is anyone excited about andrew weatherall fabric mix?

HMV are doing a "buy one get one free" Fabric CD offer at the moment. And even though it only came it out yesterday, they've included Weatherall's Fabric 19 immediately in the offer. Well, they have in some London branches at least. So you can get this and another Fabric for £11.

Checking out some more samples The Emporer Machine leapt THE HELL out at me as one of those 'oh god.. where have I heard that before??' tunes.

Finally tracked it down to the Sylvie Marks mix I downloaded the other week (not on her site any more sadly, this months is ok but not quite as insanely-twitchy-danceable)

The Richardo Villalobos track is odd, sounds just like late 80's/early 90's skate rock!

Probably will buy this ...

It's kinda like to the Poker Flat sound what Scsi-9's Digital Russian is to the Force Tracks sound. Except Digital Russian is better.

When he's on he's on though. "A Night Like This"! "That's What I Like (Fuck A Duck Mix)"! His stuff usually sounds great in the middle of a mix.

#1 = http://www.discogs.com/release/145793
#2 = http://www.discogs.com/release/155151

minimal funk #3 is not really worth your time (ie it exceeds tim's "never really suprising" comment, it's actually really boring)

one good thing you can say about bug's selections is that they're less german-centric than most microhouse mixes, he casts his net pretty wide.

Basically I like Steve most when he sounds Get Physical-worthy.

This conversation inspired me to put on that John Tejada Poker Flat Volume III mix again, I always forget how good it is. Tejada's "Flight to Tokyo"!

Right now I'm not sure what I feel like buying at all! Have to scratch some kind of itch soon...

cheers for that though both of you :)

And all of you must hear "Chorgs" by John Tejada!

and i kind of agree with dog latin. the weatherall mix, while technically great, is just missing something. it's very much like hypercity. maybe i need to hear it again. one thing i've noticed with weatherall is that his mixes are not headphone music.

The best DJ set I ever saw was TLS dj-ing dub and reggae in the dance tent at Reading. They somehow managed to blend all the dub together so perfectly and slipped in "Wilmot" towards the end. Had the whole place jumping!

at a proper distance from quality speakers on a good sound system of course.

or in a car with a good stereo.

listening is completely subjective though so who knows. i notice that i prefer a lot of music with added room ambience. i also have a pretty great sound system...

The DJ who played before Captain Comatose's live performance here in Melbourne the other night did a set which was like a best-of of all of these overlapping styles. He played the Mylo mix of "Chewing Gum", "2 After 909", DJ T's "Philly" (with an a cappella female rap over the top which worked surprisingly well), this awesome mix of the Freaks' "The Creeps" which I hadn't heard before (not the Steve Bug one) the Tiefschwarz mix of "Plastic Bags & Magazines" and all this other excellent stuff which i can't remember now. Anyway, the point is the whole time I was thinking "yes, this is what house should be right now, this expansive environment where killer electro riffs and acid bleeps and stuttering micro-beats and disco strings and pop vocals all mixed up as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

(Captain Comatose were amazing too, but that's another story)

http://stat.discogs.com/R/2087-001.jpg

indulge me my rockism, please

i prefer the radioactiveman mix on fabric to this one to be honest - a lot more pumpin!

still like it though, and the "mixing" that someone mentioned on another thread at track 6 and 7 - the steve bug "that kid" tune that jumops fronm schaffel to 4/4, and the dj t - time out (acid dub) arre both worth the price of admission. or the price of a cable modem

maybe i will take advatage of that hmv offer when i get near there and get fabric 17 and 19

It’s no fun

And it's true. There's nothing on this record that'll get your rocks off so I can leave it to the beards and jockey-spotters to pick to bits.

i'll take no fun any day of the week
this was my number 2 mix of last year, only beat out by the truly amazing scratch perverts essential mix for radio one

bbbut this mix has steve bug "that kid" and dj t "timeout (acid dub)"!!!!!!

those two tunes are worth the price of entry alone!!!!

but there is something a little dry about the mix, i concede.

that's such kneejerk bollocks! barely any of the tracks on Fabric 19 are that style of electro and the outro to the mix is weird post-punk type stuff, as a mix it's not comparable to any of the other electro mixes which I assume are horribly Shoreditch. And even if they were, what on earth has that got to do with the music?

