out, widescreen vision. The VIP Remix has the ability to make you feel like you've been up all night and imbibing even if you haven't. 

Early Morning, another Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio collaboration, came out in 2021 on Tici Taci. Slo- mo dub splendour. 

Big Heat was the title track of a 2022 EP that came with two remixes, one by the superb Bedford falls Players, and one from Rich Lane. It also featured Rudely Fresh and an Al McKenzie (from D:Ream) remix of Dust Devil. Big Heat turns up the tempos and the heat, a throbbing, chugging dub techno delight with squelchy bass. Rude Audio have tunes to spare and there are several digital/ CD EPs with B-sides and extra tracks that could easily have made the cut here- but then this mix would have been three hours long. The Bedford Falls Players remix is a joy, full of some of BFP man Mark Cooper's signature sounds and touches, a remix that keeps giving and keeps rewarding.

Bedford Falls Players also remixed the title track from the Railton Ruckus EP, from 2021 (a track also remixed by Hugo Nicolson). Railton Road runs between Brixton and Herne Hill. In the 1970s and 80s the Brixton end was the front line, a hotbed of radicalism, activism, squats, and bass culture. 

Rude Audio have a long standing interest in Middle Eastern sounds and scales. Rumble On Arab Street came out on the Rude Redux EP in 2018 and then again in remixed form on Street Light Interference. The tracks on Rude Redux were the ones that first really captured my attention, To The Sun, To The Half Moon and Pipeline Screaming along with Rumble On Arab Street. 

The Grinning was a vinyl only 7" release on Golden Lion Sounds in 2023, a split single backed with Richard Norris and Findlay Brown. It is a rumbling, tumbling, thumpy piece of dub techno with echo- laden timbales and intense synths quiggles, the musical equivalent of being blinded by the strobe (in a nice way). 

Revolvalution

Hugo Nicolson and David Harrow are both former Andrew Weatherall collaborators. Hugo was Andrew's number one studio right hand and engineer on almost all the early remixes and on the Screamadelica- era Primal Scream songs and One Dove's Morning Dove White album and attendant singles, the words 'ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson' appearing on the sleeve notes of a multitude of Weatherall remixes and productions. David Harrow worked with Andrew a few years later, writing, recording and producing with Andrew as Blood Sugar, Deanne Day and Planet 4 Folk Quartet and releasing in his own right as Technova on the Sabres Of Paradise label. They've come together (arf!) now to release a mammoth, genre busting seven track EP on Brighton's Higher Love- two versions of the track Revolvalution and a slew of mighty remixes. 

Revolvalution is a ten minute epic, a sampledelic, kaleidoscopic riot of electronic psychedelia, with sounds whizzing by in a blur of arpeggios, fizzing synths, lasers, and cartoon- like snatches of voices, underpinned by a non- stop sequencer bassline and four- four drums. Occasionally it shifts, a key change and bass drop accompanied by whoops, and then another shift, a breakdown into squiggles and snares, and then that bassline comes back in, Moroder banging at the door and a helium voice chanting. 

David Harrow provides two of the remixes, the heavy and acidic Square Circle Remix and the percussive, deep dub Circle Squared Remix. Rule Six bring their own take with their remix, some disco stylings and mirror ball action and a sprung bassline straight from the early 80s. 

Hugo and David both spent significant periods of time with Adrian Sherwood and On U Sound, a large part of the reason Andrew was so keen to work with them I'm sure. It's no surprise therefore that dub is present and correct on the EP. Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright put out an album together last year, the dub splendour of Psychedelic Science, and they bring a pair of dub remixes of Revolvalution, cutting the tempo and finding the echo and the space. The Original Remix is a ten minute psychedelic dub excursion, with an opening four minutes of bass, reverberations and FX, that eventually falls apart into a raga, with a lovely sitar solo, shakers and blips and boings. The bass comes back, the rhythm picks up, the springs and whoops return, a Hawaiian guitar glides on top, tropical birds call- its all very lovely and very early 90s Weatherall in spirit.

The Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright VIP Remix is slower and lower, supremely spaced out, with a lazy hip hop drum break, loads of delay and echo, and a reel to reel feel that goes on and on. Grin inducing, head nodding stuff. 

An Hour Of Weatherall Covers

We all love a good cover version don't we? The reconstructing of a familiar song in a new form, the buzz of hearing someone do a song differently, irreverently or lovingly, and the nodding of the head to influences and inspirations. At times cover versions can also seem a bit lazy, a way out of writer's block or something thrown together for B-side at a late hour and under pressure, but when done well and with the right intent, they're a joy. 

In two weeks time it would have been Andrew Weatherall's 60th birthday had he lived. There are a series of events taking place nationally throughout April to celebrate this- a full on night at Fabric in London with a huge line up of DJ talent together with nights in Glasgow, Belfast and Todmorden, all places with strong Weatherall connections and crowds. I'll come back to the Todmorden one nearer the time (29th April) with more details but it does include a second ride out for The Flightpath Estate DJ team (which includes yours truly). I expect to run several Weatherall posts over the next few weeks- that's probably not much different to usual round here, he does tend to feature fairly often- and thought I'd kick off with this one, a mix for Sunday of cover versions Andrew either recorded as an artist himself or other other artists he remixed. It is not surprisingly a fairly eclectic bunch of songs and artists. It now occurs to me that I should have put the originals together as a mix too so maybe that will follow at some point a companion piece.

