Andrew Weatherall
Lone Swordsman and respected rotter Andrew Weatherall talks to Overload about Zen, electro and the upside of guitars and dance music.
However one perceives his precarious passage through the annals of nineties’ pop, it's difficult to overstate Andrew Weatherall’s role as a catalyst for crossover. His reworking of Primal Scream's tormented ballad I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have into the cult smash Loaded was a powerful mechanism that shifted guitars and ‘beats’ into a shared space, and by the time he’d produced the band’s Screamadelica LP in 1991, the twenty-something Londoner had played a pivotal part in changing the face of popular music, for better or for worse, forever. "I’m one of a few people who should be in the dock for that," he declares. "‘Never apologise, never explain’ springs to mind – I seem to spend my life in interviews doing both. I think it’s not the records I don’t like, it’s more me ten years ago that I don’t like..."
Following the success of his initial chart-bound ventures, Weatherall collaborated with Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner to form the seminal studio/band outfit Sabres Of Paradise. As people took to their dark experimental sound, he avoided travelling down the path of imminent popularity by silencing the project following their second album release. "I just saw the way that whole thing was going. I was getting further and further away from what I was about because I was propelled down that path," he explains.
When the plug was pulled, he fashioned Two Lone Swordsmen with former Sabres engineer Keith Tenniswood. The project marked something of a turning point: "not just for the whole mechanics of making music – me as a person was beginning to change," he explains.
He’s the first to admit how for many years music was primarily a soundtrack to hedonism. "It was five or six years of absolute lunacy. I wouldn’t swap it for the world, but around the time when we started Two Lone Swordsman things were beginning to change. The hedonism needed to be kept in check a bit because there was a danger of becoming a bit of a cartoon character, a bit of self parody, and I knew I should really be concentrating on the music."
Following the demise of Sabres, Andrew established Emissions Audio Output, a three-tiered label maintaining a varied release roster right up until it's recent interment. "Yeah, varied in quality as well," he adds. "There are some things we shouldn’t have put out and there are some things we didn’t put out which we should have done, but every record label’s going to tell you that. People were sending all these great demos that were never going to see the light of day anywhere else."
In Two Lone Swordsmen the duo soon forged an intoxicating new sound, releasing on Emissions before signing to Warp, one of Andrew’s favourite (and former) labels. From aquatic dub-house to menacing electro twist-ups, today’s TLS material wears plenty of influences on its sleeve but drops a whole load of interference into the transmission. "Yeah you can spot the influences, but not in the way that I know what record that’s sampled from or I know where they’ve nicked that bassline from. I think when you listen to our stuff, especially now, it’s infused with influences yet it doesn’t pillage the past for our own gain. I think we diffuse our influences well."
One influence that’s shined through in both his DJing and recorded output during recent years is electro. "That’s always been there," he explains. "My early club experiences were electro tinged, my all-time favourite single was Joyce Simms All And All, which was a Mantronix production. Its one of those musical influences that has always been in the brain, but over the last four or five years it’s finally worked its way to the fingertips. I’ve liked it because to me its kind of the rawest form of machine music – when done properly you can hear the machines humming. It goes back to a love of early drum machines on records in the 60s and 70s, just that rudimentary, almost 808-sounding preset rhythm boxes that people started to use. With electro you can keep the pace of a set going but change the rhythm, which is what I like to do when I’m playing. I didn’t like 100% thud thud thud, I like a bit of thud, snare, thud, snare every now and again."
In light of past decisions, Two Lone Swordsmen certainly seems to aspire to greater longevity than his previous projects. "I think it’ll run and run," Andrew assures, "but the good thing is we’re not stuck with that — we don’t have to be Two Lone Swordsmen 24 hours a day. Two Lone Swordsmen pays the bills and pays for other less obvious musical excursions, so I don’t think it’s something that I’ll stop." Such asides include the new Rotter’s Golf Club label, a new 7" label project christened The Hidden Library, a track on Mille Plateaux’s Clicks And Cuts Vol.2 compilation, and forthcoming releases on Kanzleramt and Force Inc.