And also, make up your mind, you say Fabric 19 is "no fun" and "horribly Shoreditch" and also for "beards and jockeyspotters"

That sounds like a fairly 3 different criticisms of pretty much any possible sense in which this mix could be good.

I see the fabric as weatherall havig a bit of a "hmmm what shall i play next" vibe rather than a work out on paper and practise for ages mix.

he probably turned on the decks, and knocked it out.

then again his one for the social comp is deep house...

you say you were looking forward to the mix for ages and so was i but the fact that it doesnt sound like it should in your head is more youre views on the Wev' and not his musical taste

but what do i know about anything.

That sounds like a fairly 3 different criticisms of pretty much any possible sense in which this mix could be good.

Err... What? I love arguing with you Ronan but I'm making the same point with all of these. I'm not asking Andrew to play the bloody Vengaboys or anything but I can't help thinking that this mix is rather soulless. It seems very much style-over-content trying to play the very trendiest of trends until it just sounds nerdy and cleansed of any vigour or energy.

Seriously, I'm not bashing it and I do like puting it on occasionally. It's just, as I said upthread, that this mix could've ben done by any old house DJ whereas I've seen Weatherall do some amazing sets in the past. Admittedly there's a personal agenda here too because I have a general aversion to mid-tempo house music as well as the Disco-Punk sound (which fucks me off - yes I said it) and am more up for the dub/idm/electro/techno side of the Swordsmen's work.

Also I don't consider the last 3 or 4 tracks "the disco punk sound", or if they are they're a fairly specific spin on it.

I dunno, I don't really accept "style over content" as a valid criticism of anything.

"Admittedly there's a personal agenda here too because I have a general aversion to mid-tempo house music as well as the Disco-Punk sound (which fucks me off - yes I said it) and am more up for the dub/idm/electro/techno side of the Swordsmen's work. "

I take it you disliked Hypercity and the Live @ The Social mixes too then doglatin?

I think though to be honest he's such a "big name" he could get away with playing those sort of sets to his audiences around Europe, I mean, the time I saw him last, about 2 years ago, he was so so so so boring that people were chatting and talking or alternatively stretching themselves out having taken many many pills.

I was quite high and it was far and away the most boring thing I've ever seen, but almost comically boring, we actually spent the night talking and drinking and messing with people around the club.

I guess though there will always be people for whom Tilt is like the highest pinnacle dance music has ascended to.

well, tim, how it is that i'm basically a house/techno populist in the way that most post-reynolds critics are d&b populists.

the funny thing is that i get accused of being a "house music rockist" when of course, nobody ever gets called a "junglist rockist" for suggesting that early suburban base tracks are better than the new product.

also where i draw the line is in suggesting that whole scenes/genres are inherently populist or cognoscenti-oriented. i think you can do that at the label level probably but the idea that detroit techno doesn't have its own fanbase that's as trend-unconscious as the progressive trance massive is just silly (or maybe some people need to hang out in different record stores and online forums)

i feel like every genre has its functional product (UR, 20:20 vision records, dj hype and doc scott) and its cognoscenti product (intuit-solar records, kompakt, roni size) and that really transcendent zone of overlap where the really really good shit happens (carl craig or urban tribe, classic, reinforced).

when it comes down to it, given a choice, i'd rather listen to purely functional and anonymous music, like subliminal or defected comps than whatever i perceive to be (stealing from fashion terminology) "directional" music. i guess that's why i was so excited by the blackstrobe mix - it doesn't seem at all like "blackstrobe's mission statement of purpose and intent" until somewhere in the 2nd hour and even then it's much more functional than usual (i'm crediting arnaud rebotini as the secret weapon).

