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

Love Is All That's Left In the End

Last week Lauren Laverne did a theme for her 6 Mix show called Desert Island Disco All Dayer, inviting various people to submit a mix of songs they'd like played endlessly on their fantasy desert island. David Holmes contributed a half hour of uplifting and emotional songs perfectly sequenced to lift the spirits. He starts out with Suicide's Dream Baby Dream, 9 by Sault, a seemingly unreleased Skylab track sampling that Joe Strummer interview where he says 'people can change anything they want to... and that means everything in the world', Chris Carter's remix of Daniel Avery's Lone Swordsman, Francesco Lupica's Heal Thyself, a scorching David Holmes and Keith Tenniswood song called I Am Somebody (also unreleased) with Andrew Weatherall's sampled voice, a French cover version of Stayin' Alive by Freedom Fry, an as yet unreleased song from David's Unloved band called Turn Of The Screw ('screw you' the chorus spits) and finishes with a short section of Poly High School Choir doing John Barry's Midnight Cowboy. It's wall- to- wall brilliance, drawing from the past to produce a dancing, life affirming, vibrant, day glo, slightly tripped out present. I just hope all the unreleased ones are going to appear soon. 

If you're in the UK you can find it at the BBC website, split over two parts. The first is here and the second here (the first five minutes run into Alison Goldfrapp's own Desert Island Disco All Dayer mix, also worth staying on for). You'll have to click through the news at the start to get to the music. If you're outside the UK (or inside and want to have the shows to keep) you can get part one here and part two here. 

Or you could download the one below- I edited the two files above into one thirty minute piece, chopping off the news at the start and the Alison Goldfrapp mix at the other end. Trying to get the two files to overlap exactly took some doing and I haven't quite managed it- the section of the David Holmes and Keith Tenniswood track with Andrew Weatherall's voice in it is a millisecond out but the very slight delay effect it creates on the vocal sample is quite pleasant so I've left it as it is. You could think of it as an exclusive Bagging Area remix of the track. 

David Holmes Desert Island Disco

And here is Poly High School's choral version of Midnight Cowboy in full- rather beautiful, probably wasted on a Wednesday morning in late January, but as the choir fade out singing 'love is all that's left in the end' you might just feel like the winter and January can't last forever.

Radio On

Andrew Weatherall was back for another outing at BBC 6 Mix last night with the usual two hour journey through time, space and sound. It's on the iPlayer and someone has uploaded to Soundcloud (with d/l).



The tracklist includes the second song from that double A side with Friendly Fires, a song he's produced from the forthcoming Pete Molinari album, and a sackful of records by people I've never heard of until now- Grumbling Fur, 6:6, Afet Serenay, Secret Boyfriend, Mano Le Tough, Jex Opolis, Tristesse Contemporaine and an Asphodells remix for She Said. Start your googling engines now.

Number two child is at a sleepover tonight. Number one tends to go to bed earlyish and without his hearing aid and cochlear implant in isn't woken by noise. A virtually childfree Saturday night with the stereo turned up awaits.

Weatherall Transmission

Lord Sabre was back at the Beeb last Friday night for another outing of his 6 Mix residency and an outstanding mix it was, largely electronic plus some dubby reggae. It also had not one, not two, but three brand new AW remixes including one of primal Scream and one of 80s jazz funkateers Blue Rondo A La Turk. You can listen to it for the next few days here. After that you'll probably find someone has uploaded it to Soundcloud. Two hours well spent my internet friends.

This came out two years ago, a bass heavy, chugger of a remix of a Timothy J Fairplay track.

Sleighride/Blizzard (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Avery Mix

Daniel Avery- his fine new album Drone Logic is out now and was mentioned here last Thursday- was the guest for BBC Radio 6's 6 Mix on Friday night. You can listen to it on the iPlayer (and probably find a d/l of it if you have a scoot around the internet). It's an electronic delight including The Horrors, Death In Vegas, My Bloody Valentine and a whole load of good people who, let's be honest, we've never heard of. A good mix of things- a bit like Picasso's twinning of striped t-shirt with checked trousers.

If you've not been before Friday night regular George has started a blog- Jim McLean's Rabbit. It is a splendid mish-mash of music related stuff, including records he no longer owns and other musings. You should give it a go. Tell him I sent you.

Weatherall Back On The Beeb

After a lengthy absence Mr Weatherall was back at the controls at the BBC Radio 6 Mix last night featuring his usual eclectic selection of the slow and groovy; odds and ends from around the world including some superb stoned stuff from Romania, some dubwise selctions, some of his own stuff (Asphodells, his Madness remix), some artists I've never heard of before like Melody's Echo Chamber and Group Rhoda, some cinematic/library sounds from Cults Percussion Ensemble, Italian soundtrack tunes from Enrico Simonetti and Goblin, some folk from The Unthanks, nuggets from Manfred Mann and The Saints, and more besides. If you haven't tuned in before go and take the plunge. Listen here for the next six days. Two hours well spent.

