Sabresonic

The Sabres of Paradise (UK DJ Andrew Weatherall and musicians Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns) 1993 debut is an album of haunted techno, gothic dub and leftfield electro, edgy, anxious and intense. So it’s a little ironic that the most loved and remembered track from a generally heavy and imposing album is the beatifically joyful and perenially popular Smokebelch II - Beatless Mix. The other eight tracks present an uneasy and eerie version of techno, with rattling, skeletal percussion on top of distorted thudding kicks, creeping metallic synths and unsettling soundscapes. Three churning, chugging, dub-flavoured fear-step tunes form the centre of the album, half an hour of scuttling noises, metallic synth washes, Halloween drones, shadowy FX and brooding bass. Still sounds imposing three decades on.

This was the sound of Andrew Weatherall making the first of the sharp left turns away from the spotlight and towards the shadows that would characterise and sustain his remarkable career. By 1993 he could have followed acid house contemporaries like Carl Cox and Paul Oakenfold into the global DJ mega league — but instead he chose to duck down underground, embracing minimalist techno and his most gothic impulses, remixing obscure world music records as much as or more than the big indie bands of the time, signing to WARP, and making this album. With studio partners Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns he crafted a digital haunted house, full of horror movie chime melodies, deep dub bass, percussion that skitters and runs down your spine, and general gothic atmospheres. From the quivering 15 minute centrepiece “Clock Factory” to the chase-through-the-night techno of “Still Fighting” and “Inter-Lergen-Ten-Ko” it switches up and down energy levels, but keeps that shadowy, fearful aesthetic consistent throughout. It’s by no means inaccessible mind — after all, the bonus “Beatless Mix” of “Smokebelch II” would become a huge and endlessly compiled chill out classic — and it signalled Weatherall as having a career way deeper and longer than just being remixer du jour. But it still sounds gloriously dark and odd even now.