Fifty Five Minutes Of Andrew Weatherall Cover Versions

• Carry Me Home
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves)
• Witchi Tai To (2 Lone Swordsmen Remix)
• The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• A Love From Outer Space (Version 2)
• Sex Beat
• Slip Inside This House
• Goodbye Johnny (Andrew Weatherall's Nyabinghi Noir Mix)
• Faux/ Whole Wide World

Carry Me Home is a cover of a Dennis Wilson song from 1973, a wracked funereal blues for a dying soldier in Vietnam that was written for the 1973 album Holland but was left off. 'Life is meant to live/ I'm afraid to die', he sings. Primal Scream's version which Andrew produced is from the Dixie- Narco EP, a very downbeat and beautiful way to pay homage. Andrew and Hugo Nicolson's mix of instruments and production is stunning, Duffy's electric piano at the start and the acoustic guitar and cello in the end section especially so. 

Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a Saint Etienne cover of a Neil Young song. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. Andrew's remix sent the song into a dubbed out bliss, Augustus Pablo- esque melodica in the first half (played by Pete Astor of The Weather Prophets), the Jean Binta Breeze dub poetry sample in the middle cutting the track in half, and then the song appearing in the second (along with the Jean 'cool and deadly' sample). 

Witchi Tai To was a 2007 single by X- Press 2, the Two Lone Swordsmen remix adding the live drums of their sound from that period and matching the Wrong Meeting albums of the same year. The original was a a 1971 single by Jim Pepper, a Native American singer and saxophonist who took a peyote chant his grandfather taught him and turned it into a hybrid jazz/ Native American song. X- Press 2's cover was sung by Tim de Laughter of The Polyphonic Spree. 

The Drum was a single for The Impossibles, an Edinburgh duo who made early 90s jangly indie- pop. The original is a Slapp Happy song from 1974. Weatherall's remix, from 1991, is a lesser known one from his early 90s hot streak, a tour de force of throwing whatever is at hand in the studio/ imagination at a remix and it working. Andrew was ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson on this one too. 

A Love From Outer Space was the calling card from the 2013 album by The Asphodells, the outfit he formed with Timothy J. Fairplay after they had bene working together on remixes and their own material and realised they had enough for an album. Andrew's vocals were a big feature of The Asphodells (following on from the Two Lone Swordsmen records of the previous few years where he stepped up to the mic for the first time since the early 80s). A Love From Outer Space also became the name of his traveling club night, with compadre Sean Johnstone, a night never knowingly exceeding 122 bpm. The original song is by late 80s one offs A.R. Kane, a duo of dreads who made spaced out dub/ dreampop. 

Sex Beat was a Two Lone Swordsmen single in 2004 and on the From The Double Gone Chapel album of the same year, a radical shift in sound and style after the pure electro of 2000's Tiny Reminders. Andrew and Keith Tenniswood becoming a garage band with Nick Burton on drums and Chris Mackin on guitar. Sex Beat was such a blast when it came out in 2004, an energetic swerve in the road to somewhere new. Sex Beat was on The Gun Club's 1981 debut Fire Of Love, a blues/ rockabilly/ Southern Gothic classic. Leader, singer and writer Jeffrey Lee Pierce pops up again in this mix in the form of Goodbye Johnny.

Slip Inside This House is a cover of The 3th Floor Elevators song from their 1967 album Easter Everywhere, the second song on Primal Scream's 1991 opus Screamadelica, a juddering statement of acid house intent after the rock n' roll opening of Moving On Up. Hypnotone's Tony Martin was involved in the production of this track too. It was sung by Throb. Bobby Gillespie is said to have bene suffering from 'acid house flu'.

Goodbye Johnny was on Primal Scream's 2013 album More Light. It came from a covers project that paid tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Weatherall's spaced out remix tips its hat to the Nyabinghi sound of African Head Charge, a big influence on Andrew. 

Faux/ Whole Wide World comes from a Radio One session from 2004. Faux was the first single ahead of From The Double Gone Chapel, a scuzzed up slice of electro- rockabilly, combining rapid programmed drums and fuzz guitars with Weatherall vocals and lyrics about the love of his life, Elizabeth Walker. As a touring band Two Lone Swordsmen had a habit of working Faux into Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World, a peerless 1977 single. At the time Andrew was recommending the new album then just released by Eric, Bungalow Hi, a record Andrew described as 'like Duane Eddy meets Aphex Twin'. The recording here is ripped from a radio session, never officially released. There was a version on the Rotters Golf Club website for a while too, part of a three song session they recorded playing at the Bloc Weekender. Of all the lyrics that swirl around Andrew's world and outlook, 'I don't do faux', is as good as any. 

Find 'Em

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 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. 

Find 'Em Fool 'Em Forget 'Em (The Eighth Hour Mix)

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 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. 

Locked Swords

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
• Curses:Insomnia
• The Beat Escape: Seeing Is Forgetting
• Frobisher Neck: Isi
• Andrew Weatherall: Selling The Shadow
• Hamish Kilgour: Opening / Welcome To Finkelstein

