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Re: Andrew Weatherall Sets
..(New Year's Eve i think??)
..(New Year's Eve i think??)
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Last edited by bobjuice; September 18, 2013, 02:22:37 PM. -
Re: Andrew Weatherall Sets
I'm getting a load of tapes recorded and upped in the next couple o weeks so will be posting them in here, some from way back...Comment
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Re: Andrew Weatherall Sets
great stuff mate
"Working like a wizard he doesn't jump around much or react much to what he is playing but the place is going nuts"Comment
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Re: Andrew Weatherall Sets
Inside Out - London Belongs To Me
Andrew Weatherall
Rotters Golf Club, London
The third episode of our London focused Inside Out format, "London Belongs To Me', is a journey through the UK's capital with none other than Andrew Weatherall - one of the most prolific and important British DJ/producers of all time. Weatherall has worn a lot of hats in his career: Pop-star producer, Balearic figure-head, electronic experimentalist, peerless explorer of the minimal techno sound, rockabilly enthusiast and the original moody DJ. His history goes back to the beginning of the British acid house scene having swung gigs for himself at Danny Rampling's legendary Shoom night, his connections with the original Boys Own record label (and fanzine) led to artist releases, remixes and a string of legendary London clubs such as Blood Sugar, Circulation, and of course Sabresonic. It was through Primal Scream that Andrew first made his name however, as the producer of the generation defining Screamadelica album, which fused narcotically challenged rock and acid house. Andrew's collaborations with the radioactive Keith Tenniswood as Sabres of Paradise and later Rotters Golf club were only marginally less influential whilst his more recent work has seen him take more and more inspiration from the rock and roll music that he has harboured as a passion for all these years. Our journey here follows Andrew around the streets of Soho, where he shares his rich knowledge of the area's murky history, and recalls buying the first Psychedelic Furs single from a stall manned by The Pogues' very own Shane MacGowan, via the National Gallery - a place he often visits for artistic inspiration, and ends up at the Crossbones Graveyard in Borough. The tunes that soundtrack this nostalgic trip include The Clash, Chris and Cosey, Primal Scream and of course some hand-picked Weatherall productions.Comment
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Re: Andrew Weatherall Sets
Andrew Weatherall on BIS Radio Show #459
March 10, 2009
Pt 2 with: Andrew Weatherall
19. DJ Hell - The Angst Part 1&2
20. Andrew Weatherall - Brother Johnston's Traveling Disco Consultancy
21. Fairplay - U Know U Jack (Weatherall Remix)
22. Andrew Weatherall - Walk Of Shame (Instrumental)
23. Filthy Dukes - This Rhythm (Emperor Machine Remix)
24. The Golden Filter - Solid Gold (Russ Chimes Remix)
25. Who Made Who - The Plot (Discodeine Remix)
26. Katelectro - Plug (Ottomatique Remix)
(Direct Link)Comment
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Re: Andrew Weatherall Sets
The following is an interview I did a long while ago with acclaimed London DJ Andy Weatherall. Essentially Weatherall is a DJ playing dance music in nightclubs, but his background, influence and intelligence have set his Djing and his own music (he has re- constructed numerous artists' records and his own solo efforts are recorded under the name of Sabres of Paradise) apart from most of the other boring fools he shares the "clubbing scene" with.
"Colourbox are a pretty big influence, that's the sort of dance stuff I liked. I was never a great disco or soul fan, the stuff I was into was 23 Skidoo, 400 Blows and Adrian Sherwood. So Colourbox were and still are a big influence. Not just musically but in attitude because they could have really copped out and gone for commercial success, but they never did because that didn't interest them. I always liked that attitude."
Andy's first solo effort under the moniker Sabres of Paradise was a reconstruction of Throbbing Gristle's 'United'. Throbbing Gristle were Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Sleazy and Chris Carter. Their practices in drug induced [????? - JE] electronic music, performance art and situationism [nah mate - JE] resulted in over twenty LPs and hundreds of head-**** live shows during the seventies. In fact, it can be said that TG were early pioneers of techno, they just didn't have ponytails. The best examples of TG's output can be probably reduced to just two releases - Twenty Jazz Funk Greats and the grisly D.O.A. Third Annual Report [Wot no Heathen Earth?! - JE].
