In Strict Tempo, vol. 85: Sabres of Paradise Interview

This week I sat down with Gary Burns from the legendary Sabres of Paradise to chat all things Sabres.

Formed in 1992, Sabres of Paradise consisted of Andrew Weatherall, Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner who was unable to join us for this interview. They released two seminal albums on Warp Records: Sabresonic (1993) and Haunted Dancehall (1994). A remixed and resequenced version of Sabresonic followed in 1995, titled Sabresonic II. This featured a Beatless remix of Smokebelch II that soundtracked basically every chillout album released in the 90’s.

As well as a production outfit, The Sabres of Paradise were in-demand remixers, putting out a number of remixes of everyone from Bjork, New Order, Chemical Brothers and The Orb.

Sabresonic also lent it’s name to a Club Night hosted by Andrew Weatherall. Taking place at Happy Jax in the arches under London Bridge station it ran for a few years before Weatherall started his other club nights including Bloodsugar, Haywire and The Double Gone Chapel. Famously, after stopping Sabresonic Weatherall quoted “I’d rather people asked my why I stopped it than as me why I haven’t”. After disbanding The Sabres of Paradise Burns & Kooner continued to work as remixers, whilst Andrew Weatherall formed Two Lone Swordsmen with Keith Tenniswood.

In 2020, Andrew Weatherall sadly left us, and I wrote a lengthly tribute to him earlier this year here. In May this year Warp announced represses of the first two Sabres albums, and the Jagz and Gary reunited under the Sabres name for the first time in 20 years for a handful of gigs including at London record shop Stranger than Paradise (a five hour recording of that show is here) and Fabric.

Gary kindly took some time out of his day to speak to me about the represses, the reunion and of course, Weatherall.

In Strict Tempo: Hi Gary, firstly thanks for taking time out of your day and talking to me, I do really appreciate it. I guess let's start with the reunion. Before we started you mentioned it had been 30 years since you last played together, so how did it come about?

Gary Burns It all started when me and Jagz (Kooner, who couldn’t make this interview) did a Q&A session for the Flightpath Estate guys, they’re like Weatherall encyclopaedias, really. We went up to Todmorden to the Golden Lion and did a Q&A. Jagz DJ'd and played quite a few of our old kind of remixes and stuff. But before we went on to the Q&A, they played Sabres of Paradise live at Herbal Tea Party back in 1993. We were like, “oh, it sounds really good” Andrew's brother Ian had already mentioned to Warp about a reissue campaign to celebrate 30 years and in honour of Andrew, really. And that's how it all kind of started.

After we heard the live thing, me and Jagz were like, “well, if we're going to put the records out, should we do some gigs around it?” That might be quite good. And before you know it, there we are getting it all in motion. It just sounded like a really fitting tribute. But also, something that we loved doing in the first place. And everybody was on board immediately.

I did kind of think a reissue was long overdue, these Sabres records haven't been available for years. And once Andrew died, people were cashing in, weren't they? They were going for hundreds and hundreds of pounds. I haven't actually got around to buying the reissues yet as I’ve got original copies, but they sound good really on digital. How come you reissued Sabresonic and not Sabresonic 2? The story was you guys deleted it as you weren’t happy with the original mix and put out a new version?

GB Technology's come on. And now you’ve got YouTube and Spotify and it just seemed like a good idea to have it remastered. And it sounds really, really good. You know, we A/B'd it with the originals. It's got a bit more oomph and a bit more everything. And it sounds really good. I'm very happy about the job that they did with the remastering.

It just sounded like a really fitting tribute. But also, something that we loved doing in the first place. - Gary Burns

So it's kind of come full circle that you preferred 2 over 1 and now 1 is the new definitive mix, right?

GB Sabresonic 2 was kind of cobbled together a little bit. Andrew wasn't very happy about that. But Warp were trying to recoup some money, really. But it was kind of cobbled together.

Andrew wasn't too happy, but the management were like, “well, look, they've given you decent advance” and they weren’t a massive label at the time, so they want to claw some of their money back.

You’ve reissued Haunted Dancehall as well, Have you got a favourite out of the two?