Forty Minutes Of One Dove

After last week's Dot Allison mix I thought I should go back to the source and do a One Dove mix. One Dove's album Morning Dove White was finally released in October 1993 after a year of hold ups and wranglings about whose mixes and which versions should be on the final record, Stephen Hague's radio friendly sheen or Andrew Weatherall's lengthy dubby productions. We all know what history tells us about those kind of arguments. I bought it and played it a lot, an album that can transport me back to the flat I lived in then with a friend and the times we spent listening to it, the smell and hum of the gas fire, the ashtray filling up with cigarette butts. It sound-tracked our post- club arrivals back home, the winter of 1993- 94, a couple of break ups, us making our way into adult jobs, all that kind of stuff. I've listened to it ever since, an album that continues to give alternately shivers and a warm glow. Weatherall's production, on the back of Screamadelica, is expansive, restless, superbly chilled out but warped too and oddly timeless. The moody/ elegiac songs of Dot Allison, Jim McKinven and Ian Carmichael were clearly good to start with but once Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson got into the studio and began working on them they went somewhere else, sprinkled with the magic dust of the early 90s. Stephen Hague's mixes are possibly a little too shiny in places (and kept mainly for the CD version) but the vinyl is an album to rank alongside the best of the 90s. I once said here, many years ago, that it was brilliant but felt slightly flawed, like there was something missing. I'm not sure what that was or what I meant now. The album's cast included Weatherall's Sabres Of Paradise mates Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner, Jah Wobble's bass on There Goes The Cure, Phil Mossman (Sabres guitarist and future member of LCD Soundsystem) and Primal Scream's Andrew Innes. It's never been re- issued on vinyl. Copies on Discogs are currently starting at £80. Mine is most definitely not for sale. 

Putting together a One Dove mix without just sequencing a bunch of songs from Morning Dove White pointed me towards the remixes and B-sides. I couldn't find room on this mix for either Weatherall's majestic dubbed out odyssey, Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out) or their spaced out cover of Jolene- a second forty minute mix should happen at some point- and there are several Sabres remixes of Transient Truth not included below, the mighty Old Toys and Old Toys Dub are both stunners. The ten minute Guitar Paradise version of White Love looks like a glaring omission too. And if Fallen feels little like it was just tacked onto the end, then that's because it was. I just couldn't not include it in one version or another.

Forty Minutes Of One Dove

• Why Don't You Take Me
• Skanga
• Transient Truth (Squelch Mix)
• Transient Truth (Death Of A Disco Dancer)
• Why Don't You Take Me (Underworld Remix)
• Fallen (Nancy And Lee Mix) 7" Edit

Why Don't You Take Me is from Morning Dove White and was a single in December 1993, the now London Records owned Boy's Own label putting it out as the third single from the album and hoping for a hit. The Glaswegian dub reggae of Skanga was a B-side (along with Jolene, not included here). 

Transient Truth was also from Morning Dove White and released as an official 12" (with the Old Toys mixes) and a white label promo, both in 1992. The white label contained four Sabres Of Paradise remixes of the song, the two included here plus the Paradise Mix and the Sabres Fuzz Dub. I've no idea if the Death Of A Disco Dancer remix is a reference to The Smiths song of the same name. 

Underworld's remixes of Why Don't You Take Me are both up there with their best from the period, released on double blue vinyl along with a Secret Knowledge remix. Underworld's Up  2 Down remix is a long thumper. The one I've included here is dubbed out Underworld style and is magnificent. 

Fallen is where the One Dove story starts, Dot's breathless vocal and the ambient/ dub/ acid house music initially built around a Supertramp sample which led to legal action and the offending harmonica  being removed. Weatherall's remix for the 12" came with the title Nancy And Lee Mix, which sent many of us scurrying back to our parent's record collections looking for Sinatra and Hazlewood albums and singles. The version here is an edited one from a  February1992 7" single and I include just because it's such a great song it can even survive having four minutes chopped off it. 

Looking at all of the tracks I've left off this I think part two may have to come sooner rather than later. 

Raise

Halfway up the towpath between Sale and Timperley (a nice stroll with the promise of a cup of tea and a sausage sandwich at the cafe at Timperley tram station before returning home) there is a post with a Boy's Own sticker on it (pictured). It's a bit mystifying. Boy's Own was very much a London thing and the sticker must be quite recent given it's not faded at all. It was pleasing to see it though, a little piece of 80s/ 90s culture stuck to a post by the Bridgewater Canal. 

Boy's Own was the collective formed by Andrew Weatherall, Terry Farley, Cymon Eckel and Steve Meyes, bored out in the west of London (Slough, Windsor) in the mid- to- late- 80s but with ideas, enthusiasm, records and an interest in clothes, music, clubs and culture. They started a fanzine, semi- inspired by Liverpool fanzine The End (which was produced by The Farm's Peter Hooton). A mate with a printer ran off 500 copies which they sold at the football (Farley was mainly the football fan, a regular at Chelsea), outside pubs and clubs and in a few shops. Their connections and sense of humour and style ensured the first edition sold out and would go on to produce more issues, covering whatever ticlled their interest. Issue one had an interview with Martin Stephenson (of The Daintees), Weatherall's account of a weekend in Manchester at the Festival Of The Tenth Summer, a review of a Trouble Funk gig and a column titled Uppers and Downers, a list of what's in and what's not. It ran for twelve editions through to spring 1992 when Weatherall called time on it and the others agreed with him.

Boy's Own went on to DJ, to put on club nights and events, set up a record label and briefly became a band/ group/ collective called Bocca Juniors- Weatherall and Farley with Pete Heller, Weatherall's regular right hand production man Hugo Nicolson and singer Anna Haigh. Their debut single released in summer 1990, was a tremendous slice of Balearic house called Raise. It was the first release on Boy's Own Productions record label, catalogue number BOIX1, the logical progression of some young men using Letraset, a typewriter and some photocopied pictures to make a fanzine to sell to a few like minded souls. It is a great record too, a summer of 1990 classic. 

Raise (63 Steps To Heaven) Redskin Rock Mix

The intro, some piano notes, the screech of tyres and a sample saying, 'boy! Am I gonna wake you up', gives way to a huge piano riff, the sort that can silence a field of people and turn an entire dancefloor into a seething mass of arms in the air. The crunching beats kick in and Anna starts singing, 'It's often said, that I want never gets...' as horns parp away behind her. The lyrics, written by Weatherall, quote Aleister Crowley- 'do what you will shall be the whole of the law/ raise your view of heaven keeping both feet on the floor'- and the chorus is about generally not putting up with second best- 'raise your hand if you think you understand/ raise your standards if you don't'. Early 90s positivity but with a very Weatherall edge. 

