Before they formed The Sabres Of Paradise with Andrew Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns were already working together in the studio. Burns was a seasoned session musician. Kooner had been part of acid house outfit Adrenalin MOD, and also behind “loved-up”, piano-tastic tracks, like La Camoor’s Tarantella, that sought to pass themselves off as fashionable Italian imports. Burns began to collaborate on stuff by The Aloof, a project that Kooner had started with DJ Dean Thatcher, eventually becoming a full member, and both of them also ably assisted Thatcher with the remix commissions he was picking up. 

Thatcher was the resident DJ at Flying, a hedonistic Saturday night soiree held at London’s Soho Theatre Club. A small, intimate venue, tucked away behind The Astoria, on Falconberg Court. All the tunes that these 3 friends produced were absolute anthems at the club, they took the roof off, probably not least because they’d been made by the party’s own. There was a strong sense of partly chemical-fuelled camaraderie and pride. 

The Aloof / Never Get Out Of The Boat (Flying Mix) / 1990

The Aloof’s Never Get Out Of The Boat was first released as a white label. The original “Flying” mix is a slow trippy journey, with warm psychedelic swells surrounding echoed tablas, a dub bass-line and an inspired combination of “Apocalypse Now” and “Magic Roundabout” samples. The track was later licensed to FFRR, where it gained a cool Dave Little caricatured cover, and new remixes. A “Gosh” one that borrows from Snap! via Italy’s Hi-Power, while Farley & Heller’s “Banging” version pays tribute to Carly Simon’s Why. To be honest, I didn’t know about the original white label until Phil Mison played it to me a few years ago.

This Ragged Jack / The Party’s Over (Flying Remix) / 1990

This Ragged Jack were a indie-rock / dance crossover London “baggy” act – not unlike If, of Saturday’s Angels fame – who were signed to Island. Their guitarist was Phil Mossman who would subsequently session with The Sabres and join their live, touring band. The Party’s Over, lyrically has shades of Flowered Up’s Weekender, questioning the post-second summer of love “E = Escape” lifestyle. Asking what happens when the gear wears off? The Flying mix, which I think was never officially released, only on a under-the-counter promo, opens with a carnival of crowd noise and rave klaxons. A few minutes in it swaps its B-line for the one from The Ojays’ For The Love Of Money – which had only recently been used by Terry Farley when remixing Happy Mondays’ Rave On. 

The Party’s Over was a huge tune at Gosh, a Flying spin-off, run by Clive “Peace Division” Henry, at Camden’s Dingwalls, where it strutted its downtempo stuff alongside other Balearic biggies, like the Dubweiser bootleg of The Smiths’ How Soon Is Now? 

Kiss AMC / Circles (Blind Lemon) / 1991

Mancunian hip hoppers Kiss AMC signed to A&M. In The States their major label debut, Circles, got a Francois Kevorkian remix. In the UK the Flying squad did the honours, pulling out the psychedelic stops. Aircraft take off, and Phil Mossman steps in with some savage guitar. One riff is clipped into Morse Code-like blips, the rest of it whipped up into wild wah wah. All over a fuck-off breakbeat. When the key pitch shifts, goes up a gear, it used to blow refreshed ravers’ minds. Its head-banging shredding screaming its way toward a climax. The sonic equivalent of an amyl and E rush. 

I heard Weatherall play this at Nicky Holloway’s Milk Bar. A friend had hired the venue on a Sunday for their birthday. She hung around with JMC’s Douglas Hart and Primal Scream. Anybody who was anybody was there. I was hiding at the back with the Psychedelic Skinheads, when one of them fumbled a handful of pills. Before he could pick them up, a random motorcycle boot crushed the lot. I then watched him get down on all fours, pour his bottle of Becks on the powder and start sucking the carpet. Wasted want not. To be honest, even though they were crazy, drug-addled daze, I was more than a little freaked out. Blind lemons indeed. 