GB I'm not sure, really. I mean, there's tracks on both of them that are kind of faves. But I would say Haunted Dancehall was the first proper album. If you know what I mean? The first one, Sabresonic was created when we had any downtime in the studio from doing remixes. We used to say, “right, well, we've got a day, should we stop giving away all these really good ideas and keep some for ourself”.

Haunted Dancehall was more of a coherent album then? Like you set out to make an album rather than just, you've got 12 great tracks here, let's put them together

GB Yeah, once we signed to Warp, it was like, “right, now we've got to do an album for Warp” Whereas Sabresonic was kind of a collection of things we'd done over a couple of years and just sort of put on the shelf, really.

I think it's probably fair to say that you and Jagz did most of the production work, on it when Andrew kind of provided the vibes and direction. Is that actually how it was?

GB Yeah, with a lot of tracks, Andrew would have everything coming up on the desk on different channels. And he would just sit there, with a big spliff on, and he would just sit there for hours and drop things in and out while recording them on DAT. So Andrew really did the arrangements, but Jagz and I did most of the programming, Jagz engineered it and I played the keys, the bass and the guitar.

Your background was in a band, wasn't it?

GB Yeah, I've been in bands since I was a kid, yeah, so I've literally been gigging since I was nine. It's my 50th year of doing gigs this year.

Wow, congrats.

GB I know, it doesn't seem possible.

he would just sit there, with a big spliff on, and he would just sit there for hours and drop things in and out while recording them on DAT. - Gary Burns

How did that work? What was the vibe, and the working pattern, having someone kind of drop in and drop out while you're sitting hunched over the actual synths and the sequencers and all that kind of stuff?

GB Well, we'd record it all, so we'd have like 32 bars of loops of the instruments and the bass. And Andrew would just drop them in and out on the desk and do a mix, and we'd record dozens of them. And then he'd go home and he'd listen to them and kind of pick the one that he thought was the best and then name them and bring them back to us.

And he'd go, “right, this one's called, you know, Inter-lergen-ten-ko”. And for years I had trouble when people go, “oh, I love that Chapel Street Market”. I'm like, “which one's that?”

Yeah, we knew the tune, but when Andrew named them I was never sure which one that is!

It was Andrew that did all that, but we were busy all the time and just always making music. So Andrew took that role on because then me and Jagz were doing other things with David Holmes or The Aloof or Billy Nasty. So we were keeping very, very busy. But we didn't really have that much time to sit and listen and compile things. So that was Andrew's job.

You were doing a lot of remix work at the time, right? Have you got any that stand out in particular?

GB I think the first one we did with Andrew, Visions of You with Jah Wobble & Sinead O'Connor. That’s still got a real special place for me because that was the first thing we did. And that launched us into being a remix conveyor belt, really. Future Sound of London, Papa New Guinea. I really like that one. [Flowered Up’s] Weekender was quite a good one as well. We did like a three day mix or something.

It's about three days long, that track, isn't it?

GB It's a long remix, but we slowed it down and did all sorts of... But yeah, we had like a licence just to do what the hell we wanted, really. As long as it sounded good. All of them have got a little special place, but I think those three are probably the ones that stand out for me the most.

With the remixes, was it like the same kind of workflow with you guys on the controls and Andrew giving direction? Or was he more involved or less involved?

GB That's exactly what happened, yeah. Andrew would come in and go, “right, we've got this, Bomb the Bass remix to do. Strip it all back and let's pick out the bits we really like and then build a new track around it”, So, me and Jagz were together quite a lot, We’d do like 80 hours a week in the studio, so we really knew what each other was doing. And it just became quite a slick workflow process, because in those days, we were going into studios that cost £1,000 a day. So, you can't spend six days on a remix, we've got two days in the studio, we have to come out with something finished.

So the label would put you up in their studio or rent a studio for you?

GB Yeah, and they’d always say “you can’t hang about on this”. That way, we kind of got into a fast workflow. It became like a bit of a slick operation. We knew what Andrew was looking for and we had tons of things almost ready to go every time we went in the studio. We had all our special Sabres sounds saved and then: “dig out that metal shaker” and “dig out that boingy noise” that kind of thing.