"They were ahead of their time. It's only now that their influence and importance are being seen. It's the same with any band that swims against the tide. Their value isn't known until years later. It's like with the band Suicide. I'm listening to a lot of Suicide at the moment and that's a big influence. It's weird, you go out and talk to people in their early twenties/late teens and they're into techno and you say 'Do you know Suicide?' and they don't know it. Basically it's techno with Elvis singing over it. Those kids are probably listening to records by people old enough to have been influenced by Suicide and they don't know it. They don't even realise where the influences are coming from because those are so in the past, but they've had like this subliminal influence on people."
suicide
It's like what's being taught in the colleges and schools. Great artists and different movements and phenomena are never for the most recognised by academia and the establishment in their time, but years later they'll be part of the curriculum
"Because it's not the accepted rules and regulations. But that's the kind of music I like best, even if I don't necessarily like the end product, it's the concept behind it and the fact that it's like 'non-music' sometimes It's like with rave music, these really heavy rave records. I don't like them to listen to, I don't think they're particularly good records, but I like the reaction they cause in people. You get these rave records that are really almost 'non-music', and they're in the top ten."
And thousands of little kids are dancing to them all over the country
"Yeah, I think that's good and the fact that it upsets the old A&R men - 'Oh no it's not music, they can't play their instruments.'"
It's the same effect that punk had but it's even more extreme than that, and even more non-musical than that. Some of it sounds like TG with a breakbeat behind it
"It's turned the whole thing upside down - non-commerciality has become commerciality. Everything else is so boring now and you've got to 1993 and you've taken music as far as it will go and anything that's non-commercial is now commercial."
It's just a big circle
"Yeah and then people will get bored with that and it will just keep going around. Boredom is a good spur to move people on Like with Throbbing Gristle, I'm sure that there are what you call serious classical pieces * I'm sure there were pieces from the thirties and forties"
Well, the surrealists messed around with noise
"Yeah, like nothing is totally original, if you trace it back. If you find out what the people making that sort of music were listening to, if you talk to them or see a list of their favourite records, you'll see records that are ten years before and if you go back to those people twenty years were you can follow it back to something else, and something else. It's all part of a logical progression.
And if you tap into that energy that moves people on the cutting edge * the innovators
"Exactly"
It's like the followers, the majority of these scenes are often miles apart from each other but the innovators and cutting edge artists seem for the most part very close, even similar in outlook. Look at for instance say, John Coltrane, Led Zeppelin, Throbbing Gristle, Derrick May, in my mind they're all very similar.
"Yeah, yeah. Basically innovators don't wear blinkers. They're taking little bits from everywhere and making something new. There's not a lot you can do now * there's only so many notes and structures. If you're an innovator you've got to be looking outside your sphere, that's how music progresses. It upsets purists, but that's a good thing or else where would we be? If we take it back to its logical conclusion if you're a musical purist you should be basically listening to tribal drums and nothing else. Even if you're a soul purist, something is got to have come before that. The innovators of that time probably ****ed off the purists. That's what I'm saying. Innovators don't wear blinkers, they're just open to every influence they can be. <elitism> It's just when you present it to a wider audience that's when the blinkers get put on again because they don't realise I'm influenced by thrash metal in the sounds that I'm using. But if I'm playing to an audience and I say to someone 'listen to this' and I play the thrash metal record afterwards, they just wouldn't get it. It's the listening audience, they're the ones with the blinkers, who turn into purists. </elitism>
And since your records are going out to a lot of people now, I guess you're having to keep that in mind, whereas if you're only playing for thirty people you can be as wild as you want
"I do think about that. It's nice being popular and it's nice that people buy your records. I don't want to alienate anybody * people who have supported me Hopefully, that's why people like what I do, because they don't know what to expect. When they buy a record with my name on it, they'll think 'what the ****'s that going to sound like."
"I'm in a lucky position, where from day one I've made it clear that what I'm doing and you're going to be listening to is maybe not what you're used to. Now I've come to the point where I don't really have to worry about the audience because I know there are different people who will buy it because it will be something different."