Ariel / Rollercoaster (Flying Mix) / 1991

Ariel were a 4-piece, that included a pre-Chemical Brothers Tom Rowlands. The Flying remix of their tune, Rollercoaster, cheekily centres around a hypnotic percussive hook sampled from Sil’s big progressive house hit Windows. There’s cryptic dialogue lifted from a movie – I’d love to know which one – and excited exclamations that tie into the thrill of the titular ride but the pay off is some Italian “scream-up” piano. It’s definitely cheesy, but it’s also a nice, unashamedly happy, reminder of seemingly simpler times. 

Ian Dury & The Blockheads / Rhythm Stick (Flying Mix) / 1991

Ian Dury & The Blockheads’ damn fine, funky Rhythm Stick gets smoothed out into a Balearic shuffle. Pretty piano paves the way, but once the axe starts energetically slashing the whole thing explodes. As did the Soho Theatre Club. Chaz Jankel’s cracking keyboard solo and Davey Payne’s squawking sax compete with Dury’s screaming. The song’s “it’s nice to be a lunatic” could have been the Flying motto. This was the sole release on the club’s label, Flying Vinyl, before the identically monikered Italian imprint forced them to change their name to Cowboy Records. 

I’ll always associate this track with the dynamic duo of Brian Law and Justin Marr. For a few years they were everywhere on the Balearic Network circuit. On a mission from Venus to Full Circle. Ibiza to Rimini. They should write a book. When I write mine they’ll star in a few chapters. 

Saint Etienne / Speedwell (Flying Mix) / 1991

Speedwell was the B-side to Nothing Can Stop Us, Sarah Cracknell’s debut with Saint Etienne. The original paired a blues-y gospel holler with what was basically an edit of Weatherall’s remix of their cover of Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart. The Flying mix adds sexy, spirited Sueno Latino-like purring and turns the track into an arms-in-the-air piano hoedown. 

Toward the end of 1991 Weatherall, while at Flying, approached Kooner and Burns and suggested they do something together. This resulted in a handful of remixes, before the trio christened themselves The Sabres Of Paradise, the 3 below are my favourites… 

Jah Wobble’s Invaders Of The Heart / Visions Of You (Secret Lovechild Of Hank & Johnny) / 1992

This remix is split into several parts. Spinbacks separating the sections. It opens all ambient / beatless, with big single, loosely tuned strums. A drone underlining the transcendental raga-like vibe. Wobble then leads us in an enlightened addict’s prayer – “I’m not numbed out anymore…” – and there are timbale touches and flashes of funky organ. The drumming begins, broken, but sorta martial, starting a march for Weatherall’s devoted barmy army. Wobble’s B-line riffs on the monster he supplied for Primal Scream’s Dub Symphony. There are celestial snatches of Sinead O’Connor.

The title is in tribute to Justin Adams’ guitar playing. Switching from twanging, tremolo-ed rock n roll, rich with reverb, to frenzied Saharan bedouin fretwork. When I saw The Invaders Of The Heart live, at London’s Astoria, Sinead was with them, and at the end of the gig I walked up to the stage and shook Justin’s hand. Wobble gives him a bit of stick in his book, Memoirs Of A Geezer, but Wobble gives pretty much everyone stick in there, including himself. Justin’s playing that night was incredible. 

Galliano / Skunk Funk (Cabin Fever) / 1992

These early The-Sabres-before-they-were-called-The-Sabres remixes were largely sample-based, where isolated elements from the original song were loaded onto individual channels on a large mixing desk. Later there were the customised delays, filters and their sleek, steely echoed percussion, stuff that would define future Sabres Of Paradise epics, but for Skunk Funk there was a didgeridoo, gospel choir, organ and timbales. One by one these are all introduced, dropped out and and in turn dropped back in again. I picture the 3 of them, Weatherall, Kooner and Burns at that desk, doing battle, each with their fingers on a fistful of faders. The bass-line is a beast, this time playing on Paul Simenon’s riff for Radio Clash. There are buttons that activate bites from Billy Stewart’s Summertime, Fearless Four’s Rockin It and fizzing sound effects. Someone was also in charge of a serious guitar solo. 