The piano riff has been the subject of some debate. Largely thought to be a sample from Jesus On The Payroll by Thrashing Doves, a while ago Sean Johnston suggested it was actually taken from this 1989 Italo 12" by The Night- S- Press (although it could be the Thrashing Doves piano riff sampled or re- played I guess- either way, I see no reason to doubt Sean). 

Bocca Juniors were named after the Argentine football club, the home of Diego Maradona. In the summer of Italia 90, No Alla Violenza and World In Motion this was all quite right. The Raise video is a blast too, a sea of faces having fun and the famous 'Drop acid not bombs' graffiti- a proper time capsule. 

 

Across the various formats there were a number of different mixes of Raise. The Piano Hoe Down is a stripped back, largely instrumental version, the riff, bassline and those 1990s drums with extended piano vamping and background voices, very nicely stretched out for maximum dancefloor fun. 

Raise (63 Steps To Heaven) Piano Hoe Down

There was a second 12" with some Tackhead remixes, Adrian Sherwood's outfit with Keith Leblanc, Skip McDonald and Doug Wimbish. The Dubhead remix pulls an extended version of Protege''s rap to the fore. There are two other mixes- the Heavenly Rap and the Philly House Skank- as well as another Tackhead one but I don't have any of those on the hard drive at the moment. These three should be more than enough to be going on with. 

Raise (63 Steps To Heaven) Tackhead Dubhead Remix

Forty Minutes Of My Bloody Valentine

The other night I was about to go upstairs. Lou was halfway down, a quizzical look on her face.  

Her: 'There's a horrible, whining, drilling sound coming out of the computer... what is it?'

Me: 'Dunno'.

I rushed upstairs to see what was happening. I'd left my mp3 player plugged in to the USB slot to charge it. When it's fully charged it switches itself on and starts playing random songs, through it's own tiny, tinny speaker. The 'horrible, whining, drilling sound' was You Made Me Realise by My Bloody Valentine. 

Me: 'That's not a horrible, whining, drilling sound. That's You Made Me Realise by My Bloody Valentine.'

A My Bloody Valentine Sunday mix had occurred to me a while back and this seemed like an ideal opportunity to put it together. They are an acquired taste I think it's fair to say and there are times when if the mp3 player is in shuffle mode in the car, they can jar and disrupt a good flow of songs like few other groups. The string bending, feedback, tremelo, full on assault of Kevin Shields and Belinda Butcher against the sometimes raging rhythms of Colm O' Ciosoig's drums and Debbie Googe's river dredging bass can be a heavy jolt to the senses. Equally, the same noise can be uplifting and life affirming in a way all of their own. They also do a beautiful line in a sort of head- spinning, post- coital comedown wooze, something Sofia Coppola knew when she put the soundtrack for Lost In Translation together. 

The music below is almost entirely from their 1988- 1991 heyday. There's nothing from the 2013 mbv album- not deliberately as such, I just didn't have it to hand and couldn't remember anything about it, so if nothing else I will go back to that record and see what it sounds like now. When it came out in 2013 it was their first album since Loveless in '91 and was recorded in bursts up between 1991 and 1997, then resumed by Shields in 2006 and then again in 2011. Instead I've gone for songs from Isn't Anything, Loveless and the EP releases around those albums apart from a cover version they recorded in 1996. 

Forty Minutes Of My Bloody Valentine

• Don't Ask Why
• Slow
• Feed Me With Your Kiss
• Loomer
• Drive It All Over Me
• Map Ref 41°N 93°W
• You Made Me Realise
• Soon 
• Soon (Andy Weatherall Mix)

Don't Ask Why is my favourite MBV song, a gorgeous, swooning tripped out song, gently strummed, chiming, slightly off kilter guitar and Kevin's voice, very clear and upfront. Belinda coos in the background and a shimmering reverb covers everything until the moment at three minutes six seconds where a second guitar comes in like a weather system. It was on the Glider EP released in 1990 in the run up to Loveless, which kept getting pushed back. In his book on Creation Records David Cavanagh speculates that many of the song titles from this period were coded messages to Alan McGee- Soon, Don't Ask Why, Off Your Face. 

Slow was a B-side from the You Made Me Realise 12" in 1988, an indie rock (with the emphasis on weird, disorientating rock) about oral sex. You Made Me Realise is from a point in time when indie guitar music, as made by this band and a handful of others, was going somewhere it hadn't been before. Drive It All over Me is from the same EP, effortless, late 80s brilliance. 

Feed Me With Your Kiss was a single in 1988 and appeared on Isn't Anything. A friend of mine bought Isn't Anything on cassette, played it and took it back, assuming there was something wrong with it. 'The guitars keep slipping out of tune and time, the tape must be too slack or stretched or something', was the gist of his complaint. 'That's what they sound like', he was told.

Loomer and Soon are both from Loveless, released in 1991, a year not sure of groundbreaking, high quality albums. It sounds as breathtaking now as it did then. Soon is Brian Eno's favourite MBV song, the song which sounds like the six minutes where everything Shields was searching for came together- it is both very vague and sharply in focus, guitars hinted at and right in your ears, a blur of memories and feelings worked into something approaching a song. Belinda's vocals sighs and Colm's drums provide the top and the bottom. Everything in between is like the ghost of indie guitar rock, recorded onto tape and then faded, blurred, bleached. Loveless is according to legend the record that nearly bankrupted Creation and McGee's relationship with Shields and the group broke down as a result. He went from My Bloody Valentine to Oasis (you can probably insert your own sentence here depending on your point of view).

