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
labelmates 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”.