Andrew Weatherall - Unknown Plunderer / End Times Sound

  • The Guv'nor's first posthumous release is predictably great, which makes it all the more bittersweet.
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  • The first posthumous release by the late Andrew Weatherall hit the shelves on Friday, February 21st, just four days after his death. It's not only the timing that felt cosmic. One of the tracks is called "End Times Sound," and the EP includes a remix by Radioactive Man, AKA Keith Tenniswood, one of Weatherall's oldest and best-known collaborators. (As Two Lone Swordsmen, they were responsible for a vault of strange bangers.) The music on Unknown Plunderer / End Times Sound also feels eerily fitting. What better farewell than two cuts of slow, sludgy, hard-to-define club music, loaded with Mad Professor-style dub effects and delicious guitar licks? Both are killer, but "End Times Sound," the perkier of the two, just pips it. Andy Bell, formerly of the British rock bands Ride and Oasis, riffs over a groove dense with bass and hand percussion. A snaking woodwind melody soothes and seduces. The combination of sounds, eclectic yet refined, is classic Weatherall. The digital version of the EP ostensibly includes two remixes of "Unknown Plunderer," though, due to a tracklist error, that's only half true—Manfredas's remix is actually of "End Times Sound." The big giveaway is the woodwind melody, which unfurls in full splendour at the end of a long breakdown, moments before the rude, muddy bassline thunders back in. It's classy stuff. The same goes for Radioactive Man's creepy electro warbler, which pairs the original bassline and occasional thrum of guitar with a crisp breakbeat and wacky acid babble. I bet Weatherall loved it. Correction: A previous version of this review said it was Andrew Weatherall's final release. It isn't. He has at least one more on the way.
  • Tracklist
      01. Unknown Plunderer 02. End Times Sound 03. Unknown Plunderer (Manfredas Remix) 04. Unknown Plunderer (Radioactive Man Remix)
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