Andrew Weatherall's remix is a groundbreaking record too, the acid house dancefloor dynamics and samples taking Soon into another place. Hugo Nicolson, Weatherall's production partner at the time, was presented with the records Andrew wanted to sample and the pair (with the band in the studio wanting to check what was happening to their music and apparently wanting also to see what remix culture was all about and what the process was) went about inventing indie dance and then destroying it at the same time. I wrote about this remix here and the various samples Weatherall and Nicolson used- West Bam, Gang Of Four, Claire Hamill, The Dynamic Corvettes, Rich Nice and as Hugo told us, the voices from a Volvic television advert. 

Map Ref 41°N 93°W is a cover of a Wire song, recorded for an album of Wire covers that came out in 1996 called Whore- Various Artists Play Wire. Lush, Band Of Susans, Bark Psychosis. Lee Ranaldo, Mike Watt and Godflesh are among the other contributors.

Slip Inside

I went to see Primal Scream on Saturday night playing outdoors at Manchester's Castlefield Bowl, the last night of a week of gigs from bands including James, Pixies, Crowded House and a Hacienda Classical night. Primal Scream have been touring to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Screamadelica, playing Glastonbury, rapturously received two nights in Glasgow, Halifax's Piece Hall and moving onto London this week. I've seen them a number of times over the years and always enjoyed it, from a gig in a basement in Planet X in Liverpool in August 1989 when they played Ivy Ivy Ivy and songs from their leather trouser/ long hair period to an audience of about twenty people, to the original Screamdelica tour in the early 90s, to the XTRMTR tour where three guitarists- Andrew Innes, Throb and Kevin Shields plus Mani on bass- made a racket unlike anything else. In 2013 they toured More Light (the last good album they made I think), two hours of sinuous psyche, krauty grooves and trippy songs. I saw them do the Screamadelica 21st anniversary shows back in 2012, Screamadelica at full pelt with Weatherall as support. Saturday night for me didn't quite match up. On the tram home- fuelled by some lager I should say- I opined that it was poor stuff, heritage/ festival rock and 'boring shite'. 

Castlefield was rammed, the sun shining and people had been out all day. It was very much a party mood. On the way to meet my brother in the pub before the gig I passed three hen parties. In the pub we saw Mani, who'd taken the stage with his former bandmates in Glasgow a few days earlier for the encore. He looked like he might have a date with a bassline later. The crowd was bouncing from start to finish and reactions on social media have been really positive, Primal Scream at their best. I wasn't so sure on Saturday night and I'm still not sure now. They play Screamadelica, more or less in order, starting with Movin' On Up, a slow intro before Innes cranks out the riff. In the past they've had two, sometimes three guitarists. Now it's just Innes and I don't think it works as well, they need a fuller sound. The twin pairing of Slip Inside This House and Don't Fight It, Feel It were both good and felt right, samples and keyboards filling it out, loose but the early 90s rhythms on point.

Slip Inside This House

A five piece gospel choir are on stage all night which really adds to the vocals. They're the best thing about Come Together. They play both versions, the Farley and Weatherall mixes jammed together, but it doesn't really take off- it did at the Apollo in 2012, it really flew, but it doesn't make it here for me, a big disappointment. Inner Light, the gorgeous Beach Boys- esque instrumental is lovely, Bobby slipping off stage for a few minutes. Then they play the title track that didn't appear on the album, Screamadelica, Weatherall and Nicolson's ten minute masterpiece from the Dixie Narco EP. It should sound huge and effortless, gliding and gleaming- it doesn't, it feels lumpy and sketchy, like they've not worked out to play it best. By now I'm feeling a bit like we're into end of the pier mode, Screamadelica as cabaret. The two ballads, I'm Coming Down and Damaged, are played as the sun sets and then Simone Marie plays the bassline to Higher Than The Sun. Bobby gives a nod to Denise Johnson at one point between songs, acknowledging her- she's as much the voice of the album as he is in many ways. During set closer Shine Like Stars the backdrop projections are images of Andrew Weatherall, the man who produced the album and brought it all together for them, the rock and the dance, samples and guitars. Where we're standing, sideways on to the left, we can't really see the projections and I think people in the centre have got a much better experience.

The record that kicked it off (the group's longevity and Weatherall's career as a remixer) Loaded, is played as the first song of the encore. Swastika Eyes follows, an electrifying, pumped up version (based on the Chemical Brothers remix from XTRMNTR) and then we get the standard Primal Scream encore. Just as in the early 90s they turned away from the dance floor and embraced their inner Rolling Stones, they do the same here, three festival rockers- Jailbird (Stonesy rock), Country Girl (always a very silly song, almost a pastiche) and Rocks (ditto). Mani joins them on second bass for the last two, beefing the sound up further. I came away feeling that they've become festival rock, endlessly repeating themselves, not fully able to do Screamadelica justice, a guitarist short and whacking out faux Stones songs for encores. So, in summary, I may have been a bit over the top in describing it as 'boring shite' but with a few days to think about it, I'm not sure it was that good either- but let's face it, it could be me, because almost everyone else seemed to have a great time, and I'm a bit out of sorts at the moment anyway (to put it mildly). 