NYE

New Year's Eve is probably the most overrated night of the year, all expectation and little delivery, and it's now been well over a decade since I had to go out, pay over-the-odds to get in somewhere and have a 'big' night out. It's round to friends, chuck the kids in a room with sweets and a games console while the adults get slowly drunk in the kitchen. With the same adults then complaining when I take control of the stereo.

Whatever you're doing tonight- going out, staying in, going out to stay in- you could do worse than start your night off with Andrew Weatherall's 6 Mix show from New Year's Eve 2010, an hour of tunes from the Primal Scream Screamadelica tour bus.

Andrew Weatherall NYE 2010 6 Mix (Screamadelica Tour Bus)

Tracklist...
Patti Paladin and Johnny Thunders Let Me Entertain You
Tav Falco Oh How She Dances
Bo Diddley Dancing Girl
Webb Pierce Teenage Boogie
T Rex Teenage Boogie
Simon Scott Move It Baby
Corporate Image Not Fade Away
Anandar Shankar Jumpin' Jack Flash
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band Faith Healer
The Standells Medication
New York Dolls Trash
Terry Edwards Never Understand
La Dusseldorf Rheinita
Silver Apples I Have Known Love
A.R. Kane A Love From Outer Space
The Glitter Band Let's Get Together Again

Bon Voyage my friends, thanks for coming. Quite a few people I know will be glad to see the back of 2012. Here's to a better year in 2013.

Weatherall And Sherwood On The Reggae Wireless

Over at BBC Radio 6 Mix you can catch these two fine gentlemen, Mr Andrew Weatherall and Mr Adrian Sherwood, discussing life and reggae and playing many, many fine reggae tunes as part of the BBC's celebration of 50 years of Jamaican independence. Hurry up though, it only streams for another three days. Unless you can find a sneaky download.

Shakedown 1979

I was doing some ironing an hour or two ago while listening to BBC 6 through the TV (I know what you're thinking; take it from me, the fun never stops round here). Karl Hyde of Underworld was playing a diverse and eclectic mix of songs that inspire him, one of which was 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins. Now, I never liked The Smashing Pumpkins- grunge by numbers with bad hair, and Billy Corgan always seemed like such a dick. How, incidentally, did he end up playing with New Order? But 1979 was one very cool song, ace drum intro, great guitars, wistful vocal. Love it. I've got their Greatest Hits, bought in 2001 (2001? Jeez!), pre-internet days for me when I used to buy cds for the odd song. I bought it solely for 1979 but hoping there'd be something else on it as good.

There wasn't.

1979

Chatham Pocket

This came out as a freebie some time ago but I've only just got around to listening to it (I wrote some time ago when this post was first published, see below)- a taster for a new record by Billy Childish's latest other band The Vermin Poets (see below also). Chatham Pocket is a rocking guitar led instrumental and will go very nicely on your latest compilation cd or mixtape or playlist. A Chatham Pocket is, apparently, slang for the internal cavity where drugs can be hidden. Nice.

Edit: actually they're now called the Spartan Dreggs.
Another edit: Dunno what Blogger's playing at but this post has re-popped up tonight, without me asking it too. So I've put the link back up. It was in Weatherall's 6 Mix show last week as well. Spooky.

Chatham Pocket

Sabres

Also from Mr Weatherall's 6 Mix show the other night, Haysi Fantayzee's seven minute dub-pop song The Sabres Of Paradise, from 1982. Haysi Fantayzee are best known for the A-side hit John Wayne Is Big Leggy (which coincidentally I was talking to someone about on New Year's Eve. You can't say I don't know how to have fun at an NYE party) and for one half of them being Jeremy Healy, 90s club dj and 'face' (and several other less complimentary words according to a friend of mine). Healy took the phrase Sabres Of Paradise from a novel about Cossacks by Lesley Blanche, which a different friend gave me a copy of about fifteen years ago, which I still haven't read. Weatherall took the name from the record, and the book, for a group and a record label. Got all of that?

Top song by the way.

The Sabres Of Paradise

These Are Not The Last Days

Towards the end of his New Year's Day Vinyl Only 6 Mix show Andrew Weatherall played two corkers, one a krauty song by The Early Years and the other this- Love Performance by Australian band Total Control. Very post-punk, some Martin Rev, some Wire, very Joy Divison but with keyboards all over it as well as guitars and very good too. You can get the album Henge Beat on vinyl from Iron Lung Records or as a download from Bandcamp.

Love Performance

Left Side Rock

The gentleman in the interesting suit is Brian Olive, a former member of The Greenhornes (who made some not terribly interesting 70s rock revival with Jack White). Brian has released a rather good 60s psyche influenced album (Two Of Everything), which was one of the selections the last time Weatherall played his 6 mix show. It's produced by The Black Keys Dan Auerbach, so has those vintage, valve amp sounds nailed down, but it's well worth looking out for if you like that kind of thing. This song opens the record.

