Remastered for vinyl!
✿ RELEASED ON FRIDAY 23RD APRIL✿
✿ PRE-ORDERS VIA HEAVENLY’S BANDCAMP SOLD OUT✿
✿ NOW AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER VIA INDEPENDENT RECORD SHOPS ✿
Big news: one of the most iconic pieces of music in Heavenly’s history gets a reissue on vinyl.
Flowered Up’s ‘Weekender’ along with its companion piece ‘Weatherall’s Weekender’ (two remixes by the master) are being released in a seriously limited edition.
This time Weekender even has a B side and it’s the soundtrack from the legendary and timeless film made by WIZ to accompany the original release back in 1992.
✿ INFO ON THIS RELEASE + PRE-ORDER LINKS ✿
12” – Weekender b/w Weekender (film soundtrack) HVN558 (Remixes by Andrew Weatherall.)
Limited editions of 800 copies. First repress ever. Re-mastered for this vinyl pressing by Guy Davie at Electric Mastering.
New artwork designed by Paul Kelly
Features the full Weekender film soundtrack – released for the very first time.
✿
Weekender was always a mass of contradictions. Both derisory commentary on part-time party animals and shout-along anthem adopted for committed fans and casual listeners alike, it was equal parts acid house and progressive rock. Lyrically, it was far more free form street poetry than pop song, a snarl from the sidelines. And, ultimately, it was both Flowered Up’s towering zenith and their troubled swan song. Now nearly three decades on, it’s easy to see it as one of the best singles of the 1990s: a record that did everything people would claim Britpop did, only far better, and a few years upfront.
Recorded in early 1992 with producer Clive Langer (Madness, Dexy’s Midnight Runners) for London Records in the wake of the band’s disappointing debut album (A Life With Brian) Weekender turned out to be good enough to get Flowered Up dropped. An uneditable, thirteen-minute long single that somehow managed to perfectly encapsulate the anticipation, execution and aftermath of a night out proved to be the final straw for a label focused on producing easy to pigeonhole radio hits. Too unwieldy, too long, too strange. In other words, it was perfectly Heavenly.
Although Flowered Up returned to the label that discovered them with just one track, that turned out to be more than enough to cause huge creative explosions. The single was released unedited, accompanied by Wiz’s short film, has since cited as a major influence on Trainspotting (the film, though probably the book as well). The film’s relationship with the record is such that once seen, it’s hard to hear the record without visualising the travails of the protagonist, spinning around in Leicester Square or spinning out on the dancefloor. Weekender’s importance as a cultural document was reflected in the BFI’s decision to get the director to fully remaster the film in 2018 from the original prints.
At the time of release, producer Andrew Weatherall radically remixed the track for a separate 12”. Christened Weatherall’s Weekender, it presented two mixes that channelled the intent of the original then sending it spiralling in new, uncharted directions. Insistent and relentless, driven by sub-bass over shifting tempos and rhythm tracks, Weatherall’s remixes led Flowered Up back onto the same dancefloors they’d been inspired to form a band on.
✿
One of the chapter highlights of Robin Turner’s recent Heavenly book, was ‘HVN16 Weekender Flowered Up.’ In the chapter, Flowered Up manager Des Penney recall the highs and lows of the group’s brief but incandescent existence.
You can read it in full on The Quietus website here.
Purchase ‘…Believe In Magic, Heavenly Recordings, The First 30 Years’ here.
✿