Returning to his philosophy of stopping projects before they peter out, I wonder if this in anyway correlates to why his recent compositions are short in comparison to many of his older works? "Because I’d been thrown into the limelight I thought every time I appeared I had to make this massive grand gesture," he explains, "and to me grand gestures were 15-minute tracks, all guns blazing, ‘where’s the kitchen sink? We’ll have that in...' Then suddenly realised that loads of the records I love are two and a half minutes, three chords. I just learnt that you can say so much more by saying so much less. And then I read a definition of Zen, which is ‘the maximum amount of beauty and the minimum amount of ingredients.’ It was there in black and white."
Although the thought of guitars and ‘beats’ doesn’t float his boat these days, he tenders constructive commentary on the current state of the field he helped to fertilise. "The good thing about it is, is that if you listened to indie 10 or 15 years ago you wouldn’t get to hear about great funk records or great Latin records or great jazz records, but at least now if you’re an indie kid or you listen to big beat, they’re sampling old funk records. So it would be foolish to totally decry big beat or indie dance because I think it does serve a valuable purpose in leading people to other areas." His dissatisfaction with that whole school of music seems to lie in the fact that much ‘indie dance’ is primarily lazy in its construction. "A lot of it just sounds more like an exercise in sampling – there’s no thought of dynamics or actual sonics," he comments. "I don’t mind functional music, but that seems a bit too functional sometimes, which is why it’s used as background music for sports programs – it’s tailor made for it."
Or adverts. Isn’t a version of the Sabres’ seminal Smokebelch currently being used on an ad for Vodaphone? I ask. "Don’t get me started on that one," he answers, a touch defensively. "Basically, I’ve had the piss taken out of me by a very large multinational who know that I can’t afford to sue them. To be honest I got a couple of grand out of it that’s it for a fucking advert that’s out everywhere. But the good thing was I channeled all the anger into making music and made some really great tunes, because it was like ‘I’m going to make a tune that no bastard can put in an advert’. The most annoying thing about it is people coming up to you and saying ‘get the drinks in, you must have a million in the bank’. Well, I had two grand and I probably spent that on rent for the studio."
Having trodden the line between the underground and the mainstream with boots bigger than most, he’s critical of those who lie submerged beneath the surface, wallowing in self-styled credibility. "I think that the underground can be a bit of a cosy place to hide," he states. "It can get a bit ghettoised. Okay, moan about the ‘overground’, moan about ‘commerciality’, but a lot of people seem to be a bit too happy moaning about it because they don’t actually have to prove themselves, go above ground and do any fighting. It’s like the generals at the back, ‘off to the front with you’. It’s like ’come on lads lets get up out the manhole cover and walk about amongst these people’, because you can have fun with it as well. The pop world and the commercial world are very funny. It can be annoying that there are a lot of very silly people making a large amount of money, but if you're doing something experimental or vaguely different I think you've got to resign yourself to the fact that it’s not going to make you a millionaire. You’re not doing it for that anyway – you moan about commerciality, but then you tell everyone you’re doing it for the love of it? Well stop moaning about not having any money then!"
He's also opposed to the inverted snobbery that belies the open-minded attitude many 'underground' producers profess to endorse. "All the people who decry the mass media or decry pop culture will gladly go into ironic mode when the 80s get mentioned. If they’d had been students at the time of the Human League then they would have gone, ‘this is shit’. All the people now who are slagging off pop music, their younger brothers in ten years time will be looking back at these records as classic pop records and will be dancing about to it in an ironic way with mullet hairdos. Why not enjoy the pop culture now rather than just ironically in 10 years time? Isn’t it good that certain radio one DJ’s are just Smashy and Nicey with Prada shirts, it’s funny! A lot of the popular dance press is beyond self-parody — you don’t need to set up a fanzine to take the piss out of it, just go and buy it! It’s equally as funny – why not get off on it?"
