Fail We May,
We’ve lost countless others. Deified figures. Legends. Icons. Figures from another epoch perhaps. Weatherall was now. “The leader of our generation” someone wrote in a lost comment thread after he died so young.
I didn’t know the guy, and I don’t want to be a ghoul. I do still think about him a lot.
Dream about him sometimes, or find myself oddly adjacent to long demolished studios. A couple of weeks ago I found myself almost pinned in place, searching the deepest reaches of mixcloud for something specific, only later realising I’d been facing Scrutton Street, kettled between the glaring surfaces of sheer sided gentrification.
When I was 18 his episode of the essential mix changed my life. We’d dabbled with DiY and Sasha, we were all in on underground dance music, mostly via bootlegged mixtapes; just that little bit too young to go to the big illegal raves.
Once the Criminal Justice Bill had done for that moment and I’d left school, we went to drum n bass nights, techno clubs, warehouse raves. I came to this mix expecting Andy Weatherall (as he was known then) in his guise as a techno dj, and I got something deeper; typically fierce, impeccably mixed, yet melodic, deep, ethereal.
I started buying records shortly after, the Morgan Geist opener being one of the first I stumbled upon. Its hard to really imagine now how magical that felt; in a world without the internet, discogs, track ids, the endless cross refs of add-to-cart culture.
As much as Weatherall is revered as a producer, uniter of the indie dance tribes, he was foremost a DJ for me. Selector. Scenemaker. One of those rare alchemists that seem to offer a way in, a glimpse of new culture, a window to where it’s at.
Wether opening our ears to house music in the 90’s, cosmic disco a decade later, or somehow converting every ageing raver into a drug chug aficionado another decade later still; he always steered the course.
Where he led, we followed.
An inspiration for anyone daring to call themselves an artist. Hoping to God we’re not a careerist.
Music is not for everyone. Is art? Can anyone make art? Hobbyist? Celebrity?
Who decides? Is it privilege? Ego? Self belief? Or lack thereof?
Why am I writing this?
Its not an anniversary or anything. I have been thinking a lot about leaders lately, who we follow and why. Who mine have been. What it is exactly that inspires me still. Idiosyncrasy. Taste. A certain well read bloody mindedness.
Whatever I do my modus operandi is always don’t bite. Be yourself. Only through truth, authenticity and hopefully a little self awareness can we ever hope for something approaching transcendence.
Follow your own nose with heart, soul and hope.
“Fail we may, sail we must”
