Qualia

The core quality of Andrew Weatherall’s work is that he made profundity inseparable from FUN. It was there in his description of the club experience as both a transcendent collective gnostic ritual and “just a fucking disco.” And it’s here in his last solo album, from 2017. QUALIA is almost all instrumental, rooted in Weatherall’s beloved post-punk (most conspicuously The Cure circa Seventeen Seconds) and Krautrock, all hypnotic repetition and gloomy twangs. But from the repetition of a sonorous “HELLO!” through opening track “Evidence the Enemy” through untold outright silly boinging dub echoes and synth wobbles, there is endless playfulness, tomfoolery and hilarious mischief.