Plus if you're dragging in all these influences, you're going to be introducing people to sounds, and then ideas, that they might not have heard, experienced and thought about.
"Yeah, hopefully. The sort of bands I work with are right across the board, from Galliano to Throbbing Gristle, from jazz funk to industrial music. Hopefully someone along the way will say 'I'm into Galliano, but this sounds good, I wonder what it is'"
Like the whole TG and industrial scene was very ghettoised and insular, but now through DJ-ing and your own music you're getting those same ****ed up electronic noises to a wider scene.
"It was ghettoised to a point. And now because of the nature of the times we're living in, everyone wants that thrill faster and faster. The underground has become so interesting to television * it's exposed to more people. It was happening anyway, but when acid house took off the underground made such an impression on the overground that television started taking notice and the magazines started taking notice and now that underground is so much easier to come by. It's a good thing, but it's also a bad thing because it's too easy. The whole nature of an underground is stumbling on it and discovering it for yourself, not switching on the telly and seeing a documentary about industrial music * that's the bad side. It's good if it turns people on, but the bad thing is that it's too easy. I always think that underground and subversive things shouldn't be easy to find, you should search them out."
"But it's just part of the culture we're living in. You can turn on the telly and everything is happening so fast and information is available so freely now. That's what made the underground turn into the overground * that information is so much easier to come by. The good thing about it is that kids who didn't know anything about it can get into it, but the bad side is that businessmen see and think they can make money out of it, water it down and"
And control it, when what made it good in the first place was that it was out of control.
"I'd rather stumble across a record, a book or an artist accidentally in a shop or a gallery rather than switching on the telly and it's all explained"
A lot of your records are like classical pieces, if you step back from the dance floor you'll hear layer over layer of different things going off.
"That's the whole idea. If you hear it on a dancefloor you'll hear one thing, but at home with headphones on you'll hear something else you might not have heard. I do like to make things substantial, not just throw-away dance tracks * that's not my style. Stock Aitken and Waterman do that, and fair play to them. They do it well, but I don't. Everyone probably thinks it's really easy to produce a Stock Aitken and Waterman track, but seriously * put them in a studio and tell them 'now write a top twenty dance hit'."
"Sometimes it happens by accident. Like 'Loaded' ended up in the charts. But I don't set out to do that, I set out to make something a bit more lasting. At the end of the day I always remember a thing John Peel said: 'what will you remember the seventies for?'"
"Even him, even John Peel remembers the seventies for Slade and the Osmonds. He won't remember the seventies for some obscure industrial record he played, know what I mean? So perhaps pop is longer lasting after all."
But people are continually discovering underground scenes from the past for themselves. Maybe in twenty years time people will be collecting your records like they collect old punk and soul now.
"Hopefully. I'd love to think so. That's part of the reason behind the record label. I like the collectability, that doesn't come first, the music comes first. But I do like that collectability, like Factory when I was younger, and certain dance labels. That's the reason to put out stuff that is different.Comment
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Re: Andrew Weatherall Sets
Interview Posted by ClashMusic Mon, 14/09/2009
Click To View the Fullsize Image/s
Andrew Weatherall’s going backwards.
Sat in his ever-dark basement London studio, he reveals that his debut album, some twenty years behind schedule, was actually produced in reverse as if it was a remix. The main guest vocalist is, in fact, the singer who Weatherall transformed nearly two decades ago into the ultimate acid house muse: Bobby Gillespie.
Weatherall, whose debut album has been lodged in the Clash collective consciousness for a week now, dutifully explains: “Bobby came down just to sort of hang out like he does sometimes, and he heard the track and his words were, “Oh, I’ll do the Mick Jones,” a kind of Clash backing vocal part, which he did very well.”
