The Sabres Of Paradise produced only one “proper” album. The long-player’s predecessor, Sabresonic, had been, instead, a cherry-picking of cuts from the outfit’s DAT archives. Haunted Dancehall was released in the fall of 1994, shortly before the trio’s professional demise. Gary Burns, Jagz Kooner and Andrew Weatherall first got together in 1991, to remix Jah Wobble and produce One Dove. In the space of three years they completed more than thirty remixes and progressed from a solely studio project to a touring, live band. Time must have moved at a tremendous clip.

The LP cover is a cartoon of a blood red, cutthroat razor. Seeing it, I immediately thought of the legend of the demon barber, Sweeny Todd. Combined with the inner sleeve narrative, penned by Weatherall, under the pseudonym James Woodbourne, it’s designed to invoke a London of hidden, sleazy locales, populated by dodgy characters, a mix of Dickens and Colin McInnes, and soaked, as its title suggests, in the spirits and spectres of yesterday’s shindigs (1).

The music is suitably cinematic. Summoning scenes of replicant private dicks shaking down informants, down on their luck pleasure units, in dystopian, near future, robotic, red light districts. Theme, for example, which actually soundtracked the British crime movie Shopping, is a reimagining of The Sweeney via steam-punk machines and Blaxploitation scores. Drama packed with, brass (knuckle) punches and savage, snarling wah-wah, its like Shaft in a cyberspace Soho, Burning Chrome. Theme 4, which follows, is the deconstructed debris left in its wake, and more of an homage to Roy Budd’s Get Carter. The popping and locking Ballad Of Nicky McGuire, with its filtered, gated “Sparky’s Magic Piano” scatting effect, as it fades, seems to pay tribute to The Third Man’s balalaika (2). The title track itself, a frantic flurry of urgent midnight chimes and Psycho strings, could act as the closing credits for a horror flick where your left unsure as to whether the forces of darkness have truly been vanquished (3). Its main melody also appears to have been, seance-like, picked up from beyond via a failing, flickering valved crystal set. 

The tempos on the LP are a radical departure from Sabresonic’s tribal, neopagan techno, instead embracing slower, head-nodding, hip, trip hop grooves. The tracks often getting lost in, locked in their hypnotic loops. No doubt down the strength of whatever the three friends were smoking. Everything, however, is still characterised by The Sabres’ trademark metallic percussion – steel scraped, filtered, EQ-ed and tightly twisted, like the sound of their swords being sharpened – and a distinct, clanking and creepy (4), industrial edge. 

Duke of Earlsfield, with its upright bass-line, delayed drum rolls and paradiddles, is a shot of sinister, spaced out jazz. Eccentrically echoed exotica, similar to the music of muckers, and sometimes Sabres’ band members, Red Snapper (5). Cementing a sonic aesthetic that seeped in to the Sabres later remixes for folks such as Bomb The Bass and Wolfgang Press. Return To Planet D, whistling, appropriately alien and otherworldly, owes something to Autechre and Beaumont Hannant, in the way that its orbits of programmed percolating gradually, melodically converge, merge and coalesce.

It could be argued that Haunted Dancehall isn’t a dance record at all. Dark and moody, it reflected its surroundings. It wasn’t the summer of love any more. Wilmot, when released as a single a year earlier, was a raucous rush of David Lynch / Wild At Heart New Orleans gris gris Mardi Gras voodoo – a call-to-arms at Weatherall’s club, hosted in London Bridge’s dungeon-like arches. On the album, it’s stripped back and reinvented as a shuffling, somnambulant digidub samba. Tow Truck, though, touts blocking rocking beats, timbales, sirens and some Link Wray-like rock’n’roll guitar rumble. Like Duane Eddy meets J Saul Kane’s Depth Charge in dub (6). Funky organ flashes recall The Sabres taking The Stereo MCs for a stroll down The Stones’ Main Street. 

Thirty years later it’s the album’s ambient tracks that really stand out. Take Jacob Street 7AM. A fizzing, squiggling synth-scape, with a rising and falling refrain, that evokes early – Another Green World / Music For Films – Brian Eno. Named after Oliver Twist’s old manor, and only short drug-addled walk / stagger from the site of Weatherall’s aforementioned club, it reactivates flashbacks of refreshed mornings after. The gear wearing off. The sun coming up. The city silent, deserted. Straight society sleeping. As you try to find / wind your way home. Chapel Street Market 9AM is as if the E has kicked back in, or our protagonist necked up again (7). One more for the road. Setting off a psychedelic eruption of imaginary fireworks. Spirals of sparks, exploding in joyful, outbursts of wild bird-like flights and shooting star showers. Both of these pieces share something symphonic with, Smokebelch II, The Sabres’ perhaps most well known, most beloved tune. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s evident that epic, emotive minor key, melodies were always at the heart of Weatherall’s finest moments (8).

Haunted Dancehall (Remastered) can be ordered directly from Warp.

NOTES

(1) I’m sure I’ve read that Irvine Welsh was originally tasked with writing the sleeve notes, but that he came up with more of a straight biography of the band, when Weatherall wanted a pulpy noir story. 

(2) This is only track from Haunted Dancehall that I can remember hearing in a club. Rick Hopkins spun it at Weatherall’s club, Blood Sugar – held at Hoxton’s Blue Note. 

(3) Like something from John Carpenter, or the threatened remake of Andrzej Żuławski’’s Possession. This track was clearly inspired by In The Nursery, who had previously provided the parts for The Sabres’ Smokebelch II, and would also remix Haunted Dancehall. 

(4) Clock Factory-esque.

(5) The Sabres remixed Red Snapper’s Hot Flush. Snapper’s drummer, Richard Thair, worked with The Sabres both in the studio and on stage. Thair, Kooner and Burns were also all members of The Aloof. 

(6) Depth Charge did the remix. 

(7) It was a party on Chapel Street, in Islington, North London, where Danny Rampling asked Weatherall to spin at the now hallowed Balearic Beat / acid house bash, Shoom. Rampling having fallen in love with a Chris & Cosey tune Weatherall dropped. 

(8) Part Chris Carter, part PiL’s Radio 4