Andrew Weatherall? (RIP February 2020)

Can’t believe it, it's easy to forget how much important output he was behind, and for how long. Two Lone Swordsmen and Sabres of Paradise were pretty important for me in my teens, and it’s sad to think part of that world is gone.

watching him and keith tenniswood playing vintage dub at Reading 98 was a lightning bolt moment for me. watching the crowd grooving to this slow reggae and hearing it morph seamlessly into techno by ways of Wilmot was so special

He played locally after Christmas and I stupidly didn’t go.

As Matt DC points out he seemed to have an undimming or unflagging interest in discovery, and never seemed to coast.

A bit before 'Tiny Reminders' came out I remember him saying something like 'We've made an electro album. I don't see why electro can't be considered a proper genre in itself, like house or techno'. And of course he was right, although in 1999 there wasn't enough new electro being produced for this to be conceivable. Two years later, electroclash was the most buoyant new genre in the game and electro would be the sound to define the coming decade in pop and dance music.

I mainly knew him through his remix work, which was reliably great from what I heard, esp given that most ppl treat it as an afterthought.

I love the fact that he had this parallel rockabilly thing going on for years as well.

when TLS went punkabilly, I have to say it threw me a bit. anyone prepared to reassess it?

I don't think I really listened to much by him after 2004 when From The Double Gone Chapel came out. What's good from after that era?

The final two TLS records were decent. Not life-changing, but enjoyable. The wrong meeting ones.

His Fabric mix from '04 is one of my favourites of the whole series

I'm really itching to listen to it again

From Bill Brewster's FB:

There were two sides to Andrew Weatherall. Over in one murky corner was the Lord Sabre of ill-repute, whose music often expressed a darkness that must have been otherwise well hidden. The other side was the quietly reflective, frequently hilarious, deadpan polymath whose character seemed deeply at odds with his piratic look. I guess he was a bit of both.

Although our paths often came close in the 1990s, it was only over the past 20 years that I really got to know Andrew. I interviewed him a couple of times, but we also DJed together at a bunch of parties and hung out at festivals, usually with his girlfriend Lizzie. In person he couldn’t have been further from his slightly foreboding reputation. He was an extremely likeable person, always with an interesting angle on a well-worn story, he was someone you’d be guaranteed to end of talking about something typically off the wall; I’m remembering conversations over the years that covered New Orleans voodoo, David Essex in That’ll Be The Day, Billy Childish or any one of countless diversions that always seemed to be part of a few hours spent with Mr Weatherall. He was also kind and thoughtful man. One summer, we spent a week together in a villa in Croatia, and he helped teach my then very young daughter how to swim (in between speculation about whether Dr John had filched lyrics from a book he’d just read).

I’d doubt whether anyone from the acid house generation has forged such a singular career as Andrew. Many have gone on to become much more successful and considerably more wealthy than him, but none of them have managed to plough a furrow so unique and utterly without ‘career planning’ in mind. Careers were for other people, but not him (during one of our interviews, he told me, “It was only about five or six years ago I realised I was a DJ.”)

Weatherall somehow beat a path in all kinds of directions – verdant and otherwise – but still managed to keep people fascinated by his next move and was equally at home banging out coruscating European techno as he was digging out rockabilly obscurities for a crowd dressed in Western checks and Levis. One of my favourite Weatherall tips was Dave Phillips & The Hot Rod Gang’s brilliant cover of Tainted Love. Pure Andrew dynamite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qJwft9B48k

He told me on more than one occasion that he’d seriously thought about knocking DJing on the head and concentrating on his art. It’s a tragedy for the art world that he never lived long enough to pursue further diversions. In fact, it’s just a tragedy full stop. What a DJ. What a producer. What a guy.



Having gone through my own losses over the past few years, my heart is aching for Lizzie and for ALFOS buddy Sean and Caroline and all of his close friends. He was a giant of a man and he’ll be terribly missed by many many people.

Amazing hilarious interview here

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/feb/25/andrew-weatherall-interview-dj-disco-maverick

Xp that's great stuff from Bill Brewster. I'm amazed when someone can have that kind of impact on so many people.

The three-CD 'Masterpiece mix he did for Ministry of Sound is also tremendous, more in the Love From Outer Space vein, although I'd recommend starting with discs two and three.

Also the Essential Mix from the 90s, always and forever.

I really want to know what he thought about David Essex in That’ll Be The Day!

Oh shit, Hypercity as well, that's one of the defining microhouse mixes.

i just want to say this news sucks, i got nothing else at the moment.

before i saw i saw him perform a 3 hour set of the same kind of groove as that Masterpiece set (as mentioned upthread), i bumped into him wandering around the festival.
i was wearing an on-u t-shirt, we of course chatted.
such lovely warm nature.
just wish i had the chance to have a few drinks and really chat to him, i bet he had some brilliant stories.

related : saw this band support Jim Jones a few years back, checked out the merch afterwards and saw that Andrew had remixed them, so bought the EP on the spot for the remix alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_dPcjS2NOI

The three-CD 'Masterpiece mix he did for Ministry of Sound is also tremendous, more in the Love From Outer Space vein, although I'd recommend starting with discs two and three.

seconded, well worth tracking down, acid house loveliness. I have fond memories of listening to it while getting the bus from Bilbao to San Sebastian, through misty Basque hills.

let's all listen to his nts shows, they are wonderful

Lovely words from Rolo McGinty of the Woodentops on FB:

I awoke, read something a bit weird got straight back in bed went straight to sleep and hoped it was hoax about Andy Weatherall.
He was for a while my near neighbour in Clapham North, late 80’s early 90’s. Theres so many people will be gutted because he was a cheerful friendly bloke, always a glint of good humour . I owe him a lot for all the tracks of mine he popped on the decks. All the places he put me on the door for, laughs, music conversations, mutual friends, some really ace tracks he produced but you know, mainly an active music nut like myself and im not at all used to the truth of this. Ive taken the day off, done deal. Plenty of names coming to mind of people who will be emotionally paralysed. To his family and people closer than I , I wish good healing. He was a centre of energy and clever as well as witty

And Joe Muggs at Mixmag:

https://mixmag.net/feature/rip-andrew-weatherall-obituary-dj

that joe muggs piece is excellent.
had to close down FB as my timeline was getting too emotional.
best thing is to just kick back with a glass of wine, and enjoy AWs grooves for the rest of the evening.