‘A Pox On The Pioneers’ is a ten-track album riddled with Weatherall’s observations and erudite learning delivered quaintly alongside his understated failings and the lessons gleaned. And, as he chirps between puffs on his ubiquitous spliff, it’s also a concept album: “The theme of the album is heroic failure. In rock ‘n’ roll and art, we love our artists to have suffered, because the more the suffering the better medicine for us when we read it and the more inspiring it is.” This belief was galvanised over an evening in Glasgow when Billy Childish, out on the sauce with our forty-five-year-old protagonist, revealed that he was more the type of man whose philosophy was to climb up Everest without shoes or oxygen tanks, since the vagaries of modern equipment would be cheating.
A chain reaction developed. “So, I started to get interested in polar expeditions that went horribly wrong, all hideously under-equipped,” Weatherall confesses. “I just thought I’m getting the same thing from that, I’m getting the same medicine - not getting off, but I’m gaining strength from other people’s failings; I’m being impressed by their striving against the odds the same way that I do from reading about suicides in rock ‘n’ roll. I just thought I’ll put myself in the place of people that are about to commit suicide, or are the last man left of an arctic expedition, and it does come with a cost; it’s like the explorer is saying, ‘A curse on the people has led me to this point’, you know? ‘It’s pioneers that came before me, that I’ve followed for their idea of life and how to operate, and it’s led me to be marooned on an iceberg with everybody dying around me, so **** them!’
-"It's better to have failed on your own terms-
that to have succeeded on somebody else's."
This reinterpretation of heroism, this insight into the terror stricken side of selflessness is expected from this musician, a figure who’s refused to sell out through every age of dance music. He now jokingly sets out his stall with it, and it’s full of colourful tales. His narratives takes us through the likes of lying angels slamming against the ground as they fall, or the disco singed ‘walk of shame’ home after a three-day bender. Then there’s the family of suicidal trapeze artists who cant admit defeat, or a young lady called Miss Rule who paid him his highest compliment ever by saying her older brother’s Weatherall mix-tapes corrupted her into becoming a glamour model.
The music itself is an effacing mix of Weatherall’s genealogy. He describes it as similar to the music he was making as Sabres Of Paradise in the ’90s, yet now he “knows how to actually produce music properly”. Humility swoons. Andrew was a young punk with a penchant for rockabilly quickly seduced by acid house around 1987. He then in turn became the modest master of this infectious and fast expanding hinterland from which he navigated an underground yet international role as THE DJ to invest, digest and explosively play almost any genre of dance music in the seediest of venues whilst many of his peers crumpled as their integrity was plundered. His self-wrought music is a demure mongrel of all these enduring lives and eras to forge something distinct and powerful. For better or for worse, for richer, or (likely always) poorer, his deliberately understated career’s always been on his terms.
“I just think it’s better to have failed on your own terms than to have succeeded on somebody else’s. It may be using a flowery way to excuse my shortcomings, to liken myself to someone going up Everest without the proper equipment when really all I’ve done is not done things properly. Again, it’s that thing of create your own system or be a slave to another man’s, William Blake I kind of paraphrase, I don’t know the exact quote, but that’s the gist. I interviewed Throbbing Gristle and they said, ‘If you do something that you believe in, the worst that can happen is people say, ‘I don’t like it’, but if you do something that you’ve compromised and people say they don’t like it, it’s a kind of double hit.’ That really stuck with me and it’s seen me through many times of doubt.”
So, what have been this man’s heroic failures? Well, professionally you could probably count them on the fingers of one boxing glove. But personally he’s taken his lifestyle to the extreme heights akin to Everest and discovered the levels at which one can fall. “The songs on this album are deeply personal; they’re about my character but they’re more story songs, they’re not as obvious. The songs on ‘Wrong Meeting’ (his last album as Two Lone Swordsmen) were really obvious. That’s the difficult thing though, out of all this resentment and hurt and bitterness and foolishness have come some really nice wistful songs. I thought ‘Let’s try and do that, let’s try and be beautiful and wistful in not such an obvious way really, in a ‘me bird’s just packed me’ sort of way.’”
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Weatherall’s themes and lyrics are dark, yet in an English way. Brought up through his father’s love for The Ladykillers, Spike Milligan and Monty Python, he’s been left with a black humour that looks over its shoulder to the past as much as to laugh at the devil following. When asked if he regards himself as nostalgic, he almost falls over his knackered old couch, laughingly casting a look down himself to highlight his Hessian slacks, trouser braces, worker’s shirt, black flat cap and huge handlebar moustache. He looks, fittingly for his theme, like he’s just climbed out of his Spitfire in 1918.
