Monday's Long Songs

It would have been Andrew Weatherall's 57th birthday today. Around the internet there are artists offering tracks they recorded with Andrew or that were remixed by him as freebies and, natch, there are plenty of long songs to get your teeth into while raising a glass to the man's birthday tonight.

Being is/was the name adopted by Edinburgh based Dave Paton. He has an extensive back catalogue. In the 90s Being found himself in Weatherall's orbit, releasing music on the Emissions Audio Output label. Emissions replaced Sabres Of Paradise as Weatherall's own label and was split into several sub- labels- Emissions Echoic, Emissions Lo- Fi, Emissions Static, Special Emissions and New Emissions- all to put out slightly different takes on the sound from 'dark, stripped down, derelict house music' to 'experimental and ambient dance music'. A full breakdown of the different sub- labels and their releases can be found at Discogs. The logos were nicely minimal and looked good on the generic Emissions sleeves and t- shirts.

Being's records came out on Special Emissions in 1995 and 1996, minimal scratchy, ambient electronic dub records with weird noises, echoes, hiss and lots of s p a c e. In 1996 the Two Lone Swordsmen and A Being record came out, three tracks long- Craterplay, Pallor and Thruxton Circuits. The release was only on white label, limited edition and came in a resealable plastic bag with a photocopied A4 insert. Rare and now very collectable. The 12" single plus the remix he did of Two Lone Swordsmen's 1996 tracks Azzolini and The Branch Brothers (both originally part of the first two Lone Swordsmen record, The Third Mission, out on Emissions Echoic in April 1996) are available from Being's Bandcamp as a free download. Probably not everyone's cup of tea but sharing these emissions from the margins is part of what blogging is all about. Let's leave no stone unturned.



More recently, 2018, Andrew remixed Marius Circus' I Feel Space track.  I Feel Space is Marius' take on the track that kicked off the whole Scandi disco scene back in 2005- Lindstrom's tribute to I Feel Love, an warm, uplifting, dreamy Italo- house synth record. Marius' cover and the two Weatherall remixes are both available for free, if you haven't got them already. Both remixes are spaced out, cosmic disco chuggers with plenty of those long, keening sounds that are littered throughout his work from the last decade. The unreleased dub is, er, dubbier and probably the pick of the pair to these ears.

Monday's Long Song

This Monday's long song comes from a long out of press compilation CD on Weatherall's mid-90s Emissions label by Being. Frust is fourteen abstract, experimental, downtempo minutes, released in November 1995. A breakbeat, some whirring noises, some waves of sound crossing from one speaker to the other, a distorted synth bassline. It stops and starts a few times, building slightly in intensity as it becomes less ambient and more present. It changes tack at around eleven and a half minutes, bringing in some lovely synth strings for the closing few minutes.

Frust

I didn't know anything about Being other than this track and the one that follows it on the album, the comparatively short Try which clocks in at a mere eight and a half minutes. But the internet provides answers- Being was/is Dave Paton, Scottish and in the mid 90s based in Edinburgh. He released three records through Emissions and has been self releasing the music he made in the 90s ever since, most recently in 2018. There's an article/interview at Discogs. If you've made it this far you can read it here.