W.R.F. - THE APPARENTLY SOLO - VOLUME 1

To celebrate what would have been Andrew Weatherall’s 60th birthday, his long-time studio partner Nina Walsh reached into her colossal Facility 4 archive, emerging with three roof-raising dam-busting killers in the “oompty boompty” style beloved by fans and the global dancefloor masses.
Hard as an ancient rhino’s helmet, lethally sinuous, melon-massaging spaced and tweaked for maximum groove destruction, ‘SHLAP’, ‘Crack-Ed’ and ‘Mistress Ploppy’ resonate with the pressure cooker power and devastating momentum of one of her late W.R.F. collaborator’s having it late period DJ sets. Inspired by his supernatural ability to send crowds into orbit, its dam-busting threesome are inevitably marinated in the telepathic spontaneous combustion that routinely gripped the pair while working relentlessly at Nina’s studio in his hyper-prolific final years.
“About a year before that fateful day I said to Andrew ‘I’ve made a For Sale folder. We’ve got all these tracks that need some sub-categories to start putting stuff in and get organised.’ And so we did, although I’d actually done it all before he got to the studio. We had an ambient folder, an electro folder and the Berlin Bum Dungeon for the more banging stuff. Oompty boompty or banging, panel-beating racket. At Facility 4 the bangers would come after Andrew had been playing panel-beaters in some ‘Berlin bum dungeon’, as he would call it. Not necessarily in Berlin, but that would quite often set the scene. I think he’d actually played in a Berlin bum dungeon that weekend; a gay club in a basement in Berlin.
“The other thing that could influence our general mood was the shithole we were attempting to work in. We’d be in a particularly banging mood if we’d been greeted in our shitty mews by some bin-bags that had been tipped and we had to shovel out of the way to open the door. If somebody had attempted to mug me or set light to my car that would also inspire a banging dancefloor belter. The environmental circumstances with regards to the no-man’s land we decided to call Facility 4 could affect our state of play for that particular day. On the rare occasions I went out it would normally be to ALFOS. Given my history of Sabrettes, maybe that 120 bpm limitation would frustrate me a little bit so I may have wanted to up the bang potential somewhat. A banger doesn’t have to be fast; it’s just got those sounds, and the gravel.”
Going for the trouser-jousting jugular with its up-tempo momentum, ‘SHLAP’ deploys gnashing warthog gonad synth beneath ringing guitar gouges from the vast Akashic Library of Sound created by her late partner Erick Legrand. Like all three tracks, it invokes the indelible influence of Nina’s formative teenage years cavorting to shapeshifting Detroit techno at London’s earliest acid house clubs where she first met Andrew; manifesting on ‘SHLAP’ in springily primitive Motor City motifs, melon-whisking circuit blasts and booming tom-tom fills, stoking a twisting, turning groove that never lets up.
“Those Detroity sounds are so ground into me from acid house I always feel excited when I hear those things,” explains Nina. “It gives me the same feeling as the 303. The drums on ‘SHLAP’ are the same ones from the archive that Andrew used on the mix he did of ‘Borderland’- originally a piece of music I wrote then got Sarah Sahandi to work the parts out on her viola. We were going to play it at our Barbican gig that sadly never happened.”
‘Crack-Ed’ maintains the irrepressibly euphoric pressure like a controlled explosion, riding its elastic gazelle loincloth riff with deadly precision, enhanced by complex drum trickery, throbbing hippo bollock bass and cascading astral flatulence, landing further killer punches when it drops to the basic groove. Rampant, defiant and taking no prisoners.
‘Mistress Ploppy’ closes the set with its heaviest morsel yet, the German basement influence rising like a crazed bison’s boner from its heavyweight industrial strength stomp, offset by Detroit-style space strings, grimy riffage and twittering electro tickles. The intriguing title actually comes from Andrew’s nickname for his creative partner of over thirty years. “Mistress Ploppy was a Black Adder character. For some reason it became my nickname then got shortened to Plop quite early on in our relationship. Not very nice is it? It’s like poo! But it didn’t come from poo, it came from Mistress Ploppy.”
Quite suitable really as the track’s stealth bomb malevolence succeeds in blowing up the nearest chemical toilet with seismic consequences, showering its victims in the grand tradition of Detroit and Chicago’s classic shiners while exerting an iron fist grip on dancefloor delirium levels. Like all these monsters, the tune’s underscored by the emotion and experimentation so skilfully channelled and organised by Nina from Facility 4’s hyper-prolific creative ejaculations.
Welcome to the Bum Dungeon. As our friends The Clash proclaimed on ‘Know Your Rights’; “This is a public service announcement.”

Kris ‘Giant Mushroom’ Needs


Fifty per cent of all profits will be donated to Shelter, one of Andrew’s favoured charities.