It has been a long time since The Sabres Of Paradise albums were in print and in the intervening years, stock of the three members, Jagz Kooner, Gary Burns and Andrew Weatherall has gone through the roof.
We know about the sad early demise of Andy, but Jagz and Gary, after working in production and engineering, decided to put the Sabres back on the road and take their unique brand of dub-inflected beat-driven wonky electronica back on the road. In keeping with this, Warp have decided after many years to put the first two albums back in print.
As early releases on Warp, the two albums definitely follow an electronic path; but where they tended to diverge from some of the other acts of the time was that along with beats, they made use of dubby basslines, industrial elements and noir-ish themes that imbued some of their songs with an air of atmospheric intrigue as well as making them dancefloor-friendly.
The fact that their second release and first album proper was called Haunted Dancehall pretty much described their raison d’etre. The trio had made names as producers and remix engineers prior to their meeting and some of their successes put them in mind of using those skills in the studio to their own ends.The first album, Sabresonic, was more of an accumulation of ideas bound together as an album, but gives a great indication of their eclectic approach and the aesthetic continuing from the fruitful remixes. Over eight long pieces, the Sabres unveil their mysterious world, starting right from the outset with the shaded beats and synth sweeps of “Still Fighting”. You can feel the dark, driving club sweat merging with languid vocals, delivering a sense of depth.
There is real thought and enthusiasm gone into these pieces and the deep saturnine dub of “Smokebelch I” puts us firmly underground. It moves slowly with coiled intensity, washes of cold synth giving a spy thriller vibe to the key melody. Although they were devised as separate pieces, there is a thread running through the album that sends a little unease through the listener and the variation of beats is surprisingly diverse.The sinister spitting, dragging and scraping on “Clock Factory” replaces beats and there is quite the dark vibe here, with its beatless simplicity becoming quite compelling as it lumbers on, while “R.S.D” has a funky bassline and skanking horns that give it an airless Jamaican dancehall swagger. There are bongos all over “Inter-lergen-ten-ko” that give it huge momentum, with its innovative take on four on the floor beat, but it also has a mildly industrial vibe that is carried throughout the album in the use of awkward samples.
There is hardly any space to breathe on “Ano Electro (Alllegro)” and this is the most intense yet, although there is brightness in the sci-fi synth riff to offset the sly bassline; but the closer “‘Smokebelch II”, which looks as though it has been added to vinyl for the first time, shows the trio in a whole other light as a brief pastoral notion, all space streakings and feathery astral synth leads us calmly from the world of shadow and echo.
The trio approached the following year’s Haunted Dancehall as more of a cohesive collection of songs that would work as an album and although it is a little longer, is made up of fourteen tracks. It still retains the same liminal shadowy feel, but there are more ideas tackled and more avenues explored.
The variety of samples is increased and therefore the places they take you are more varied from the cold cellars of “Bubble And Slide”, with its water-draining sample and gurgling electronics, to the Eastern market of “Wilmot” with its reed-based tune and playful elastic dub bassline.
If anything, there is a little extra light on this album or maybe a little less shadow, and on “Theme 4” there is a real uplift with its horn and bass over a stuttering synth imbuing it with some ’70s cool. The clashes of metallic textures on “Ballad Of Nicky Maguire” are always moving, injecting it with a sci-fi road move vibe, while “Chapel Street Market 9am” is not quite dark enough for Alien but definitely inhabits that same kind of sunless world.
Roaming from the dancefloor to the cinema via the updated Black Ark with many stops in between, Haunted Dancehall really captures the many diverse interests of the three protagonists and accelerated their already growing stature. The two albums work well but in different ways, and for any fan of intelligent and leftfield electronica are are rather essential. They stand up well over thirty years later and Warp’s re-issues are very welcome.-Mr Olivetti-