I'm listening to his 2017 album Qualia right now. a nice combination of murky, squirly electronica and the more live instrumentation of his later days

Was he about the only producer to birth a genre via a remix? Maybe the indie/dance crossover was inevitable to some extent, but it seems like "baggy", such as it was, couldn't have existed without "Loaded" and the "Soon" remix.

Justin Robertson has just posted this on the ALFOS FB group:

Weatherall and co artwork from over the years.

Download and do as you please within reason.

Link will be valid for 7 days and is free.

Hopefully it's a good gesture that AW would appreciate xx

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/c3c196a91e9f32b0a0760ba08bd7d16120200217170915/9dca65/grid

Was he about the only producer to birth a genre via a remix?

Not to take anything away from Weatherall, but I'm sure even he himself would credit King Tubby as being the first producer/remixer to do this.

Also, techstep was born out of DJ Trace's remix of T-Power's "Mutant Jazz", tho obviously that happened a couple of years after "baggy".

I didn't follow his career but this was unexpected all the same — his name popped up in so many places. I no longer remember how I discovered it (maybe here?), but several tracks from his Nine O'Clock Drop compilation never left my workout playlist, and in particular I have it to thank for exposing me to Gina X Performance. I should listen to some of those NTS shows! RIP.

tuomas : think the post was about the fact that Andrew possibly invented the baggy remix i.e. a specific genre - the remixing of indie guitar bands for the dance floor.

can anyone tell me the version of 'haunted dancehall' that's on the cafe del mar vol2 compilation

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Caf%C3%A9-Del-Mar-Ibiza-Volumen-Dos/release/23725

it's very very different to the version on the sabres album ?
it's truly gorgeous with massive orchestration and deep chill atmospherics.
no detail on the cover/credits/discogs or anything.

and in particular I have it to thank for exposing me to Gina X Performance

Same - 'Warm Leatherette' too for that matter (although I hated it at first) - iirc that comp came out at least a year or so before the revival of that aeshetic was in full swing. Loved that totally different Social mix just as much.

I'm sure he hated the word 'eclectic' but he did seem to occupy a central zone in which all directions of dance met, turning his attention like a clock arm to a particular direction just ahead of everyone else.

xpost to myself : youtube trawling revealed the answer.
it's the In The Nursery version.
guess i need to track that mini-lp of remixes down now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU26wxr520o

Really good interview:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/feb/25/andrew-weatherall-interview-dj-disco-maverick

tuomas : think the post was about the fact that Andrew possibly invented the baggy remix i.e. a specific genre - the remixing of indie guitar bands for the dance floor.

“When that superstar DJ thing began to take off, I thought, ‘DJs? Heroes? Are people really that desperate? I know people want heroes, but seriously, this is ridiculous.’ It was very tempting, because the money to be made and the larks to be had were manifold. It wasn’t a grand, anti-commercial gesture, because I love pop music and I don’t decry people. But call me unambitious, I was fine as I was. I’m quite happy at this level. When it becomes a career, a career in any business looks quite tiresome and vexing and like it might involve me having meetings with people I don’t want to have meetings with.”

🤩🤩🤩 xp

Yeah, I've got that 7" release

Convinced there were another cover on the B side but discogs seems to think it was single sided xps

A friend of mine went to his house once and said he certainly didn't give the impression of having a lot of money.

it's quite sad is this, he was definitely one of the very few good ones:(

ripped from my twitter feed :

"OK my favourite weatherall story told to me by sean johnston... someone was giving him grief across the decks all night and eventually weatherall asks the griefer "how much did u pay to get in tonite?" and the griefer says "a fiver" and weatherall says "here's a tenner. fuck off"

<3

lol!

tuomas : think the post was about the fact that Andrew possibly invented the baggy remix i.e. a specific genre - the remixing of indie guitar bands for the dance floor.

I guess what I was getting at was that a genre could possibly be traced to a specific remix ("Loaded" in this case), that there was this shared "aha!" moment, which I'm sure was there with dub and house of course, but maybe not so traceable to an exact moment like w/ Weatherall. And DJ Trace, who I had forgotten about, though for me techstep was maybe the first genre that I couldn't actually describe to somebody else.

A lot of genres seem to evolve over time, but that indie/dance crossover moment was like a lightning bolt.

i agree.

Nah that was happening anyway and it was almost inevitable that it would - the Wrote For Luck remix was several months before that for one thing.

That is true but I just don't remember people going all doo-lolly for the WFL remix like they did w/ Loaded.

Plus, Vince Clarke basically turned WFL into an Erasure track w/ Shaun Ryder on vox, whereas Weatherall more or less laid out a blueprint w/ Loaded, which is probably why it was so influential.

Sorry, didn't mean to turn this into a semantics thread. Let's make way for more great stories about a guy we all agree was a giant in our world.

Weatherall's Weekender.

.. available via soundcloud as i have just found out.

I think I got Nine O'Clock Drop out of the library in 2000 and didn't really give it a fair listen as I'd expected something more techno and dubbier, but going back to it now, that's a v prescient tracklisting - a lot of stuff that I heard revived and revered via other channels over the next few years after it came out