This takes us neatly into his next anecdote. Asked about the meaning of standout track ‘Let’s Do The 7 Again’, his answer is as antiquated as his choice of facial appendage.
“Again, it’s about heroic failure. Basically there was a famous circus act in the ’30s and ’40s called The Flying Wallendas, they were a total family act, and old man Wallenda decided to do what had never been done before: a seven-person human pyramid across a tightrope without a safety net. They toured it, did it a couple of times, and there’s a famous film, they only show it so far, but they did it in a circus tent and they fell. I can’t find footage of the actual fall, they freeze it as they start falling in the air, and I think one or two of them were killed, one of them ended up in a wheelchair, it basically decimated the family. But then the next two generations got together and decided they’d do it AGAIN just to prove they wouldn’t be beaten. ‘We’ll do it again!’ And they did it.”
Principals reign. The real reason why this album hasn’t been made at any of the other junctures across his career is that Weatherall stoutly refused to take any credit for anyone else’s work, as he reveals: “There’s a lot of DJs who have forged solo careers and left a trail of resentful engineers in their wake. There’s quite a few of them, I won’t go into names, and some of the stories may not be true, but I didn’t want to be one of those DJs that left a wake of disgruntled backroom boys.”
-"I've been good at realising when the door of-
dignity is about to shut and lock me in."
In the theme of flawed heroes, Clash asks if our protagonist feels like he’s still exploring the outer limits of music. An expectant anecdote follows whereby he’s recently discovered that ‘Sloop John B’ - the Beach Boys tune - was actually an old bohemian calypso song. Obviously. Let’s change tack then.
Asked about his scaling of hedonistic heights and getting wasted, an occupational hazard for a globetrotting DJ, we find that he prays to a more abstract god. “I have gone mad over the years, but I’m always good at heeding warnings; whether they’re metaphorical or people physically warning me, I’m always good at taking signals. I’m not a great believer in the cosmic or a message from God, but I take the hint. The classic one was I was in the Milk Bar and I’d just bought a gram of gak [cocaine], and I opened it up in the DJ booth, and as I opened it up the fan swung round and blew the entire lot away! The guy I bought it off was standing next to me, so I could’ve quite easily said, ‘Oh, give us another one’, but I just thought, ‘No, I’m gonna take that, it’s not a message from God; it’s nothing cosmic, but I’m gonna take that as a warning’. I’ve also been good at realising when the door of dignity is about to shut and lock me in.”
Such instinct has helped keep Weatherall’s cantankerous vessel well away from the rocks that blight many a music career, and we pray he continues on this tack and well away from jibes during his retroactive jaunt into the future. Discussing the twin influences of progressive music and life experiences leads to an examination of reflections, and what it’s like to mine thirty years of music and life for creative purposes.
“I like nostalgia aesthetically, but not as a human condition,” he rounds off. “It’s very debilitating as you look into the past with your rose-tinted specs on. I think wistfulness rather than nostalgia works best. I’ve got rose-tinted specs but one of the lenses has fallen out, so I suppose I’ve got a rose-tinted monocle.”
How very fitting for this wonky wayfarer whose charts are as unexpected as they are often undiscovered.
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Words by Matthew Bennett
‘A Pox On The Pioneers’ is released on Rotters Golf Club on 21st September.Comment
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Re: Andrew Weatherall Sets
Andrew Weatherall: One lone swordsmen
RA's Todd L. Burns talks to one of the most renowned remixers and unpredictable jocks about trying to remember his own productions, warming up a room and knowing when to stop.
Andrew Weatherall is a legend. It's a weighty word, legend, but it really and truly is the only one that can accurately sum up the numerous accomplishments of the man's career. From his early days as a young hipster in the Junior Boys Own crew or his production on Primal Scream's essential Madchester document, Screamadelica, on through to his work in the '90s with The Sabres of Paradise and Two Lone Swordsmen and into the late '00s with his first release under his own name—a record which Simon Reynolds' called "his most enticing offering yet"—and all the while crafting inspiring DJ sets that span genres effortlessly, Weatherall has pushed relentlessly forward in as many directions as possible, rarely looking back to take stock of his incredible oeuvre.
