Enjoy This Trip

A week ago we had our Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 launch party at Stranger Than Paradise in Hackney. It was by all accounts a very good evening and well attended. I couldn't make it due to work commitments- nor could Martin or Dan- but the album got played in full, Baz (below, right) and Mark (below, left) both DJed and Richard Fearless played a superb three hour set which got people moving. It was recorded and as soon as that surfaces I'll share it here. 

The first fifty copies came with a beautiful free art print, designed by sleeve artist Rusty. The first copy sold on the night was to S- Express main man Mark Moore who was passing through, heard the unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track on our album, the eleven minute dub- house splendour of Lick Wid Nit Wit, and bought a copy on the spot. Mark is a huge Sabres fan. Back in 1991 when Mark Moore's path crossed with Andrew Weatherall's, this barnstorming, outside the box remix was the result....

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

Back in spring 1988 I was seventeen years old. I can clearly remember watching S- Express gatecrashing Top Of The Pops miming to their smash hit Theme, my head turned by its brashness and day glo brilliance, Mark and his friends cavorting round the studio, the cut and paste sampling a million miles from The Smiths, The Wedding Present and The Primitives...

The idea that thirty seven years later the front man of that group would be buying an album that I'd put together with four friends, that I wrote the sleeve notes for, would have caused my seventeen year old head to spin round and detach itself. 

Theme From S- Express is of course one of the greatest dance records ever made. 

Theme From S- Express

Here's Mark clutching his copy of our album at Stranger Than Paradise last Thursday with the great Chris Rotter...

This weekend we have a northern launch party for Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 at The Golden Lion in Todmorden. The Golden Lion is the epicentre of the whole thing- we first talked about making an album while DJing there and Golden Lion Sounds is the record label it came out on. Volume 2 went in the post last week and copies have been arriving at people's homes ever since as well as copies at various record shops. If you haven't got one you can buy one at GLS, ten tracks exclusive to the album- along side Sabres Of Paradise there are Red Snapper, Dicky Continental, A Certain Ratio and Number, Unit 14, Richard Fearless, David Harrow, Richard Norris, Bedford Falls Players and Sleaford Mods. Mark's twenty five minute sampler mix of the ten tracks is here. 

Our launch party takes place in the back room with me, Martin and Dan DJing from 2pm though until 8. Free entry, fun for all the family, no requests etc. If you're in the area, feel free to drop by and say hello. 

At the same time and into the early hours there's a Lion collaboration with The Gun, Hackney with a huge cast of DJs on in the main room including Decius Soundsystem, Vladimir Ivkovic, Lena Killikens, Nathan Gregory Wilkins, Psych Williams and Luke Insect. 

The Sabresonic 30th Q&A Plus Weatherall Remix Friday Sixteen

Back in November we (The Flightpath Estate team) and Waka at The Golden Lion put on an event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of Sabresonic, the debut album by Sabres Of Paradise. We invited former- Sabres Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns to a Q&A at the Lion and Jagz promised to do a DJ set. The evening went really well and the chat was enjoyed by everyone there, as was Jagz's set that followed. 

Pete Lawton, Andrew Weatherall's manager, arranged to have the Q&A filmed and both this has been uploaded to Youtube, split into two halves. I haven't managed to watch to watch the whole thing yet- I'm the one hosting the Q&A and asking the questions. I needn't have worried as much as I did in advance- both Jagz and Gary were superb guests, chatty and helpful and full of the kind of stories and details we were hoping for. But watching yourself on film is an uncomfortable experience and hearing yourself even more so (especially when you click play and think, 'do I really sound that Manc?'). You can click the links here for Part One and Part Two. 

In the week running up to the event Jagz messaged me to ask if I had an mp3 or WAV file of Andrew's remix of S' Express's Find 'Em, Fool 'Em, Forget 'Em, one of the remixes that sealed Andrew's reputation in the early 90s as the remixer of the scene and period, a technicoloured, ecstatic, breathless, dancefloor deconstruction of what a song and remix could be. I sent my mp3, a fairly small file, to Jagz saying it might not stand up to being played through the Golden Lion's soundsystem. Jagz said not to worry, he'd give it a remaster and a boost in his studio. This is that remastered, boosted file, as played at Sabresonic 30. 

Find 'Em, Fool 'Em, Forget 'Em (The Eighth Hour Mix) (Jagz Master)

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

Saturday Theme Sixteen

Today's Saturday theme is one of the great Theme records, a song which turned spring 1988 upside down- a joyous, ecstatic, sampledelic splash of neon colours, smiley face, acid house crossover mayhem. A song guaranteed to fill a dancefloor, at any occasion, still. Theme From S'Express is one of the best records of the 80s and if I was forced to put together a list of my favourite fifty singles (or something similar) it would undoubtedly feature highly. 

Theme From S'Express

Mark Moore and Pascal Gabriel constructed the track largely out of samples. Moore was a DJ, Gabriel a producer (who had recently co- written Bomb The Bass' hit Beat Dis, another sample- heavy smash in both the clubs and the charts). Moore turned up with a bag of records, they sequenced the parts they wanted onto cassette and turned everything up to ten. 