You were never tempted to do an Aphex Twin and just package off something you had lying around and say, that's my remix?

GB No, no. Where's the fun in that!.

So what was Andrew like to work with? Was he the same with his close friends as he was with everyone else?

GB Yeah, he was exactly the same. I mean, we did laugh a lot in the studio. It was a lot. There’d be times we'd be crying because me and Jagz were sort of like super professionals. We weren't smoking anything and Andrew got stoned all day. I mean, most of the time me and Jagz were stoned as well, like secondary smoking. When we did RSD & Theme, we did them all in Berwick Street Studios one afternoon. It was ideas for a Red Stripe advert. There was no air conditioning and it was a really small studio. Ashley Beedle turned up and Andrew and that were smoking like a great mass of weed, you couldn't see!

And you were living in London at the time of this?

GB Me and Jagz lived out in Uxbridge, near Heathrow. Our studio was in Hounslow eventually. When we first started, me and Jagz used to drive from Uxbridge to the Old Kent Road every morning. It used to take two hours. And then we'd do a 16 hour day and drive home. You know, we didn't sleep much in the 90s, I tell you.

I want to touch on Sabresonic a little bit, the club night. I was too young to have gone. But there's recordings the Flightpath Estate guys have collected online, which is fantastic. Did you ever DJ there, or was it mostly just Andrew?

GB I didn't. Mainly Andrew. Jagz and David Holmes. I’m not sure Jagz DJ’d there either actually. It was Andrew's night really and then you'd get in Alex Knight or David Holmes or Laurent Garnier. So it felt like our thing, even though we weren't DJ’ing.

The music on these recordings tends to go a little bit harder, right? I find it interesting that the album doesn't really go as hard, in places it's actually quite mellow. Smokebelch II must be one of the most chilled songs ever, so was making the more mellow stuff in the studio an antidote to just the fullness of the club night?

GB Yeah, I think so. You've been out all night listening to, you know, David [Holmes] or Alex Knight banging it at Sabresonic. And then if you go home and you put the album on, it kind of takes you somewhere different. A bit more of come down before you pass out sort of thing.

And where was Sabresonic at this time? Was it in Crucifix Lane?

GB Yeah, Happy Jax. You had to keep your hand over your drink in case the ceiling dripped in there! It was proper dirty, but it was so much fun. Quite a few people at Stranger Than Paradise were Sabresonic regulars I haven't seen for a very long time. So that was nice to have a Sabres night and see them all there. It was great.

I went to Jacks [Happy Jax was renamed Jacks before it closed] a few times not long before it closed. It's probably been closed for 10 years or so now, hasn’t it? Like when they did the station up. I don't think it had changed much at all. It was one of my favourite venues. You played Fabric recently, and it’s a great club, but it's a lot more clinical, isn't it?

GB A bit more so, yeah. Whereas, you know, Happy Jax was a bit like, “is this place legal?” It was almost like you were sneaking in somewhere where it was like an illegal party rather than a club.

Just after I moved to London, it was my first New Year's Eve in London in 2004. Andrew was headlining Fabric that night, but he came and played this party we were at in Cable Street. It was an old artists studios, it was semi-legit. They were selling tickets, but it felt like a squat. Then you get someone like Andrew, who probably earned a fortune from playing Fabric that night to come down and just play this little place for probably 50 quid and a crate of beer, it says a lot about him. I don't think you'd get too many, too many DJs these days doing it.

GB Andrew would do three nights, you know! Thursday, Friday, Saturday, banging it all over the world. And then he'd nip down to the Griffin on a Sunday and he'd be there playing a five hour rockabilly set. Like, what the hell's going on? Here’s this superstar DJ just playing rockabilly. But that was him, he just loved it. I've seen him in so many small venues where you think they can't pay his fee. And like you say, he probably was doing it for four beers and 50 quid.

