Squire Black Dove Rides Out

The picture above shows Two Lone Weatherdolls. Except they're not alone, they're together, along with a replica of a Lewis chessman from the British Museum and a load of other bits and bobs that fill up the front of shelves in my house. The Weatherdolls are the work of Claire Doll, a teenage friend of Andrew Weatherall. Claire began making them in lockdown in the aftermath of Andrew's untimely death five years ago today. She raffled them for charity. The slightly smaller one on the right, I won in a raffle. The larger one on the left, was won by a friend and then passed to a friend who passed it to me to look after on behalf of the Flightpath Estate (he holds a copy of our album under his arm), to accompany us when DJing (he came to Head in Stretford last July when me, Martin and Dan played there and will make the journey to The Golden Lion for AW62 in April this year). 

What Andrew would have made of this is anyone's guess. He was largely I think unfussed by fame. He turned away from the light of celebrity and the greasy pole on many occasions, choosing the road less travelled. He would have chuckled about all of this I'm sure, and been secretly pleased too, the way people have kept his name and spirit alive since that day, 17th February 2020. 

His business acumen was fairly haphazard. Recently Lizzie, his partner when he died in 2020 and for the many years before that, said that in 2019 he found an envelope of cash in the studio, the payment for a DJ gig or remix presumably, and said they should 'spunk it on a holiday'. In her post Lizzie added she was grateful for his 'slipshod accounting' and said that we should on this day, 'raise a cup of splosh and a Tunnocks tea cake or two in his honour, play something fitting... and keep him present'.

I know as well as anyone from my experience in recent years that we keep those who have gone alive by speaking about them and by remembering them. This blog has done its best to do that in the years since Mr Weatherall left us. He was an inspiration in so many ways. His loss is enormous and felt daily. Wherever you are Andrew, thank you.

Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out)

Breakdown was a One Dove single, released in 1993 after a year of record company shenanigans and delays. After his work on Screamadelica Andrew went almost immediately into the producer's role on One Dove's album Morning Dove White (with Hugo Nicolson at his side, his studio engineer and right hand man in those early years). One Dove's album is the equal of Screamadelica, in many ways a more even and complete album. The spacious, dubbed out songs with Andrew's magic FX dust sprinkled over them and Dot's voice on top float by in a post- acid house haze, the sun coming up on the morning after. Sabres Of Paradise were coming into being by the time Andrew worked on Morning Dove White and Hugo's presence was also required by Primal Scream as their on stage, the man who provided the sequencer and sample action, a key part of the Screamadelica live shows. The One Dove tracks are as a result split between those done by Andrew and Hugo and those done by Andrew with Jagz and Gary (Hugo did Fallen and Breakdown, Sabres  much of the rest). The Squire Black Dove remix of Breakdown is a lengthy, full on, widescreen Sabres dub excursion, with samples from Exorcist by Shades Of Rhythm, a bass loop from They Came In Peace by Tranquility Bass, a bucket of dubbed out space, rimshots and melodica from Andrew's imagination, and a vocal sample from who knows where- 'against the black blue sky/ The shadow of the dove/ An open mind's excursion... can you remember? The shadow of the dove...'

Forty More Minutes Of One Dove

Last Sunday's One Dove mix was popular with a slice of this blog's readership and included calls for a follow up mix so due to popular demand here is a further forty minutes of One Dove, a dubbed out and spaced out selection. 

One Dove Two

• Breakdown (William Orbit Stereo Odyssey)
• Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out)
• Jolene 
• Fallen (Darkest Hour)
• White Love (Higherwatha)

Breakdown came out as a single ahead of the album Morning Dove White in October 1993, the Stephen Hague mix being chosen by the record company to push it towards radio play but the real treasure was to be found in the remixes and versions, two of which I've included here. The first is one of two by William Orbit (the other being the Cellophane Boat Mix, named after an infamous boat party in Rimini). 

Squire Black Dove Rides Out is Sabres Of Paradise at their dubbiest, an epic remix that showed how far ahead Weatherall was in 1992. I wrote about it here  a couple of years ago, on a sample spotting tip (and finding Shades Of Rhythm and Tranquillity Bass within it). In 1993 I had Breakdown on cassette single, these remixes, the Stephen Hague single version and the Cellophane Boat mix on one tape which often soundtracked the long bus journey to my first teaching practice placement in Failsworth, North Manchester. I still have the cassingle, one of the few tapes that survived various culls over the years. The song in all its versions is burned into my subconscious, from 1993 to 2023, from being a trainee teacher to one now only two and a half years from being able to take his pension. 

Jolene was a superbly dubbed out and off kilter cover of Dolly Parton's 1973 single, which eventually saw the light of day in December 1993 on the 12" and CD single of Why Don't You Take Me.

