"What the fuck are they up to now?" This is what Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood expect you to think when you play their new album. That's Weatherall singing. And Tenniswood playing guitar and bass, while a number of drummers take their turn on an old kit that was left for safe keeping in the basement studio.
For Weatherall there was a dawning sensation that he wanted to break free from sterile, heavily processed, intellectual techno and electronica floating around and make something with more direct communication and soul. And whenever Weatherall starts feeling like's he had enough of techno, he always goes back to his roots in rockabilly, rock 'n' roll and dub. He understands that the visceral energy of any good dance music - his specialties being electro and techno - is the same as in a good rockabilly song. The same gut feeling that reacts with your head or feet. It's about making music WITH machines, not by machines.
With all this coming together in the studio, Weatherall had spent months railing to all and sundry about how much he hated the cliché of the celebrity guest vocalist. He knew he could sing, from being in bands 20-odd years ago, and he knew it was "shit or bust" this time round. He'd been writing verses and lines that were revealing themselves to be pretty personal songs of twisted romanticism, and didn't want anyone else to sing them. So into the vocal booth he went to have a stab at The Gun Club's "Sex Beat", expecting to be told "Nice try, mate, let's get the guest vocalists in, shall we?" Instead, it worked beautifully. Weatherall's brooding, deadpan intonations playing off the dark gathering forces of the electro-rockabilly-garage sounds mutated with unmistakable TLS studio witchery.
Raw power and raw emotion, rather than slipping into your consciousness, From The Double Gone Chapel punches its way in. Tough love, anyone?
For Weatherall there was a dawning sensation that he wanted to break free from sterile, heavily processed, intellectual techno and electronica floating around and make something with more direct communication and soul. And whenever Weatherall starts feeling like's he had enough of techno, he always goes back to his roots in rockabilly, rock 'n' roll and dub. He understands that the visceral energy of any good dance music - his specialties being electro and techno - is the same as in a good rockabilly song. The same gut feeling that reacts with your head or feet. It's about making music WITH machines, not by machines.
With all this coming together in the studio, Weatherall had spent months railing to all and sundry about how much he hated the cliché of the celebrity guest vocalist. He knew he could sing, from being in bands 20-odd years ago, and he knew it was "shit or bust" this time round. He'd been writing verses and lines that were revealing themselves to be pretty personal songs of twisted romanticism, and didn't want anyone else to sing them. So into the vocal booth he went to have a stab at The Gun Club's "Sex Beat", expecting to be told "Nice try, mate, let's get the guest vocalists in, shall we?" Instead, it worked beautifully. Weatherall's brooding, deadpan intonations playing off the dark gathering forces of the electro-rockabilly-garage sounds mutated with unmistakable TLS studio witchery.
Raw power and raw emotion, rather than slipping into your consciousness, From The Double Gone Chapel punches its way in. Tough love, anyone?