I remember the Buffalo Bar up at Highbury & Islington. He used to play there a bit. A little basement venue. And again that was rockabilly, rock and roll all 45s. I loved that, you just didn't know what you were going to get when you went to see him. It could be slammers or…

GB Absolutely. That's why for me, he's always been the best DJ by a long way. If you rang up Andrew and said, “right, we're doing an electro festival. Can you do it?” He’d always say “Yeah. How long do you want me to play? Can I do three? Oh, I’ll do five if you want!”. Five hours of rockabilly, five hours of banging electro that you'd never heard before. And you're like, “where does he get these records from?” We used to go around his house and it'd be bedrooms racked out like a warehouse with records. I don't know how many records he had. It was immense. It used to take two guys four or five days to move his record collection when he moved house. He just had a really kind of encyclopedic brain of where everything was and if you wanted him to play any kind of genre, you name it… I'm sure he could have done a five-hour country and western set if he wanted. He had that many records and he never played a dodgy record ever.

No, I don't think he did. You know what it's like: You're in a club and sometimes a DJ puts something on that's a bit wafty. So you go for a smoke or go for a piss or something. I don't remember ever leaving the dance floor when Andrew was playing…

Anyway, Sabres, and Andrew in general have influenced a whole heap of music these days, it’s become a bit of a name to drop in the press release and all that, but was there anything in particular that was influencing you? You said that Andrew had this encyclopedic knowledge of music going back to like the 1940s so what kind of went into the Sabres records or was it just done on the fly?

That's why for me, he's always been the best DJ by a long way. - Gary Burns

GB Andrew would come in the studio and he'd have a record bag full of stuff that had arrived at his house that day. He'd open them up and just have a little dip. So that's quite inspiring in itself. Just hearing records, you go, “oh, that's really good, I think I know how they made that.” That was inspiring in itself. In our downtime, we'd listen to all kinds of dub stuff. And me and Jagz were out clubbing seven nights a week as well. So one night we'd go and see Leftfield or Darren Emerson or Billy Nasty and just kind of go, “oh, I like what they're playing.” And then it all rubs off on you. So when you get in the studio, you go, “oh, do you remember that tune that Darren played, that banging one? Should we do something a bit like that?”

I mean, he really made Underworld what they were, right? You know, their first stuff was kind of like Depeche Mode pastiche, wasn’t it? And then Darren turned up.

GB Darren turned up and they smashed it, yeah.

But I guess my last question is, are you and Jagz going to get back in the studio? Is there going to be any more Sabres music, or can there not be without Andrew?

GB There can't really be without Andrew. A lot of people already commented “how can they even do the live stuff?” Because Andrew was the genius. But actually it was the three of us. It wasn't just Andrew, you know? I played all those riffs and guitar and bass. They're all mine. But also it’s a homage to Andrew's legacy as well. These gigs we've been doing, there's been a lot of people that weren't even born when we started, turning up and going, “oh, that was wicked.” And a lot of the old faces too. So it's been worth it just for that, really.

Absolutely yeah, well thanks for taking the time to talk to me Gary, it’s been great chatting and just remembering all this stuff! I hope to catch you on the road soon.

New Music

No new music reviews this week, but there’s plenty of music to listen to on the Resident Advisor Soundcloud. As I mentioned last week Resident Advisor’s mix series has reached 1000 entries and to celebrate they’ve shared a number of new mixes to mark the milestone. It’s easy to slate RA sometimes, and a lot of the time it’s wholly deserved, but when they’re good, they’re really good so credit where credit’s due for these.

There’s three hours of Theo Parrish live at Fabric, a heavyweight seven hour session from Tim Reaper, Terre Thaemlitz/DJ Sprinkles first mix in fifteen or so years, and an Amapiano mix from none other than Mark Ernestus. But for me, the real highlight is six and a half hours of Weatherall back to back with DJ Harvey. I haven’t listened to all of these yet, but it really is one hell of a selection (there’s also mixes from Frankie Knuckles, Bicep, Jyoti, Helena Hauff and Sama’ Abdulhadi to get your ears round too if that’s not enough music for you.)

I’ll be back next week with the usual new music reviews, thanks as always for subscribing, reading & sharing!