Shine Like Stars

Half An Hour Of Cope

Today's thirty minute mix clocks in at closer to forty such is the embarrassment of riches in Julian Cope's back catalogue combined with my inability to rein it in at half an hour- and my decision late in the day that Andrew Weatherall's remix should be added onto the end. This mix jumps around all over Cope's post- Teardrop Explodes career, not doing much more than scratching the surface and wobbles between Julian in stripped down, voice and acoustic guitar mode and some fuller sounding, full band/ remix mode.

The opening song is classic Cope, the Archdrude musing on the role psychedelics played in prehistory and since over organ and drum machine (from Revolutionary Suicide in 2013. It's one of his very best albums I think- CDs on the internet are sold at silly figures so it could really do with a re- issue). It's followed by a 7" only version of Paranormal In The West Country (originally from 1994's Autogeddon), a camp fire recording with children and revellers audible, recorded by the famous Avebury stones. The song was only available on CD single if you'd first purchased the Queen Elizabeth 2 album and sent a sticker from that off to Cope's Head Heritage website. Julian H. Cope is laugh out loud funny, one hundred miles an hour stuff, from 1992's Jehovahkill. I Have Always Been Here Before is a rollicking garage band cover/ complete rewrite of a Roky Erickson song recorded for a tribute album (and since included in the deluxe re- issue of Jehovahkill). Love L.U.V. is a Hugo Nicolson remix of the sublime Beautiful Love (which I really meant to include on this) and Try Try Try was the only single from 1995's 20 Mothers. Self Civil War was the title track on his 2020 album, a folk/ krautrock blast of brilliance. Revolutionary Suicide comes from the album of the same name. Rock Section is by the fictitious Dayglo Maradona from Julian's One Three One novel, a gnostic- hooligan road trip that switches between the neolithic and the 1990 World Cup in Sardinia. You know who Andrew Weatherall is. 

Half An Hour Of Julian Cope

• They Were All On Hard Drugs
• Paranormal In the West Country (Avebury)
• Julian H. Cope
• I Have Always Been Here Before
• Love L.U.V.
• Try Try Try
• Self Civil War
• Revolutionary Suicide
• Rock Section (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Forty Minutes Of Wobble And Weatherall

I had a different thirty minute mix in mind for today but then suddenly midweek it occurred to me that the Andrew Weatherall remixes of Jah Wobble in the early 90s would be an ideal way to ease in a Sunday in mid- February. I've left the Weatherall produced, massive dub bassline of Higher Than The Sun from Screamadelica off this, just because that would tip it towards an hour and it's not strictly speaking a remix. What you have here is the Weatherall remixes of Visions Of You from 1991 and the pair of remixes Andrew did with Hugo Nicolson under the Boy's Own banner of Jah's Bomba single from 1990. The 12" of Visions Of You, released as Jah Wobble and The Invaders Of The Heart in 1991 with Sinead O'Connor on vocals, was a real moment for me. I remember vividly buying it in Power Cuts, a massive basement record shop in Manchester just off Oxford Road (behind McDonald's and what used to be Rafters, a legendary venue in Manchester's music history due to its Joy Division connections). Power Cuts sold all sorts of stuff, cheap and piled high, including a lot of import records with either the corner cut off or a hole punched in the top right hand corner. Nothing cost more than a few pounds. The Visions Of You 12" was sitting there waiting for me, 99p I think. I got it back to my rented room and put the AW side on, a twenty minute  excursion/ reconstruction, almost half an album in its own right. 

The Bomba 12" came out the previous year but I don't recall picking it up until a year or two later in Vinyl Exchange, two remixes, one either side, with Natasha Atlas on vocals. The Miles Away Mix samples Miles Davis and his Sketches Of Spain album from 1960- it was a long time before I twigged the origins of the sample and title. Despite many of you being more than familiar with all the remixes here I hope you'll find them stitched together as one piece- a global, dubby, Balearic, acid house forty minute mix- as a fine way to see Sunday in. 

Forty Minutes Of Wobble And Weatherall

• Visions Of You (The Secret Lovechild Of Hank And Johnny Mix)
• Visions Of You (Pick 'n' Mix 1)
• Visions Of You (Pick 'n' Mix 2)
• Bomba (Nonsensicus Maximus Mix)
• Bomba (Miles Away Mix)

Here We Go

Another Andrew Weatherall sample spotting post, my continuing attempts to try to identify and pull together the sounds that made the remixes. Today, the monumental, ground breaking, juddering dance/ rock remix of My Bloody Valentine's Soon. The long gestation period that led to the release of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless album has been well documented and is the stuff of indie legend- the record that broke Creation, the album that illustrates the manic attention to detail and difficulties of working with Kevin Shields and his single minded drive and obsession with the process and art of recording guitars, the failings of various London recording studios, the hand to mouth cash existence of Creation Records, the poor health of various participants (tinnitus not surprisingly given the volume the group played at) and so on. David Cavanagh's My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize book describes the myths and the reality in detail. 

Soon first saw the public light of day as the lead song on 1990's Glider EP (along with Glider, Don't Ask Why and Off Your Face. David Cavanagh speculates in his book that the song titles from MBV's releases at this point can be seen as ripostes to Alan McGee and his frequent requests to give him some music to release). Soon is arguably the pinnacle of Shields' famous 'glide guitar' sound and technique- playing the strings and bending them using the tremolo bar. That underestimates Soon somewhat- Soon swirls and shimmers, disorientation and delight in equal measures, a riot of melodies and feedback, ghosts of guitars and washes of vocal. It rattles in with some percussion and then a storm of guitar chords, the queasy topline melodies (one that sounds very like a flute and may well be), echoing feedback and Belinda Butcher's barely there vocals. Soon is vaguely danceable and the guitar sounds, the vertigo inducing tremolo chord changes, give it a swirling, slightly out of control feel- you've had one too many, the edges of your vison and hearing are fuzzy, you're spinning and not in control. The video version here is under four minutes but the version on Glider and different mix that made it onto Loveless are seven minutes long, an ecstatic headrush of sound. 

