ERICK LEGRAND - ABOVE ALL

It’s all about the beats on this year’s mind-blowing set honouring Nina Walsh’s fallen comrade Erick Legrand’s birthdate. Her last in the series before a final set curated by Erick’s mate and mentor Oliver Grasset, Above All fulfils the promise Nina made to Erick to release his massive archive into the world.

Initially, he became “invisible third member” of the Woodleigh Research Facility formed with her long-time studio partner Andrew Weatherall as the pair delved into Erick’s labyrinthine hard drive containing 20 years of tracks, blueprints and loops. After Erick passed in 2011, Nina commenced releasing the seven albums on Bandcamp that climax with Above All, the most personal of the sets as she was present when most of the tracks were created between 2006-2011. She can happily call it, “a Nina and Erick album; our little soundtrack.”

Comprising tracks recorded at the Fortress, Nina’s “Turkish harem” loft at Woodleigh Gardens and Erick’s final abode in Folkestone, it’s his most cohesive album yet with a unique vibe of its own, retaining his glorious unpredictability and cliffhanger twists underpinned by his panoramic arsenal of thermonuclear beat action. Originally a drummer on Camden’s noise scene, Erick built the album’s twelve tracks on his booming tattoos, startling polyrhythms, motorik hypno-vehicles, shadowy electro patterns or featherlight bedroom vamps. As described by Nina, Erick’s “cranky and slightly warped” sense of humour is another crucial element, her observation “He was beautifully unhinged on so many levels” borne out spectacularly throughout.

Pumping its psychedelic 60s go-go frug with Suicide-like bassline, ‘Queer’ introduces the recurring twanging guitars inspired by Erick’s love of spy movies and Patrick McGoohan’s toweringly prescient The Prisoner (According to Nina, Erick was obsessed with infamous spy Kim Filby and met his son at the Falcon in Camden when he briefly worked behind the bar). After ‘Sade’’s midtempo bass groove laced with celestial synths and radiophonic bell tones, ‘Calcutta’ unfurls a monstrous black glory hole over groove mating Jaki Liebezeit’s Can shuffle with James Brown’s funky drummer; one stellar example of the human element triumphing over hoary drum machine samples. Add spy film melody and deranged jungle whoopee. ‘March of the Pigs’ stealth bombs comfort zones with cavernous pulsebeat under siege from riffing string section, searing guitars and baboon’s bottom brass parps.

Dating from pre-Nina 2004, the cinematic title track veers into Prisoner turf over luminescent electro-ghost grunt-shuffle tagged with bell-like melody. Four years later, Erick’s Can-like drums propel ‘Buttle’’s collision between Joe Meek’s twang-infested space-beat and ‘Danger Man’ mood music. Building a sonic skyscraper of fence-trampling mayhem, ‘W.H.O. 2’ lashes skipping jazzy snare with screeching tyre stabs over Doorsy organ riff before African elements barrel in with woozy brass swoops to create an uproarious music of the spheres that could be the maddest track.

Upping the force ten energy, ‘Changeling’ hits as Erick’s tribute to Killing Joke as pummelling stop-start funk and vast distorted guitar stuff Joe Meek’s blender with Martian y-fronts. Immediately soiled by filthy basslines, ‘Pants’ pole vaults into pirouetting space jazz with Sun Ra keyboard and engine room rumble. Charged with tangible emotion, ‘Niric’ revisits the spy saloon with sombre bell melody before the towering theme kicks in countered by oddly poignant melody highlighted in the gorgeous drop. Self-explanatory bedroom sashay ‘Come’ rides ecstatic sigh-loop, elastic twangs and swollen organ taking Serge Gainsbourg from behind with its sensual souffle.

Dating from Nina’s loft in 2009, grand finale ‘Sacked Mood’ carries a surreal back story involving Erick getting himself arrested after former friend Charles ‘Chicken’ Poulet stole his hard drive containing late partner Claudine’s photographic works, getting him probation and banned from his Camden stamping ground in the case of The Big Chicken (Legrand-Poulet). The ominous rumble and jazzy skip take the track to David Lynch’s Black Lodge in Twin Peaks, where weird is normal.

It makes a suitable conclusion to a set of untethered genre-crushing brilliance that could sit easily alongside electronic music’s classic works; the perfect conclusion to Nina’s now accomplished labour of love.

Kris ‘Bonacon’ Needs