A few years ago at his A History Of Dubious Taste blog Jez pulled together the songs that provided Mark Moore with his source material which is where I got most of the mp3s I've used for what follows. I've attempted to sequenced the songs that S'Express sampled for Theme From S'Express into one continuous mix- it was a bit of a challenge, getting the sequence and the segues somewhere near right. It starts and finishes with some spoken word science fiction, goes all disco and New York, borrows from acts as diverse as Sam The Sham and Gil Scott Heron, some early 80s synthpop and the genuinely jaw dropping, X rated Tales Of Taboo by Karen Finley, a song that once heard is never forgotten. 

Theme From S'Express Samples Mix

• Laura Olsher: The Martian Monsters
• Rose Royce: Is It Love You're After?
• Peech Boys: Don't Make Me Wait
• TZ: I Got The Hots For You
• Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson: The Bottle
• Crystal Glass: Crystal World
• Alfredo de la Fe: Hot To Trot
• Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs: Oh, That's Bad, No That's Good
• Debbie Harry: Feel The Spin
• Karen Finley: Tales Of Taboo
• Stacey Q: Two Of Hearts
• Yazoo: Situation
• Gene Roddenbury: The Star Trek Dream

Drop That Ghettoblaster

Something a bit more in your face and full on, full frontal even, than yesterday's ghostly Rootmasters song. This 1986 release by Karen Finley was sampled by S'Express (where this post's title was borrowed from and also the phrase 'suck me off', which somehow Mark Moore managed to disguise slightly by smudging the first vowel sound and then sneaking onto Radio 1 and Top of Of The Pops). Over a rapid fire drum machine and then some long keyboard chords Karen opens fire (Karen was a performance artist and poet and is currently a professor at New York University). She starts out with 'you don't own me bastard, you fucking asshole' and then crams in pretty much every insult, sexual reference and swear word she can think of, also taking time to include your Granny and Belgian waffles. It's a tour de force performance and was produced and co-written by Mark Kamins (who most famously worked with Madonna in the 80s).

It is still pretty jaw-dropping to hear and should probably only be played loudly/audibly if you are very confident in those who are around you. Most definitely Not Safe For Work.

Tales Of Taboo

Here, so you can place those vocal samples in context, and also because this is one of the greatest records of the 1980s (and of any decade in fact) are S'Express having a lot of fun on Top Of The Pops.

Funky Killer

There's an album out now of updated versions and remixes of S'Express songs which looks pretty interesting. As well as the opinion splitting Primal Scream cover version Enjoy This Trip has new versions by Tom Furse of the Horrors, Jagz Kooner, Horsemeat Disco and Chris and Cosey among its fifteen tracks. This very funky Red Snapper remix didn't make the final tracklist but has a very 1990s jazzy, hip hop vibe which works really well if sounding quite unlike S'Express.

A State Of Mind

I've flip-flopped around with Primal Scream's RSD cover version of Mantra For A State Of Mind, starting off thinking it just sounds lazy, then liking it more (Jason Pierce's guitar probably making the difference). The original S'Express version (from 1991) is pretty wonderful, discofied and then a housier last few minutes. As Craig at Plain Or Pan pointed out, it isn't a million miles from Don't Fight It, Feel It.

Mantra For A State Of Mind (Club Mix)

And just because I'm kind to you this is the Weatherall remix of Find 'Em, Fool 'Em, Forget 'Em, a loved up, piano and synth driven excursion with heavy breathing and airhorns, also from 1991.

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

Find 'Em, Fool 'Em, Weatherall 'Em

I'm not sure anything qualifies as 'rare' in the internet age but this is a lesser known (or lesser heard) Andrew Weatherall remix from 1991, wherein our hero takes S'Express's disco house and stretches it out over up to eight minutes.

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

Enjoy This Trip (And It Is A Trip)

Surely one of the greatest singles ever made, S Express (Mark Moore)'s Theme From S Express introduced acid house and sampling to a mass audience in 1988- it was number 1 in the UK for two weeks. Borrowing liberally from Rose Royce's Is it Love You're After?, it is dance music heaven.

Kind of ridiculously, I love the 'lyrics'

'Enjoy this trip
Enjoy this trip
And it is a trip
And it is a trip

(Countdown is progressing)
Uno, dos, tres, quatro

S Express
S Express

I got the hots for you

Chop me off, chop me off, chop me off (this bit always sounded more explicit to me)Jump on that ghetto blast off (or is it Drop that ghettoblaster? I can never quite make it out)Come on now slip it to the music, now scoot (Not wholly sure about this bit either)Oh, that's bad
No, that's good'

If one of pop culture's sacred wordsmiths had written these, they'd be held up for all to see. As it is they're vocal samples that sum up the joy of the record, the scene, the dancing. But they sound pretty profound to me. I'm not joking.

Edit; the Karen Finley record Tales of Taboo that part of the vocal is sampled from makes it abundantly clear that it is not 'Chop me off' but 'Suck me off'.

Theme From S Express.mp3