My club memory of this track revolves around Weatherall DJing at Villa Stefano, in Holborn. Steve Proctor hosted the night. Weatherall was the guest. It was the only time I ever met Proctor. I told him I was surprised that Weatherall was playing, since I’d heard that Proctor had fallen out with the Boy’s Own crew. I’d heard that basically the London Balearic inner circle had ostracised him for daring to hold his “Promised Land” parties at the Southwark Street Fitness Studios, after Shoom moved on. I guess they thought it should sit empty like some kind of shrine. Proctor laughed and said he never fell out with anybody. Weatherall was surrounded by a big group of what I think were sound system guys. One of whom I’ve always assumed was Tony Thorpe, since they all looked pretty moody. It was Proctor who dropped Skunk Funk. Little Lee was serving up.  

Flowered Up / Weatherall’s Weekender / 1992

The bass runs, charges, barges, backwards beneath a blues, a gospel vocal. Muscle Shoals organ plays as drumrolls go crashing through delay. A mind bending mantra recited to rimshots smashed like temple gongs. “We’re gonna have a good time.” Deconstructed and reconstructed, broken down. Rebuilt to a point of greatest intensity. Then dropping into dubwise, bongos and congas. Sirens sounding before the dance, a techno tarantella, quickly, accelerates, accelerates. That choir reaching for the heavens atop a tribal thump. Time seeming to stop as its 15 something minutes fly by. 

Tabla and timbales tumbling, A hornet-like horn buzzing around, blasting out bursts of mad morse code. The dual drum loops sort of not quite syncing. The big melodramatic piano like a sad morning-after reprise of an Italian house scream-up. The mix working its magic, continually rising and falling. Its drama, dynamic, frantic, chasing a chemical rush. E, coke, and poppers, slowing mid-way for a French Kiss. The BPMs bisected. The cowbell hammering out a crazed Quaalude`d carnival. Bob James` Mardi Gras trapped in Tubby`s echo chamber. Transporting you to a chill-out room somewhere, trying to gather your shattered senses. That church chorus now orbiting in the frequency fizz. The singers transcending, peaking, ecstatic, as the DJ bashes the bass-line in and out on the crossfader. Taking the tempo racing, the axe cutting electric, arc after arc. 

In 1992 Weatherall`s Weekender really captured the zeitgeist. The extended second summer of love was well over, done and dusted. Weekender drew a line in the asphalt and asked, “Which side are you on?” Its hook of “We always have a good time” seemed kinda barbed when your weekend was spent out, high, in hedonistic oblivion, and your week spent in a spiral, dashed on reality’s rocks. A lot of folks had done a fair few years living on tick and the margins, hand to mouth and outside of the law. In its un-remixed form the song`s lyric was that nagging questioning voice of Monday through to Thursday – “Don’t you hate, hate, what you are?” – critically wondering if perhaps all this “rave” energy couldn’t be better spent on solutions more constructive than a mere “two-day flirt”. The clues were in the Quadrophenia samples, and the title of the band`s LP, A Life With Brian. A combination of “Let`s have it!” and “I`ve had it.” Well, at least, those are the voices I heard.

I have a few Flowered Up stories. One involves a brief encounter with Lee Whitlock, the actor who starred in the Weekender video. It was at a Boy’s Own bash. I was there with my sister. We spotted Lee, alone, at a table by the bar. He was clearly in the grip of something extremely powerful. Staring straight ahead and sweating. My sister was no amateur, and must have been aware, but despite of, or because of this she decided to sit down opposite him and tell him, at length, how much she’d loved him in the TV show “Shine On Harvey Moon”. Lee stayed silent, jaw clenched, as he quite possibly entered a new circle of hell. His expression either anger or terror. I couldn’t tell. I will add here that I too have been baited when excessively out of it, and can confirm that it ain’t much fun.