A hackneyed cynic then, or perhaps not... "There’s nothing wrong with being cynical as long as you use the energy of that cynicism to do something about the situation" he concludes. "I’m very guilty of not doing stuff in the past, the first 25 years of my life was just spent moaning!"
And on a high I propose we draw the interview to a close. "Well, that would be in character," comes a cheeky chuckle.
Following the success of his initial chart-bound ventures, Weatherall collaborated with Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner to form the seminal studio/band outfit Sabres Of Paradise. As people took to their dark experimental sound, he avoided travelling down the path of imminent popularity by silencing the project following their second album release. "I just saw the way that whole thing was going. I was getting further and further away from what I was about because I was propelled down that path," he explains.
When the plug was pulled, he fashioned Two Lone Swordsmen with former Sabres engineer Keith Tenniswood. The project marked something of a turning point: "not just for the whole mechanics of making music – me as a person was beginning to change," he explains.
He’s the first to admit how for many years music was primarily a soundtrack to hedonism. "It was five or six years of absolute lunacy. I wouldn’t swap it for the world, but around the time when we started Two Lone Swordsman things were beginning to change. The hedonism needed to be kept in check a bit because there was a danger of becoming a bit of a cartoon character, a bit of self parody, and I knew I should really be concentrating on the music."
Following the demise of Sabres, Andrew established Emissions Audio Output, a three-tiered label maintaining a varied release roster right up until it's recent interment. "Yeah, varied in quality as well," he adds. "There are some things we shouldn’t have put out and there are some things we didn’t put out which we should have done, but every record label’s going to tell you that. People were sending all these great demos that were never going to see the light of day anywhere else."
In Two Lone Swordsmen the duo soon forged an intoxicating new sound, releasing on Emissions before signing to Warp, one of Andrew’s favourite (and former) labels. From aquatic dub-house to menacing electro twist-ups, today’s TLS material wears plenty of influences on its sleeve but drops a whole load of interference into the transmission. "Yeah you can spot the influences, but not in the way that I know what record that’s sampled from or I know where they’ve nicked that bassline from. I think when you listen to our stuff, especially now, it’s infused with influences yet it doesn’t pillage the past for our own gain. I think we diffuse our influences well."
One influence that’s shined through in both his DJing and recorded output during recent years is electro. "That’s always been there," he explains. "My early club experiences were electro tinged, my all-time favourite single was Joyce Simms All And All, which was a Mantronix production. Its one of those musical influences that has always been in the brain, but over the last four or five years it’s finally worked its way to the fingertips. I’ve liked it because to me its kind of the rawest form of machine music – when done properly you can hear the machines humming. It goes back to a love of early drum machines on records in the 60s and 70s, just that rudimentary, almost 808-sounding preset rhythm boxes that people started to use. With electro you can keep the pace of a set going but change the rhythm, which is what I like to do when I’m playing. I didn’t like 100% thud thud thud, I like a bit of thud, snare, thud, snare every now and again."
In light of past decisions, Two Lone Swordsmen certainly seems to aspire to greater longevity than his previous projects. "I think it’ll run and run," Andrew assures, "but the good thing is we’re not stuck with that — we don’t have to be Two Lone Swordsmen 24 hours a day. Two Lone Swordsmen pays the bills and pays for other less obvious musical excursions, so I don’t think it’s something that I’ll stop." Such asides include the new Rotter’s Golf Club label, a new 7" label project christened The Hidden Library, a track on Mille Plateaux’s Clicks And Cuts Vol.2 compilation, and forthcoming releases on Kanzleramt and Force Inc.
