W.R.F. - APPARENTLY SOLO VOLUME 5

After the epic widescreen peaks scaled by last month’s ‘Borderland’ comes a chilled threesome for the end of a summer yet to start. Nina Walsh’s latest Apparently Solo dispatch from her colossal vault of previously unheard W.R.F. recordings spotlights the vast archival goldmine she inherited from late partner Erick Legrand and started working with at her Facility 4 studio in 2016. It also pays tribute to the relentlessly questing spirit of discovery that drove her studio activities with late creative partner Andrew Weatherall in his final years.

Nina called Erick’s voluminous hard drive corridors of files, loops and recordings from crashing drum fills to strings composed on his hospital bed The Akashic Library of Sound, explaining, “Erick had hours and hours of recordings that he would chop up, turn into loops and process; then it was just folder after folder inside folder after inside folder, like a big maze. It was always good fun ferreting around, as Andrew would call it. That’s where ‘Unleash the ferrets’ comes from.”

At the same time the newly discovered galaxy of loops was routinely propelling the pair into shedding electronic straitjackets like an old chameleon’s foreskin, Andrew was mastering his early grappling with basic studio technology under Nina’s guidance, soon earning his programming credit on 2017’s Qualia which also drew from the Legrand library, earning credit as Erick and the E.V.P.s (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) and his Akashic Library of Sound.

‘Hidden Watchers Part 1’ takes the space-cake for fearless forging into unknown sonic vistas, its alien chamber beauty glazing a strain of advanced dub science evoking Sun Ra’s skeletal Martian delicacy over thwacking rusty hinge/kick and sawing Moondog-like ghost motif. Ectoplasmic topping includes revving car-like synth rising into sumptuous drone, Nina’s "achingly gorgeous" string melodies drifting between pastoral calm space float and haunted valley eeriness as Hank Marvin’s astral y-fronts float beatifically in the swirl. Something was happening here that could’ve revolutionised the hoary ‘drug chug’. “It’s my favourite of the three cos it’s got more of my melodies on it. I’d made this kick out of the Korg MS20 and turned it right up on the first mix here - just whacked it right up so it was the main feature then rebuilt around it with more W.R.F. loops and the Vox Invader.”

The latter is the 60s guitar we’ve already met on Nina’s Retrospective EP that appears on each track, from background feedback swarm to startling psychedelic squalls. “It was this ridiculous guitar with built-in effects like fuzz and wah wah that would do this crazy shit and Andrew couldn’t even play it! When Andrew brought the Vox Invader in I recorded about an hour of this completely out of control guitar having no idea what I was doing, which I always do when I get a new synth or something; I always stick it into record because some real magic can happen when you’ve got no clue. I didn’t know where any of the inbuilt effects were hiding in that guitar and it was loaded with them. I recorded about an hour of this with feedback and a few loops. We used to call the folder with all the guitars in Fiery Biscuits from The Mighty Boosh. They were playing these guitars that sounded like that so Andrew went ‘Fiery biscuits!’. Now we had the Fiery Biscuits folder for that guitar.”

Joined by the striking “Woodleigh Research Whizzbang” that could’ve come from a shattered window in the Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’, ‘Hidden Watchers Part 2’ rides more on the claps and cowbell percussive sway bubbling in Fort Beulah rituals than the kick’s now subliminal squelch. “The strings were done from Erick’s hospital bed when he was in with pneumonia a couple of years before he passed away. Even in his hospital bed he was making loops! He would be constantly making sounds, he never stopped.”

According to Nina, ‘Rattly Old Puffin’ was a favourite term used by Andrew for when she was trying to start her restored Austin A60 Suntor. “Andrew would often use it when I was getting Little Mo started to drop him back to Balham after the studio. That would be a rattly old puffin cos the whole bonnet would rattle. When it wouldn’t start it sounded very much like the beginning of that track and could also refer to sloppy drum loops. When Erick’s beats came together, I can remember Andrew referring to them as the Rattly Old Puffin as well.”

The track further emphasizes how, while such otherworldly grooves can still please those Andrew liked to call “chummy scufflers”, some deeper form of alchemy was brewing as ominous drones and squalling backwards guitar that could’ve come off a late 60s Electric Prunes album but features Erick in 2000 countered by piano chordage recalling the Grid’s ‘Floatation’.

“It was one of the very first times I opened up Erick’s Akashic Library in 2016. Every single loop on there is from his library with 808 added to it. The guitars are 23 years old, which is before I even met him. If you look at the multi-tracks you can see how integral Erick was to W.R.F..”


Hugh Jarse

Listen to more from Erick Legrand here: ericklegrand.bandcamp.com