Haunted Dancehall (Remastered)

Description

The trio’s second album in 1994. It is a conceptual album, with each track accompanied by a text by James Woodbourne. It also includes additional production by Portishead and Mr Scruff. By the time this album was released, The Sabres Of Paradise had gone from a production trio to a full-fledged band, touring and expanding with additional members such as Rich Thair of Red Snapper and Phil Mossman, who would later join LCD Soundsystem. The studio sound had also changed radically, using samples (notably on “Wilmot,” with its 1930s voodoo jazz accents), live instruments (the heavy twang guitar riff of “Tow Truck”), and a deep love of film music, audible throughout the album, from the funk of “Theme” to the dark soundscapes of the title track. The impression that the album itself is a soundtrack is reinforced by the text accompanying each track, which is said to have been written by Weatherall himself under a pseudonym, each fragment of text coming together to form a dark and dim novel. The Guardian summed up Haunted Dancehall as “the first conceptual album of techno.”