Left Side Rock

Sons Of Stone

Another selection from Andrew Weatherall's record box, via his 6 Mix show last Sunday night. The People's Temple might look like they're from Bolton but Lansing, Michigan not Lancashire is home. They've made a psychedelic garage record that ticks all the right influences (Love, Spacemen 3, the Velvets, 13th Floor Elevators, Link Wray, a thousand Nuggets style bands) but they've also managed to make an album that actually sounds like it was recorded in the mid-to-late 60s. Cool and groovy.

Sons Of Stone

Keep Warm

Mr. Weatherall returned to the controls at BBC 6 Mix last night and played his usual eclectic selection, including a couple of his own forthcoming remixes, one a techno/rockabilly/glam remix for Soft Rocks and another for The Horrors. Amongst it all he played a song by Warm Digits, a duo who've released their debut album Keep Warm With...The Warm Digits on Newcastle's Distraction Records, and very good it is too. The album's over at emusic and other digital outlets or you can order the double vinyl from the band website or Distraction. Piccadilly Records, fine record emporium that it is, made my eyebrows raise slightly wanting £22 for the record. It's less from the band site. Weatherall describes Warm Digits as 'machine funk kraut-a-delia' and I can't come up with a better label, but suffice to say they were very good, a bit like a less head-splitting Fuck Buttons.

Weapons Destruction

And Then I Kissed Her With A Kiss That Can Only Mean Goodbye

Everyone's favourite skinny legged, crate-digging, goth and garage rocking five piece The Horrors are back with a new album Skying. The last time they put an lp out they flipped lids all over the place. Primary Colours featured the electro and krautrocking Sea Within A Sea and Who Can Say, just about my favourite rock single from that year. They also released a superb single, Whole New Way, which I posted here ages ago. By way of celebrating the new album, shaping up to be on heavy rotation, here's Who Can Say from a 6 Music session. The mp3 I think came originally from the late, lamented Ripped In Glasgow blog (although Moggieboy's RiG adventures do continue on a well-known social networking site). Anyway, distorted guitars, 60s organ, girl group drums, Rowland S Howard 'inspired' breakdown- what more could you want?

Who Can Say (6 Music Session)

Lone Star Psych

Another track by a band featured on Weatherall's 6 Mix show last weekend, this time from The Black Angels, a psych rock band from Texas. They make the kind of 60s influenced dark psych-rock that seems to be part of the birthright of people from Austin , Texas. Maybe they pump it into the water supply over there. The Black Angels released an album last year called Phosphene Dream, which is now on my shopping list.

River_of_Blood.mp3

Cosmic

Another track that's come from Andrew Weatherall's 6 Mix record box (which is where half the new stuff I hear comes from these days). This one is from the show he did last Sunday night. In the last half hour Weatherall played his customary 30 minute disco mix, where we were treated to a Weatherall remix of Alice Gold, his own cover of AR Kane's A Love From Outer Space (original featured here last summer) and his remix of this- Stratus by Pablo. There's almost nothing about Pablo from a cursary internet search other than he's actually called Michael Hunter, is from Glasgow, has released this single through Soma, and it's 'cosmic synth dub disco'. It's very good cosmic synth dub disco too. If anyone knows anything else, please write in, usual address, no prizes though it's just for fun.

Stratus.mp3

Route 1

White Williams is an American artist whose music I first heard when Andrew Weatherall played his first 6 Mix show a few years back. White's record label said the album Smoke is 'unapologetic pop that flirts with the vacuous nostalgia of the American dream; engaging ambiguous and schizophrenic instruments with impressionistic lyrics; driven by a casually heterosexual backbeat'. Got that? A heterosexual backbeat. I assume this is supposed to be 'ironic'.

This song Route To Palm mixes synths with a vaguely rockabilly guitar line and is really rather good. The album also has a decent cover version of I Want Candy. Other than this, I know nothing.

Route_To_Palm.mp3

There's Been A Brainwave At The Radio Station

Two pieces of wireless related news as Bagging Area toys with becoming an online listings service. Andrew Weatherall, featured once or twice round these parts, is in the chair on 6 Mix tonight (Sunday) from 8 until 10. Don't touch that dial.

On Tuesday night Mick Jones is on Radio 2, also from 8 o'clock, with Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie talking about The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite. The original line up of B.A.D. have reformed for a tour this spring to play their still wonderful, groundbreaking first album (Medicine Show, The Bottom Line, and E=MC2 are all firm favourites) and hopefully this 1986 follow up, C'Mon Every Beatbox- a rush of guitars, samples, machine drums and catchy lyrics. B.A.D. play Manchester on Friday April 8th, the day we drive off for a week away. Bugger. I'm currently weighing up Liverpool and Leeds as alternatives.

02 C\'mon Every Beatbox.wma