the problem i guess is that where you draw these lines is going to be entirely subjective. to my ears most kompakt sounds very very dry and while i can see the ways in which it's interesting to think about and write about and blog about for me it's not such interesting listening. i have to struggle to come up with things to say about west coast house and detroit techno (whooshy noises! hazy synths! steady beats!) but i can listen to it for hours and hours and hours.

my feeling with weatherall is that his best work is going to be the emissions output phase where he was working with people like muzique tropique at the same time as much more underground producers. my favorite mix of his is the deep house one from the social, followed by his essential mix from the same year, the rest of all hovers in the same space far far below those two pinnacles.

the new mix sounds rather dry, yes, but i guess what is bugging me more is that #1) it seems like a forced attempt to make a statement re: the intersection of post-electroclash and microhouse, which is what killed my interest in bpitch control and #2) the attention seems misplaced, just based on the song snippets on the website i can't see how anyone would think weatherall's sounds better.

ok does that answer your question tim??

i'm not sort of hazy as to what the lifestyle of people who are really really into steve bug and ricardo villalobos is but i have a sense they all own ipods or something.

mind, i have the same general suspicion of people who are really into trance, there may be a hardcore fanbase with a lifestyle attached but it's also clearly the dance music of choice for the 12-cd crew so i guess the music is going to reflect that by pandering to a pretty low common denom (see also TRIP HOP in it's late decadent zero 7 / morcheeba oriented stage)

also the hardcore fanbase seems to be largely composed of overtanned australians (sorry tim) in tanktops making faces under strobelites and lasers, so there's more points deducted.

his early sabres material is amazing, and really there's always been a big postpunk influence, at least the industrial end that took in 23 skiddoo and human league and cabaret voltaire.

the late sabres material and early emissions = totally sui generis.

the late emissions deep house phase and the early 2LS on warp were also ahead of the curve as far as exhibiting strong "micro" tendencies in the music, also you've all got to admit that mixing postpunk and deep house is going to be a lot more naturally interesting than doing electro covers of joy division tracks (see also: maurice fulton's work as "boof" and "stress" vs the horribly overrated "mu" [uber-noisy "dance" music you can SKRONK to! YUCK!]).

so to see weatherall sudden reversing course as electroclash got real trendy and swing back to a vein he'd thoroughly mined out in the mid and late 90s is a bit disturbing. at the very least he could be doing ragga-electro like radioactive man and tim wright.

also can i be the first to say that the get physical label reminds me uncomfortably of the DMX krew? even down to the slightly creepy racial politix of the whole affair?? (mind you, i am equally if not more guilty of the same by repping bunker (dudes from the netherlands calling themselves "raheem hershel"??) and um, the dirt crew's "cleaning up the ghetto ep")

weatherall for me was always a fusion artist - which i guess explains reynolds antipathy, right? - and i don't see the new mix and work so much a fusion as it is weatherall plopping himself down right smack in the middle of someone else's scene (true, it's a scene he helped birth (years and years ago) but it's still a holding manuever, i think)

Could be an ironic joke yet there are plenty of black/muslim dudes here (though probably none of them are into bunker style electro.)

I see the Vahid/Dog Latin pov, although in the end I don't get it. Fabric 19 for me gives me a vision of how clubbing could be made fun again (probably then a personal struggle to which the mix give a solution). Of course it helps that I never went to the Church of Joy Division so I don't mind him dropping that coverversion. Also, as ever, I never care if things sound dated. Seems to go for that Weatherall, the big Author who strives for timeless art vibe.

also can i be the first to say that the get physical label reminds me uncomfortably of the DMX krew? even down to the slightly creepy racial politix of the whole affair?? (mind you, i am equally if not more guilty of the same by repping bunker (dudes from the netherlands calling themselves "raheem hershel"??) and um, the dirt crew's "cleaning up the ghetto ep")

If you mean Chelonis R Jones he's from Los Angeles.

Ronan - stop being so grumpy and make friends.

That, dear chap, is *precisely* what I'm waiting for!