Returning to his philosophy of stopping projects before they peter out, I wonder if this in anyway correlates to why his recent compositions are short in comparison to many of his older works? "Because I’d been thrown into the limelight I thought every time I appeared I had to make this massive grand gesture," he explains, "and to me grand gestures were 15-minute tracks, all guns blazing, ‘where’s the kitchen sink? We’ll have that in...' Then suddenly realised that loads of the records I love are two and a half minutes, three chords. I just learnt that you can say so much more by saying so much less. And then I read a definition of Zen, which is ‘the maximum amount of beauty and the minimum amount of ingredients.’ It was there in black and white."
Although the thought of guitars and ‘beats’ doesn’t float his boat these days, he tenders constructive commentary on the current state of the field he helped to fertilise. "The good thing about it is, is that if you listened to indie 10 or 15 years ago you wouldn’t get to hear about great funk records or great Latin records or great jazz records, but at least now if you’re an indie kid or you listen to big beat, they’re sampling old funk records. So it would be foolish to totally decry big beat or indie dance because I think it does serve a valuable purpose in leading people to other areas." His dissatisfaction with that whole school of music seems to lie in the fact that much ‘indie dance’ is primarily lazy in its construction. "A lot of it just sounds more like an exercise in sampling – there’s no thought of dynamics or actual sonics," he comments. "I don’t mind functional music, but that seems a bit too functional sometimes, which is why it’s used as background music for sports programs – it’s tailor made for it."
Or adverts. Isn’t a version of the Sabres’ seminal Smokebelch currently being used on an ad for Vodaphone? I ask. "Don’t get me started on that one," he answers, a touch defensively. "Basically, I’ve had the piss taken out of me by a very large multinational who know that I can’t afford to sue them. To be honest I got a couple of grand out of it that’s it for a fucking advert that’s out everywhere. But the good thing was I channeled all the anger into making music and made some really great tunes, because it was like ‘I’m going to make a tune that no bastard can put in an advert’. The most annoying thing about it is people coming up to you and saying ‘get the drinks in, you must have a million in the bank’. Well, I had two grand and I probably spent that on rent for the studio."
Having trodden the line between the underground and the mainstream with boots bigger than most, he’s critical of those who lie submerged beneath the surface, wallowing in self-styled credibility. "I think that the underground can be a bit of a cosy place to hide," he states. "It can get a bit ghettoised. Okay, moan about the ‘overground’, moan about ‘commerciality’, but a lot of people seem to be a bit too happy moaning about it because they don’t actually have to prove themselves, go above ground and do any fighting. It’s like the generals at the back, ‘off to the front with you’. It’s like ’come on lads lets get up out the manhole cover and walk about amongst these people’, because you can have fun with it as well. The pop world and the commercial world are very funny. It can be annoying that there are a lot of very silly people making a large amount of money, but if you're doing something experimental or vaguely different I think you've got to resign yourself to the fact that it’s not going to make you a millionaire. You’re not doing it for that anyway – you moan about commerciality, but then you tell everyone you’re doing it for the love of it? Well stop moaning about not having any money then!"
He's also opposed to the inverted snobbery that belies the open-minded attitude many 'underground' producers profess to endorse. "All the people who decry the mass media or decry pop culture will gladly go into ironic mode when the 80s get mentioned. If they’d had been students at the time of the Human League then they would have gone, ‘this is shit’. All the people now who are slagging off pop music, their younger brothers in ten years time will be looking back at these records as classic pop records and will be dancing about to it in an ironic way with mullet hairdos. Why not enjoy the pop culture now rather than just ironically in 10 years time? Isn’t it good that certain radio one DJ’s are just Smashy and Nicey with Prada shirts, it’s funny! A lot of the popular dance press is beyond self-parody — you don’t need to set up a fanzine to take the piss out of it, just go and buy it! It’s equally as funny – why not get off on it?"
A hackneyed cynic then, or perhaps not... "There’s nothing wrong with being cynical as long as you use the energy of that cynicism to do something about the situation" he concludes. "I’m very guilty of not doing stuff in the past, the first 25 years of my life was just spent moaning!"
And on a high I propose we draw the interview to a close. "Well, that would be in character," comes a cheeky chuckle.
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