Andrew Weatherall – Unknown Plunderer / End Times Sound

The first posthumous release by the late Andrew Weatherall hit the shelves on Friday, February 21st, just four days after his death. It's not only the timing that felt cosmic. One of the tracks is called "End Times Sound," and the EP includes a remix by Radioactive Man, AKA Keith Tenniswood, one of Weatherall's oldest and best-known collaborators. (As Two Lone Swordsmen, they were responsible for a vault of strange bangers.) The music on Unknown Plunderer / End Times Sound also feels eerily fitting. What better farewell than two cuts of slow, sludgy, hard-to-define club music, loaded with Mad Professor-style dub effects and delicious guitar licks? Both are killer, but "End Times Sound," the perkier of the two, just pips it. Andy Bell, formerly of the British rock bands Ride and Oasis, riffs over a groove dense with bass and hand percussion. A snaking woodwind melody soothes and seduces. The combination of sounds, eclectic yet refined, is classic Weatherall.