Fallen (Darkest Hour) is the original, pre- Weatherall release when the band were Dove (the soap manufacturer didn't see the funny side of their name- I've no idea if Dove the soap manufacturers knew it was a drug reference or just didn't like their copyright being infringed. Either way Dove became One Dove). Fallen came out on Soma in 1991 with two other versions, Dawn and Dusk. Legend has it Dot managed to get Weatherall to listen to it, he proclaimed it record of the year and then offered to produce their album. 

White Love is also a key One Dove song, not least the ten minute Guitar Paradise version by Weatherall and Sabres. The version here came out in the US only and then in very limited numbers as a promo 12", a remix by Jon Williams for Hardkiss, a hypnotic remix complete with chanting monks and oil drum thump of the drums and a loop of Dot's vocals. There is another Hardkiss remix, the ten minute Scott Hardkiss Psychic Masturbation version of White Love but as I'm trying to keep these Sunday mixes at around thirty to forty minutes that is a remix for another day. 

Against The Black Blue Sky

One of the joys of Andrew Weatherall's remixes, especially the early 90s ones, was the sample spotting- Weatherall's samples were like breadcrumbs to follow that led you to his influences and then other records and artists. Last Saturday I posted a tribute to Jean 'Binta' Breeze, the Jamaican dub poet who died in earlier this month who Weatherall sampled for his dub remix of Saint Etienne's Only Love Can Break Your Heart. In 1991 Andrew met Dot Allison from One Dove and agreed to work on the trio's album. Fresh from a lost weekend in Rimini he arrived in Glasgow to add his magic to One Dove's songs. After much wrangling with the record label (who wanted to go with Stephen Hague's poppier, shinier mixes of some of the songs) the album Morning Dove White was released, a year later than it should have been, in 1993. The album is a genuine lost classic of the 90s, the flipside to Screamadelica, a multi- layered, dubby, down tempo, after hours record, magic and mystery woven into the grooves of the vinyl. It still sounds like that- in fact if anything, it sounds better now than it did then, infused with a timeless beauty. The album has never been re- issued which adds to its allure (apparently plans are afoot to re- release it with all it's singles and remixes plus rumours of never previously released Weatherall mixes of some of the songs). The album was also key in the formation of Sabres Of Paradise with Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner engineering the album. 

The single Breakdown came out in October 1993 in various versions and mixes across various formats. I still have a cassingle of Breakdown as well as my 12" copy and a CD single came out containing five versions. They included Stephen Hague's Radio Mix, a lovely chugging, spacey Hugo Nicolson remix (the Cellophane Boat Mix) and an eight minute, wonderfully fluid, sci fi William Orbit Stereo Odyssey Mix. But the most extraordinary remix was Weatherall's reworking, Squire Black Dove Rides Out, a ten minute tripped out dub excursion taking up all of side B of the 12" single. 

Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out)

Over the descending synth string chords a sonorous voice strikes up, 'against the black blue sky/ the shadow of the dove... an open mind's... excursion', and then 'can you remember?/ the shadow of the dove'. I've no idea where this voice comes from incidentally so if anyone knows, please write in to the usual address. The voice is swamped by some dubby percussion, all rimshots and echo, and a huge stuttering bassline starts up. The bassline is taken from Exorcist by Shades Of Rhythm, slowed right down. Exorcist is raw, breakbeat techno repurposed into a widescreen dubbed out adventure. 

Exorcist

An acoustic guitar comes in, slightly startling. It's from Breakdown and played by Andrew Innes from Primal Scream. There's a lovely dubby melodica,  from I don't know where (chances are it's from an Augustus Pablo or King Tubby record) and then there's Dot's vocal, chopped up and looped, 'na na na- na/ na na na- na na/ na na na- na/ na na na- na na'. Those sumptuous synth strings sweep back in and some distant kettle drums pound and just as it sounds like Squire Black Dove Rides Out is reaching a conclusion the dub comes back, everything sent around for a few more bars, and then the acoustic guitar is brought back, more and more round and round. There's another breakdown (ha!) at seven minutes with an excerpt of the bassline from They Come In Peace suddenly dropped in, a total change in the feel and the tempo before it all returns again to the drawn out dub business. 

They Came In Peace

They Came In Peace was a 12" single by Tranquility Bass, American spaced out ambient dance, also originally released in 1991. Blissful chill opening with crickets and a voice from US TV saying, 'they came in peace for all mankind' before the jazz bassline loops its way in. 

The transformation of Breakdown, a forlorn downtempo, pop song- Phil Spector meets the back room of early 90s clubland- into a dub odyssey shows the breadth of Weatherall's imagination and his ear for a sample, a snippet or loop from another record, taken straight out of his record box and refashioned in the studio in a new way.