Thirteen years on from ‘Screamadelica’ and nearly ten years since Sabres of Paradise split we can still find Andy Weatherall fucking with our heads in the margins. Hyped as the album where he re-discovers guitars and vocals the reality is a little more complex than that. Yes, this is the first chance to hear Weatherall’s voice but if you’re expecting him to leave behind his magical touch with beats for some form of garage rock band you’ll be barking up the wrong tree.
‘From the Double Gone Chapel’ is a dark, claustrophobic beast populated by hard, funky techno beats. Weatherall, with collaborator Keith Tenniswood keep what they know best at the core of this record but that is not to say they are beyond playing with our expectations. There’s Weatherall’s vocals to begin with. It would be over egging it somewhat to describe him as a singer. Rather he mutters and snarls through several tracks, most profitably on ‘Sex Beat’, full of cool, snappy beats, fuzzbox guitars and creepy keyboards, Weatherall rather scarily opines ‘we can fuck forever / but you’ll never get my soul’.
On ‘Faux’ he bangs on about ‘simple rhythms’ over tinny drums and on ‘Kamanda’s Response’ they turn their attention to a creepy stomp a long with fantastic skanking rhythms. It’s not all Weatherall though, on ‘Taste of our Flames’ a female vocalist takes centre stage to produce a paranoid gem that wouldn’t seem out of place on Tricky’s classic ‘Maxinquaye’.
The best moments though are to be found on the instrumental tracks. ‘Formica Fuego’, for example, is full of stabbing post punk guitars that sound like early PIL and is an abject lesson in combining electronic and live instrumentation. Opener ‘Stack Up’ revels in great lolloping dubby beats and ‘The Lurch’ deals in dirty rumbling bass and a synth sound that seems to have been touched by the hand of Gary Numan. They round it all up with ‘Driving with my Gears in Reverse (Only Makes you Move Further Away)’ a mini epic with churning guitar that brings to mind Death in Vegas and their uncanny knack of producing sublime electronic dirges.
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It’s not perfect, several tracks meander along and on ‘Punches and Knives’ the vocals fall flat and sound as menacing as Craig Nicholls scary faces. That’s the price of experimentation. If you don’t stick your neck out or fall on your arse occasionally you are destined to stand still. Two Lone Swordsmen and in particular Andy Weatherall maybe playing in the margins but the mainstream was there for the taking during the early nineties after ‘Screamadelica’ and at the height of club culture. Perhaps because Weatherall didn’t want it (and it was his choice as you will know if you’ve ever seen one of his breathtaking yet utterly left of centre DJ sets) that he is still making essential music in the 21st century.
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