When it came to remixing it Andrew Weatherall entered the studio armed with the records he wanted to sample and MBV's master tapes. It seems that the band were a little reluctant to hand over control to a DJ/ producer/ remixer (this was before Screamadelica had been released so Andrew's reputation in the studio wasn't established). The resulting remix, released in 1990, turned the highwater mark of shoegaze into a stomping, shuddering leftfield dance record, one that as much as any is where his reputation as a remixer rests. MBV accompanied him in the studio, either to keep an eye on him or to see how the process of remixing worked (or both). Indie- dance would quickly become tainted as a label, used more in derision than admiration- people use the term to describe Weatherall's remix of Soon, but there's a lot more going on in it than just sticking the Funky Drummer underneath the guitars and adding some cowbell. There would be plenty of guitar bands queuing up to have their feedback and four square rock refashioned but no other remix of a guitar band from this period comes close to Soon in its execution or the effect it can have on a dancefloor. 

Soon (Andy Weatherall Remix)

The Geiger counter intro, impossibly loud in the mix, is followed by a very un- MBV voice declaring, 'Here we go'. Then one of those guitars, stripped from the original song, appears high and centre. A thumping bassline and percussion hit in. The flute/ guitar part is punched in, on its own. 'Here we go' again. More layered guitars. The drums thunder away, the guitars are looped round and round. The 'aaah aaaahhhh' vocal sample is dropped along with a guitar part that sounds like wire being wound very tight and hit. It sounds like Soon but moreso, the drift and ghostliness of the original snapped into focus, equally narcotic but a different drug. The ending is dramatic too- the elements being stripped out one by one, faders, pulled down until there's just a voice, 'aaahhh aaahhhhhhhh/ aaahhhhh aaahhhhhhhhhh'. 

West Bam's Alarm Clock, a manic 1990 breakbeat/ house 12",  provides some of the feel of the remix and the clattering rhythm that Andrew uses to underpin Shields' wall of noise.  

Alarm Clock

West Bam had already borrowed guitars from this, Gang Of Four's What We All Want, from their 1981 Solid Gold album. Stentorian, Marxist funk rock which Andrew would surely have recognised instantly when he first heard West Bam. 

What We All Want

Some of the vocals are taken from this song- Tides- by Claire Hamill, released in 1986, an entirely acapella album, Hamill's voice overdubbed to produce all the sounds. Go to 44 seconds in and you'll find the vocal part Weatherall dropped in- it repeats throughout the song. 

Hugo Nicolson, Andrew's assistant, engineer and studio whizz, tells us that some of the voices were sampled from a Volvic advert (I can't find any trance of the advert on the internet). If you go to 3 minutes 15 seconds in this 1975 song, Funky Music Is The Thing by Dynamic Corvettes, you'll find a rhythm break that appears in the remix too- or one that sounds very like it. 

The website Who Sampled Who says that Weatherall's remix takes elements, the bassline probably, from this- The Rhythm, The Feeling by Rich Nice, a 1990 hip- house single. 

If anyone knows where the 'here we go' sample comes from, write in to the usual address and I'll add it to this post. 

The remix came out first as a white label 12" and was labelled the Andy Weatherall Remix. Later versions would by credited to his full name. It also appeared on Creation's superb 1991 compilation Keeping The Faith (and if you're after a vinyl copy now you'd be better off finding a copy of the compilation- cheaper and containing a slew of other era defining tracks to boot). Soon in Andy/ Andrew's hands is a record and remix in a class of its own. It still sounds like Soon but it's a Soon that My Bloody Valentine hadn't imagined and one that blurs all the lines and boundaries that existed at the time- not rock, not dance, not indie dance, not shoegaze but something new built from all of these but something else as well. 'Here we go'. 

Shine Like Stars

Last month Primal Scream announced the a thirtieth anniversary edition box set of Screamadelica, a box that will contain all the 12" singles from that album re- issued on vinyl (nine 12" singles) with a new and previously unreleased mix of Shine Like Stars as the tenth disc. The box retails at £120.99 and I'll just leave that figure hanging there. 

The new version of Shine Like Stars was played on BBC 6 on Friday and then was put online. It seems that they will be releasing this version separately from the box, probably for next year's Record Shop Day just in case you didn't feel that the box set was exclusive enough. Late stage capitalism/ the music industry is such a joy sometimes.

Shine Like Stars closes Screamadelica, an album that Primal Scream made with Andrew Weatherall producing and Hugo Nicolson close at hand. Initially Weatherall, a relative unknown as a remixer and producer but flushed with the summer of love, a great record collection and the enthusiasm and confidence of youth, remixed I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have into Loaded and then Come Together. Higher Than The Sun and Don't Fight It, Feel It followed and Alan McGee told Primal Scream they needed to turn this run of ground-breaking, hip shaking, boundary breaking singles into an album. Weatherall got the job in the big chair and the album followed. Shine Like Stars presented some problems for them, not quite falling into place and the sequencing of the album and how to finish it wasn't quite there either until Weatherall cracked Shine Like Stars. 

Shine Like Stars

It's a space- age lullaby, a twinkling musical box melody and a drone, some synths and a lazy pace. Bobby sings softly about someone sleeping. After the Stones- isms, acid house highs, crunching club beats, country ballads and blissed out dub trips of the previous eleven songs Shine Like Stars is a beautiful way to trail off, the accordion and waves lapping against the beach for the final seconds of the song and the album. 