I still think this mix is not really electroclash or even electrohouse on anyone elses terms, it's very much Weatherall's own take. The two opening tracks are more EBM style than most of the current stuff you hear. Ambrose otm about the amazing segue into "Time Out" (Acid Dub) aswell.

Also as far as I know, lots of Dutch people probably are called things like "Raheem Hershel", can someone confirm the likelihood of this?

When it comes down to it, given a choice, i'd rather listen to purely functional and anonymous music, like subliminal or defected comps than whatever i perceive to be (stealing from fashion terminology) "directional" music."

See Vahid I'm not sure if this works analogy works exactly because, while maybe not "directionalist" in the fashionalist sense, early d&b was also not exactly functionalist "product" in the same way that Defected/Subliminal is (and I don't mean to imply anything negative by the term "product"). There's a timeless stability to Defected/Subliminal's vision of house which, while it certainly follows trends ("Shiny Disco Balls" etc.), has a sort of aesthetic reliability to in the sense that it works within pre-conceived notions of how house should sound. Early d&b, even the functionalist end, almost always had a "will this work?" ambiguity to it.

But anyway, I'm not really wanting to argue for the lack of worth of Subliminal or whatever (who, as I've said elsewhere, I really liked though I think they've dropped off of late). What interests me is that I feel like our definitions of "populist" are different. Or at least they feel like they must be insofar as most of this electro-house I would consider to be very populist. I mean you look at current Ministry of Sound comps and it's all "Rocker" and "Drop The Pressure" and "Midas Touch" and so on, just as it would have been French House at some points and trance at others (in fact somewhat oddly "Midas Touch" has as high a rate of car stereo rotation as any dance song I can think of since Modjo's "Lady" - in that sense it's probably bigger than "Drop The Pressure" or "Rocker"). This is very much the music of the masses at the moment - people who think it's just inner-city art-phags and/or bloggers deeply underestimate the extent to which metrosexuality (as a fashion statement if not a lifestyle choice) has taken hold. Of course I'm extrapolating from Melbourne's dance scene when I say this.

When I think of "purely anonymous and functional music" I think of one-bar-loop tech-house and deep-house (and ha ha neo-d&b). This stuff doesn't strike me as populist at all but really rather gatekeeperish (neo-d&b a slight exception because its tempo and sheer grunt allows for a trace of leftover rave mentality) - it's music about which nothing can be said precisely because it only makes sense to DJs, as DJ tools; it's qualities can only be articulated in terms of the snare sounds and synthesisers and EQ levels and so on. I realise that this is probably not the same music you were referring to; my point is that it's not necessarily easy to break this down into a good/bad binary.

Your argument that Kompakt and so on lends itself to blogspeak strikes me as right but I always thought this was because of its pop and populist attributes rather than its cognoscenti appeal. I mean I can't speak for every blooger who writes about Kompakt, but I can't really countenance coming from the perspective of being, say, pro-Kompakt and anti-Shakedown.

If being pro-Kompakt and pro-Shakedown and not entirely pro, say, Funk D'Void (though that Coccoon mix is mostly quite decent) is a sign of the dreaded iPod owner (ie. the middle class urbane dillettante who's not part of a dance scene), well, yeah, guilty as charged.

"also the hardcore fanbase seems to be largely composed of overtanned australians (sorry tim) in tanktops making faces under strobelites and lasers, so there's more points deducted. "

Well I'm not tanned at all and I don't wear a tanktop so I won't take it personally.

i heard something about rockabilly? does that just mean gun club / birthday party / etc?

anybody seen 2006 set lists or charts for weatherall anywhere??

http://images.junostatic.com/full/CS1952055-02A-BIG.jpg

a few years old, but this still hits the spot.

i buy very few commercially available mix cds these days, but this one i had to, and damn, i have not regretted it.

its truly wonderful.

Weatherall has two new things coming in 2016. The Woodleigh project sounds great. Scott Fraser debuted a track on his radio show last week. I'm seriously contemplating a trip to Carcossonne for his festival in 2016.