"It's only when I get a hint from someone else," he says. "I'll be out and the DJ will play the My Bloody Valentine remix or some Primal Scream stuff, and it'll sound really good. But I don't constantly listen to my back catalogue. I've got friends who will look at my discography and are quite obsessive. They will come into the studio, and say, 'I don't know such and such remix.' And I'll say, 'Well, to be honest with you, I can't even remember doing it'....Three or four years ago, I was in a shop in London and heard a track and was like, 'This is quite good, what's this?' It was only after the next song came in that I realized it was the first Two Lone Swordsmen album."
Weatherall's foggy memory for his own work can be forgiven. The remixes portion of his voluminous discography is by far the longest and—as far as his legacy goes—the most important. He began in the late '80s—a version of The Happy Mondays' "Hallelujah" with Paul Oakenfold was his first. And, since then, the list of artists that Weatherall has touched up, mangled, straightened out, covered and generally transformed reads like a timeline of pop, indie and dance culture: the aforementioned My Bloody Valentine, New Order, Primal Scream, Saint Etienne, James, The Future Sound of London, Villalobos, Fuck Buttons and countless more.
But the reason that Weatherall ever had a chance at all to do such things was because of his DJing. He was among the DJs at the legendary acid house club Shoom that helped bring the Balearic vibe of Ibiza back to England in the late '80s. With Terry Farley, Cymon Eccles and Steve Mayes, he formed Boys Own, a fanzine that commented on the culture of the time—as well as indulging their interests in fashion and football. Once they realized how popular acid house and Shoom had become, they were among the first to criticize the scene that they had unwittingly formed, claiming that it'd be "better dead than acid ted."
Weatherall's career, in some ways, has been a study in this sort of thing: A constant pulling back from the precipice, just as he threatens to boil over into mainstream consciousness. After the success of Primal Scream's Screamadelica, he became an in-demand studio hand that would offer up 10-minute plus remixes to any act willing to have him. But soon after, he was shunning interviews, and earning a reputation as a sort of mythical underground figure. (Rob Young's Wire article in 1996 tells of his friends asking him when he got back from the interview whether he'd "seen any number of bizarre decorations, posters, bits of anatomy...") A few years later, he ended the Sabres of Paradise project—right as big beat acts like The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim were finally achieving major chart success.
This mentality—and perception from others—has always been with Weatherall, however. When I ask him about his first DJ experience, he recalls "getting thrown off the decks halfway through my first record. It was 1984, before acid house, and I put the smoke machine on full and played the theme tune from this classic English fighter pilot film 633 Squadron. And the entire crowd put their arms out and started running around. The owner came up and said, 'You're taking the fucking piss. Get off!' He wasn't impressed."
It's a reminder of his former wild-man image. (One which saw him giving up drugs in front of an NME writer in the '90s, then going to the toilet later on in the conversation to rescue himself from sobriety. His battle with drugs has continued throughout the years.) But it's also a reminder of how varied his DJing has been. He remembers when he first played records: "It was probably 14, when punk rock happened. There'd be house parties, and I'd sit in the corner playing records by The Damned and The Clash to kids that were more interested in naïve fondling than my musical taste." In 2007, Weatherall finally showcased this diversity in official mix form on the rockabilly, rhythm & blues and glam-heavy Sci.Fi.Lo.Fi compilation for Soma.
"I'm willing to
work for my money,
and I can do
a better job if
I'm given
more time."
That release had its beginnings in Wrong Meeting, a party done a few years ago with Ivan Smagghe that typically went from those raw rock & roll tunes in the early hours of the evening into modern techno by night's end. And, as anyone who has heard it can tell you, it makes complete sense. As Weatherall tells it, there's a clear throughline: "You know, without rhythm & blues and boogie woogie, there would be no ska. Without ska, there would be no reggae, no dub and no studio-as-instrument. Without that, there would be no disco remixes, and no techno music. The collision of country and R&B is the ignition point of where we are today. And you can go all the way up to techno with it. I mean, it's a very tenuous link, but I've made it and I'm sticking to it." [laughs]
Even so—or perhaps because of that tenuous link—Weatherall wasn't sure whether or not he wanted to release it: "I didn't want to be the one to bankrupt Soma." But the label insisted, sensing that Weatherall's name—and the sheer quality of the music—would be enough. They were right: It's been a consistent seller in the imprint's catalogue.
