A Love From Outer Space. Andrew Weatherall, Sean Johnston, Legowelt. Was On Friday, December 7th. @ Corsica Studios, 5 Elephant Road, London, SE17 1LB, 10pm - 6am
Beginning in 2010; a residency within the intimate neo-dinge of Stoke Newington’s The Waiting Room, A Love from Outer Space was originally brought together by the advent of an excitement held for sounds situated within the mid-tempo frame; a lower BPM statute which has accented the astral, the headlong and the brawny, melding disco’s drive and glossy gestures, the cosmic glints of kosmische, thunderous dub-sonority, and intrepid post-punk bombast with proto-house and that of acid-house; the background of perennial residents and night owners, Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston. The pair held a mutual regard for Adrian Sherwood records and moved in the same circles for a number of years before ‘the oasis of slowness’, offered by ALFOS was conceived, a refuge from the frenetic ‘velocity’ of modern developments.
Undoubtedly, there’s been little detraction with a night which offers an elusion from the impersonality of the overly veneered and the tedium of the moronically paced; a measured escape from the one-techno-fits-all mind-set. Yet the longevity of their more experimental mandate has not begat dry obscurity as the infectious uptake of ALFOS’s premise has been undeniable, with tours across the UK, jaunts across the continent, numerous festival slots and more recently, the establishment of a Glasgow base at the Berkeley suite: an appropriately meteoric ascendancy.
They’ve welcomed guests like Optimo and Trickski, but kept themselves largely in the foreground, developing a distinct character and spirit to the night. Weatherall, as elder statesman, has provided the uninhibited, bedraggled luridness and the soaring, celestial dimensions that have defined the still-vibrant and pioneering production work he’s mastered over the course of his now fabled career; a career which shows no signs of a lessened momentum. And as one half of revered production outfit, The Hardway Brothers and prominent voice in earlier classic-acid project, The Flash Faction, Sean Johnston has also successfully transmuted studio alchemy into more considered fare for floor spheres. Though this doesn’t seem to be an exercise in rose-tinted retrospection or self-applauding egotism for Weatherall and Johnston, with a clear stretching of selection which journeys further, towards the peripheries, giving new life to old, leftfield eccentricities and airing the young and recent in proximity, with finely judged style.
At Corsica Studios, they’re likely to exude all of this in abundance, conducting an authentic cosmos rove, unlimited in the choice of sounds but simple in its unadorned, unassuming spirit. Their festive revelry will consist of a gimmick-free, back-to-back 8 hour marathon set from Andrew and Sean, along with the return of esteemed luminary of ‘deep Chicago house, romantic ghetto technofunk and EuroHorror Soundtrack’, Danny ‘Legowelt’ Wolfers. With prospective descendants of their sonic imprint in the form of brash and exciting newcomers, Daniel Avery and the Eskimo Twins along for the ride, it promises to be an unparalleled rapture of pre-Christmas mirth and depravity. About as far from the tragic tame of an office Christmas party as you can get. Where else but in Outer Space?
A.R. Kane - ‘Space is where we both belong’
