Andrew Weatherall? (RIP February 2020)

wtf terrible news

RIP Andrew Weatherall, whose talent wasn't just for making music, but for thinking about in a wholly unique way.

— Michael Hann (@MichaelAHann) February 17, 2020

aw, what? fuck

just on Twitter at the moment but Dave Haslam has put this up

I can't believe I am writing this.#RIP Andrew Weatherall

(6 April 1963 - 17 February 2020)

One of the greatest, sweetest, funniest guys I've ever met. pic.twitter.com/hXKR02k850

— Dave Haslam (@Mr_Dave_Haslam) February 17, 2020

We are deeply sorry to announce that Andrew Weatherall, the noted DJ and musician, passed away in the early hours of this morning, Monday 17th February 2020, at Whipps Cross Hospital, London. The cause of death was a pulmonary embolism. pic.twitter.com/cOe6KA0yts

— Prescription PR (@prescriptionpr) February 17, 2020

shit

:(

What a fucking bummer.

What the shit?? RIP.

Fucking hell, that's horrible news. RIP.

oh no! RIP, nooooo

so many classics from the 90s and beyond, of course, but in particular I'll miss his NTS show which I tried to catch every month, was still discovering lots of good stuff from him :(

listened to his nts show just last week, wtf

fuck's sake

Fuck, this sucks bad. RIP.

His NTS was great, yeah.

wtf

oh fuck

Most random Andrew Weatherall memory is buying Tiny Reminders by Two Lone Swordsmen in Northampton HMV while at uni, gegting it home, putting it on, and the CD being a mispress that had the audio of a Shakespeare play or Dickens novel (I forget which - it was 20 years ago) instead of music. The graphic on the CD was right, just the wrong audio.

Weatherall changed the way I think and feel about music in a seismic way.

Super young. He fell off my radar a long time ago (that's my fault, not his), but I think I listen to his My Bloody Valentine remix more than I listen to MBV these days.

a personal favourite mix of his: https://www.mixcloud.com/PacOlgarte/heavenly-presents-andrew-weatherall-live-the-social-volume-3-1999/

kind of random but i just remembered that time he popped up on streetview

Think i just randomly found Andrew Weatherall on Google maps streetview - https://t.co/OKJV37KvkK pic.twitter.com/I9XxvoFDte

— 𝙶𝚛𝚊𝚎𝚖𝚎 (@grohs) September 27, 2016

RIP. Screamadelica will be all over the obits, but Morning Dove White is the one I go back to more often, a favorite album from a favorite era in music.

RIP. I wasn't super familiar with his other material, but I loved Two Lone Swordsmen. Far too young to go.

my life would be different without him.

Holy shit this is terrible. I met him at a festival in Croatia a few years ago when he was having dinner at the restaurant table next to us, seemed like a lovely guy and the Love From Outer Space set he played later on was phenomenal. Yeah there's the stuff he's best known for but he appeared to have a genuine curiosity for new music, one of the few DJs from that era who never seemed to be outdated or relying on past glories.

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".