If you want to hear Weatherall do rockabilly in person, there's still a monthly night in London, but typically the Wrong Meeting party is no more. "I don't like to do a night more than a year or 18 months really. I'd rather have someone come up to me on the street and say, 'You bastard! Why did you stop it?' instead of 'You bastard! This is really dragging on.'"
At his age...scratch that...at any age, it's important to keep things fresh. Which is why Weatherall's box is one of the few in the world that changes as much as it does on such a nightly basis. Weatherall tailors his sets to the club—and the moment—spending plenty of time prepping beforehand to be able to roll with the punches should they occur.
And that, more than anything else is what has kept him relevant, unlike many of his peers in the early acid house days that have disappeared, went commercial or simply continue playing sets that you could have just as easily have heard in 1989. In an interview with The Northern Star in 1993, Weatherall was quoted as saying, "The minute you get blinkered and you just go down one avenue, it's like giving in. You've become your parents." And it's something he still clearly believes.
The infamous Robert-Johnson bass bin
Recently, however, Weatherall was faced with a problem that even his varied record bag couldn't do much against. At the end of the weekend-long celebration of the 10th anniversary of Frankfurt's Robert-Johnson club "a lovely German girl came up and said, 'I think there is fire.' And I looked down and, indeed, there was smoke from this $13,000 Martin Audio bass bin. Two strapping lads took it out of the club, and once they got it outside, it burst into flames. I was worried that I'd blown the thing up, but the man from Martin Audio came up afterwards with a huge smile on his face and told me, 'You have very hot records, ja?'"
Needless to say, Robert-Johnson is one of Weatherall's favorite clubs. But in our conversation he also name checks other usual haunts of the star DJ circuit like Fabric and Watergate. That said, he still loves underground venues such as London's Plastic People and a party in Croatia he recently played as well, where he often gets to stretch out on the decks, playing sets that allow him to take listeners different places. "Sometimes I get to play for three hours or more, and I like to start those sets nice and slow. But if I've only got an hour-and-a-half or two hours I may not do it, because starting that slow can be a risk....I'm willing to work for my money, and I can do a better job if I'm given more time."
Besides, who would want the unenviable task of trying to open up a room before Weatherall anyway? Not that the people who are doing so of late are doing all that great of a job, in Weatherall's opinion: "The art of the warm-up DJ is one that is sadly lacking. You'll get to a gig, there'll be hardly anyone in there and the guy will be there with the gains at full. That can be a bit tedious. There are very few DJs who do what I consider a proper warm-up—they're doing their thing regardless of what time it is." Hasn't it always been this way, though? "Yeah, it's not a lost art. It's an art that's just never been found by a lot of people. I know what it's like: It's enthusiasm, it's excitement, but sometimes that enthusiasm and excitement overrides common sense."
Whether playing the theme to 633 Squadron was a moment of enthusiasm, or a moment of complete common sense is anyone's guess. With Weatherall, however, you at least know that something strange is bound to happen either way.Last edited by bobjuice; January 9, 2011, 02:02:50 PM.Comment
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Re: Andrew Weatherall Sets
This is an excellent thread, always thought Mr Sabre is a true Dj legend.
He is a good friend of a friend of mine, and years ago (about 15) he played a party down our way (Portsmouth). We had a small room hired and he just played for hours, covering every style of music you can imagine. All the while he did this we smoked his weed. A quality night that sticks in my mind always. Decent chap as well.
Anyways i'm going to help myself to some of these mixes.
Thanks all for putting them up. Excellent work.
Now all we need is a Mr C thread.Comment
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I will start to plod my way through em. Some of the later stuff is too electro for me. But have found some gems also.
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