Emission possible: interview with DJ Andrew Weatherall, Update magazine, Feb 1997

Andrew Weatherall’s Emissions label has risen from noodly obscurity to deep house heaven. Anthony Teasdale joins Weatherall on the couch and sniffs the air

I JUST woke up one morning and thought, ‘arse’.”

The inspiration for a name of a new record company can come from many sources: art, history, music. But in the case of Andrew Weatherall, the inspiration came from a bodily function.

Still, if he’d gone with his original plan, we’d be sitting in his office discussing the merits of Year Zero Records and its fetching Pol Pot logo. So Emissions it was.

Set up a couple of years ago to replace the much lauded Sabres Of Paradise, Emissions was launched with minimal publicity to an unsuspecting record buying pub-lic, most of whom didn’t even realise who was behind it. “I was getting anxious because people were judging me on my history, not on the strength of my music,” says Weatherall, looking rather smart in spanking new Levis, and animated as ever on the company sofa. “It took some people six months to fathom out that it was me who was behind it.”

Unfortunately, at first the response to the more noodly early releases wasn’t as enthusiastic as had been hoped. Again, though, this was all part of the plan. “It’s true that the first few releases didn’t sell that many,” offers Andrew, “but they were good records and they laid solid foundations for the label. We just realised we’d have to put out some tracks that would sell more, and save the weirder stuff for when the label was more established.”

These more accessible releases came from artists like Deanne Day, Bloodsugar and Two Lone Swordsmen. Following a line that veered somewhere between Detroit techno and deep house, these tracks signalled a renaissance in UK house music, also being pioneered by labels like Nuphonic, Musique Tropique and Pacific.

Not surprisingly the above named artists were just aliases for Weatherall and one of his cohorts: David Harrow maybe, or Keith Tenniswood. Which is all well and good. But surely the notoriously short Weatherall attention span should have moved onto pastures new by now?

“The thing with house is that it’s an established form of music in the same way that dub or hip hop is,” he reasons. “I alwavs used to listen to dub records when I got bored of everything else, but then I started finding myself digging out old house records and really getting into them again.”

Thus, once again Weatherall is the man of the moment, plying his trade at the clubs he wants to play at, pushing the sound he believes in at places like the Heavenly Jukebox (where he’s now a monthly resident) and Bugged Out in Manchester.

So what does it feel like to be lauded as some sort of figurehead for the British house scene?

“I’ve always been into loads of different styles of music,” he explains. “That’s why I can play at Space and the Orbit in the same week. But just because some journalist hears me playing house, I’m suddenly part of some scene.”

Yet, undoubtedly, house music in this country has never been stronger. Weatherall agrees, “I played out last night, and 75% of what I was playing was either British or European. A lot of it is very abstract and experimental, more so than most of the music that papers like the NME are currentlv championing.”

As we get further into the subject, he opens up, the glint in his eye becoming brighter.

“People talk about the ‘tyranny’ of the 4/4 beat, and just dismiss these records, but if they listened to them properly they’d hear the amazing, experimental drum programming within this structure.”

Passion is the key word here. Weatherall and his longtime assistant Curley oversee artists like Alex Handley’s steely Turbulent Force outfit as well as David Harrow’s dub excursions under the guise of The Charismatics. Biggest of all though are those Two Lone Swordsmen with their massively acclaimed series of EPs, and of course the most excellent ‘Fifth Mission’ LP, released last summer.

No wonder groups like The Orb, Death In Vegas and Sneaker Pimps have been queuing up for the Swordsmen magic. And yet, this is still a group without a studio of their own, and while their own place is in the pipeline, the cost of hiring out the old Sabres studio limits the amount of time they can spend on a project.

Then again, as Weatherall himself says, “Most of the stuff we do is done over a few days, so just imagine what we’ll sound like when we’ve got as much time as we want.”

TEN SELECTED EMISSIONS

Two Lone Swordsmen — ‘The Tenth Mission’

Various — ‘Blue And Friends’

Deanne Day — ‘Hardly Breathe’

Turbulent Force — ‘Leeds EP’

Two Lone Swordsmen -

‘Swimming Not Skimming

Bios — ‘The Double Seven’

Sabres Of Paradise — ‘Ysaebud’

Sapiano And The Party Crashers — ‘Signal’

Bloodsugar — ‘Levels’

Deanne Day vs Blue — ‘Prisoner’