Bleep

In 2025 a reformed Sabres Of Paradise have re-emerged with a new mission: to let the next generation discover what came before. As such, this remastered edition of the trio’s debut album Sabresonic isn’t just a treat for the heads, but a vital document of the golden age of UK rave for those who didn’t get to experience it at the time. It’s also a reminder for the people who made it: after parting ways with the legendary guv’nor Andrew Weatherall in 1995, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns hadn’t spoken to each other in almost two decades, until fate brought them back to the legacy they’d created together.

Andrew Weatherall’s production unit became in-demand remixers for the likes of Björk, Future Sound Of London, and New Order, they caught the attention of Warp Records, who were eager to get an album out of the group’s original work. Sabresonic was built from their prolific backlog of studio material: lush and spaced out, whilst still underpinned by driving four-to-the-floor techno rhythms. The warehouse rave atmosphere of opener ‘Still Fighting’ swarms with sound effects in a hyped buildup, taking almost two minutes to finally jump into its frothing drum machine pattern, decorated with tabla and dub sirens. From gurgling tar pit acid synths to a slick dub influenced bassline, several key elements of the Sabres sound are present and correct.

Sabresonic shows off the breadth of the trio’s talents: the flanged-out airplane turbine rhythms of ‘Smokebelch I’ threads in machine gun kicks and snares, while ‘Clock Factory’ is a foreboding sound picture of resonating metallic swells, eerie theremin melodies, and rattlesnake clockwork hisses. Whether pacing out forceful percussion or homing in on head-nodding thick dub basslines, The Sabres brew up magic, especially on the classic ‘Smokebelch II (Beatless Mix) which closes out the album, a pastoral post-club anthem with oscillating mellotrons, plucked strings and shimmering synth melodies, the perfect early morning comedown lament.

Sabresonic is finally back in print, continuing to turn heads and melt minds over thirty years later.