When Orson Welles was asked, 'How did you make "Citizen Kane" when you were 23?,' he said it was the confidence of ignorance. He didn’t really know what the rules were. That’s what it was like going into the studio at 24, 25. It was daunting, but I didn’t know what the rules were and I used that ignorance it to my advantage. I’d say, 'Can we do this?' They say no. I said, 'Let’s do it then.' | | | | Andrew Weatherall in London circa 1994.
(Mick Hutson/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “When Orson Welles was asked, 'How did you make "Citizen Kane" when you were 23?,' he said it was the confidence of ignorance. He didn’t really know what the rules were. That’s what it was like going into the studio at 24, 25. It was daunting, but I didn’t know what the rules were and I used that ignorance it to my advantage. I’d say, 'Can we do this?' They say no. I said, 'Let’s do it then.'”
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| | rantnrave:// "A series of beautiful, totally futile gestures" is how DJ/producer/plus ANDREW WEATHERALL once described his life's work, and it's as good a description of a great art career as anyone has come up with, even if the second half of the description sort of contradicts the first half, as great art itself sometimes does. Beauty is never futile. Though perhaps trying to make a producing career out of asking your clients to record their parts and then get lost while you finish the record without them is at least a little bit so. How many bands or labels are going to agree to that? But musicians are pesky people who "want their record to sound how they want," so what else is a producer of a certain temperament and vision to do? Andrew Weatherall's career invited a number of descriptors—remixer, artist, DJ, curator, label head, journalist—but to more people than not, he's best known as the primary producer of PRIMAL SCREAM's 1991 dance-rock classic SCREAMADELICA, a project he began by remixing an older Primal Scream song beyond recognition until it became an entirely different one; he then proceeded to have his way with the band's work as per the above. Beyond those nearly mythical 1991 sessions lay a (much too short) lifetime of left turns, in which a THROBBING GRISTLE and dub reggae fan who eagerly planted himself in the middle of the UK's acid house scene ("I’ve always been confused," he once said; "am I a punk rocker or am I a soul boy?") followed his muse and his ever-expanding tastes through dance clubs and warehouses, recording studios, his own bands and projects and, why not, a publishing house, all while trying to avoid any sense of a career that "might involve me having meetings with people I don’t want to have meetings with." There was a great production career, just a different one than the producer of "Screamadelica" might have chosen to follow were he a needier, less ambitious man. He was also, by pretty much unanimous consent of the dance music world, an extraordinarily nice guy, as generous as he was uncompromising. Shocked and saddened fans shared remixes, DJ mixes, productions and anecdotes across social media Monday as news of his death, at age 56, spread. Sharing the art and beauty he left behind. A career's worth of meetings—that would have been futile. RIP... "ALEXA, play songs produced by Andrew Weatherall on TIDAL." No dice. "Alexa, play songs produced by Andrew Weatherall on APPLE MUSIC." Nope. "Alexa, play songs produced by Andrew Weatherall on SPOTIFY." Hey now. In order: Primal Scream, HAPPY MONDAYS, the ASPHODELLS, BETH ORTON, NEW ORDER, SLY & LOVECHILD. That may be as much about how Spotify is integrated with AMAZON's voice assistant as it is about Spotify's programming, but either way, it's a win for the service. This stuff matters, a lot, and it's going to matter that much more as we become increasingly reliant on electronic voices to find our music. Figure out those integrations... Not that human voices are automatically better than the electronic ones as musical park rangers. According to new data from the tireless researcher and equality advocate JADA E. WATSON, female artists occupied exactly 10 percent of the space available on country radio in 2019. That, Watson says, is "barely enough to be heard." Barely enough for an entire gender to be heard, that is. Imagine if Alexa interpreted the request "Alexa, play some country music" as "play some country music by men." That's what the human programmers of country radio are actually doing. Watson calls it an act of erasure, and she's challenging programmers to start closing the gap by making in 20 percent in 2020, 30 percent in 2021 and so on... RIP also ASHLEY AKABAH. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Andrew Weatherall is a dance music legend who was uncompromising until the end. | | |
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