Haunted Dancehall (Remastered)

1994 second album by the trio of Andrew Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, unavailable on vinyl and CD since original release. A concept album with accompanying text for each track by James Woodbourne, it also includes additional production by Portishead and Mr Scruff. Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Colton, contains “Theme” for the first time on the 2LP edition.

By the time this record came out towards the end of ‘94, The Sabres Of Paradise had evolved from a production trio into a fully fledged band, embarking on live tours and augmented for the stage by additional members such as Rich Thair, from Warp label mates Red Snapper, and Phil Mossman, later to join LCD Soundsystem. Tapped by Noel Gallagher to support Oasis at enormodomes, the group opted instead to play clubs, student unions, and infamously, a car park in Central London. Their tour adverts contained small print specifying a policy of “no jugglers, no fire eaters, no flutes and no hippies with lawyers”.

The studio sound had shifted radically as well, utilising samples (notably on the 1930s voodoo jazz inflected “Wilmot”), live instrumentation (the heavy twang guitar riff of “Tow Truck”) and a deep love of film scores audible throughout, from the block party funk of “Theme” to the noir-ish soundscapes of the title track. The sense of the album being a soundtrack itself is underpinned by the accompanying text for each track, rumoured to have been penned by Weatherall himself under a pseudonym, each text fragment joining up to form a suitably grimy, low-lit short story. The Guardian later summed up Haunted Dancehall as “techno’s first concept album”.