The new/ previously unreleased mix is here. 

It's titled Andrew Weatherall Remix but to me sounds more like an earlier mix, the song in a development form before it was completed. There's some very 1991 piano and a different drum track and then a huge synth bassline, not a million miles from the one on Safe From Harm by Massive Attack (out the same year). The backing vocals at two minutes fifty are nice, an interesting part of the song that didn't make the final cut, and then Throb's guitar comes in, a grungy 70s Les Paul solo, that bassline and the twinkling melody playing off against each other. The final minute and a half has all these eventually unused elements piling up, the ooh oohs, the jagged bassline, Throb's guitar, Gillespie singing low in the mix. It's good to hear it, an interesting version of the song and an alternative take, definitely some distance from the cosmic dreaminess of the final mix. What Mr Weatherall would have said about it, we'll never know. Whether it's worth the £120.99 to have it as part of the box set along with the nine other singles, all previously released and owned by many of us, is a decision others will have to make according to their bank balance. I'm glad it's out there. 

Railton Ruckus

For my money one of the singles of the summer- if not the single of the summer- came out last Friday from Rude Audio, South London's finest post- Balearic/ acid house/ chug outfit. Railton Ruckus is a tribute to heady nights out in Brixton, a four track EP available at Bandcamp. The Original Mix kicks off with a dark, tempting melody line and timbales, a mesmerising groove to soundtrack your night out or night in, a very cool example of how to hit the spot. 

Rude Audio somehow managed to tempt Hugo Nicolson out of remix retirement. Hugo's remix is eight minutes of fun, sections of the original mix pulled out and re-arranged, a wordless vocal line pulled to the fore and a sense of the wide eyed joy and abandon he brought to those early 90s remixes done on his own or with Andrew Weatherall. The loops go round, at times dizzyingly so, circling ever higher/ deeper. Top fun. 

The Bedford Falls Players Remix, stripped down and minimal, builds a kind of languid tension into the track, the timbales bouncing back and forth, bassline chugging, the topline appearing in snatches, a voice echoing in the dark at four minutes, the drums coming in around five minutes and then a slow release through to the end. 

Fourth track in is the Kampong Glam Mix of They're In Our Head, a pulsing, chugging dub disco monster, perfectly pitched for shuffling around to in a basement or when you're cooking tea- and when you get to the end, you just go round to the start, hit play and go though them all again. Like I said, single of the summer. 

Lost And Found

Hugo Nicolson, the man who engineered/ co- produced most of Andrew Weatherall's early works and who joined Primal Scream to do all the electronic stuff live when they toured the world playing Screamadelica, has been working on new dance music sounds. The first fruits of this are the Lost And Found EP, a three track release led by the pumping, trancey, sunny day sound of Finally Fading (vocals by Jillian Cainghug). 

Second track Fly Pie is slightly less full on and more experimental/ cosmische, rippling synths and melodic toplines but the BMP count remains high. I can't find a video to embed for Fly Pie but you can find it the EP at Bandcamp for the price of less than a pint of lager at your local pub. Finally Fading has been remixed by fellow Los Angeleno David Harrow, the Flaneur Mix taking things more downtempo and stretching it out over eight minutes, the bassline burbling away, repetitious, hypnotic bliss. 

Hugo has also remixed South London Balearic chug kings Rude Audio which we will almost certainly come back to at some point this summer, a remix which I heard an early version of last year and which is on point (as the folk say). And while we're considering all things Hugo I'll take this moment to remind you of his album as Spark Sparkle- Crank- which came out last summer and full of experimental exotica, Beach Boys through the looking glass, soundtrack stuff. 

Inner Flight

When Alan McGee told Primal Scream to turn their run of singles in 1990- 1991 into an album the end result was Screamadelica. The singles that led to it were era- defining and a total change of course for a band who were first 60s indie janglers and then Stooges style rockers. Taken together the singles- Loaded (I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have remixed/ demolished by Andrew Weatherall), Come Together (an epochal Weatherall mix and a summer sun kissing, Elvis referencing Terry Farley version), Higher Than The Sun (various Weatherall mixes and an eight minute Orb mix) and Don't Fight It, Feel It (Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson again at the helm, no guitars, no Bobby, Denise Johnson singing)- are a compilation released together. Add Movin' On Up, a Jimmy Miller Rolling Stones/ gospel fantasy made real, and you still have a series of singles. Slip Inside This House almost sounds like another single, a tripped out acid house cover of The 13th Floor Elevators with Throb singing. It's the rest of songs that turn Screamadelica from an all- the- hits 1991 compilation to an album, sequenced to work from start to finish, a trip/ journey unfolding over four sides of vinyl. I'm Coming Down and Damaged are a pair of ballads, one a Pharaoh Saunders influenced hit of  comedown and the other a country blues, a pair of album tracks that give the album a different pace and vibe. The glue that holds it all together are the other two Weatherall / Nicolson songs, Inner Flight and Shine Like Stars. I'll come back to Shine Like Stars, the perfect closer for Screamadelica another time- instead here is Inner Flight.

Inner Flight

Hugo Nicolson provided the studio nous and production skills for Weatherall to translate the spirit of the times and his encyclopaedic record collection into recordings. Inner Flight is a trippy, Pet Sounds on ecstasy instrumental, floating in and floating on, a circling melody line and some stellar, wordless ooh ooh ahhh backing vocals drifting in (sampled partly from C.B. Cook along with some drums from Dr. John's Gris Gris). If you listen to the last forty seconds of this 1974 song from Brian Eno you'll spot where Andrew pilfered the sound effect from for Inner Flight's intro as well.