A review on the CD version of this album doesn't seem to be very positive so I thought I'd give the other side of the fence so to speak.

An eccentric oddball of warpy alien wallpaper chimes, this is one of my favourite albums of all time. Very few dance albums have really fully cut the mustard in terms of having enough decent material and a proper structure too the tracks, this is one. The textured cover showing a red razor blade shows it all, these are clinical beats backed up by some of the most inventive use of synthesisers I have ever heard. The feel here is classic Weatherall; however the almost band like quality does shine through from all four members.

To be fair though this is an abstract album, the obviously dubbed up undertones mean that the tracks go on for quite a long time with only subtle alterations (not for everyones' short attention spans!). Some tracks don't even really go anywhere but just act as a build up to the preceeding track, drawing you in to a world of glitchy beats and then declining a resolution only to hit you with a further prolonged build up on the next track. In my world though this adds to the atmosphere as you're drawn down a dark street with only a the sound of a distant scraping noise to reel you in until out of the next alley you see a multicolour rainbow of sound realisms (my personal interpretation of the brilliant 8minutes + soundscaping of the Ballad Of Nicky McGuire).

In my opinion this stays so true to dub, it offers the listener sometimes the most basic of sounds. Allowing the listener to draw imaginary connections and in essence 'read between the lines' of the beats. When the beats give way to a fully blown melody, as in dub, the melody is bought to the front and allowed full control of the track.

The classic Wilmot has one of the best rewinds in the history of music (as well as a huge low slung blissed up and spliffed up bassline), Tow Truck has a dark menace that hints at the big-beat future of the mid-90s and Haunted Dancehall is probably the darkest tune to ever make it on to an Ibiza Chill Out CD and a stunning closer to the album.

An album of a million and one possibilites; where the space between the music is often more important than the music itself.

Haunted Dancehall is like Star Wars Phantom Menace: Just because you CAN copy and paste the same robot, space ship, alien, or sample a bajillion times, doesn't mean that you SHOULD.

On the second listen I was having a hard time resisting the FWD button. Each track had done everything it was going to do and just started repeating bits well before the half-way point. All the samples are really short and inorganic, giving the whole thing a bland cut/paste feel. I don't find mixing a dozen short loops to be that interesting, imaginative, inspiring, talented...

To this day, Haunted Dancehall remains a jewel in WARP's crown. It has aged wonderfully and sounds as fresh today as it did when it was released. Far more structured than the Sabresonic albums and less dancey, this shows the Sabres at their creative peak.
Can anyone argue against the likes of 'Tow Truck' and 'Wilmot'.

I have to admit to getting scammed by this album back in 1994. Inside the CD booklet are thirteen short extracts (one for every track except Theme 4) credited to the book 'Haunted Dancehall' by James Woodbourne; clearly each track (and in some cases its title) is intended to fit the mood and narrative of the main character McGuire's peculiar tour of the gritty underside of London life. My trainspotter curiosity piqued, I spent some time looking for the book in library catalogues and asking booksellers to search their systems, all to no avail. It wasn't until some years later that I finally found a thread on the alt.music.techno newsgroup confirming that the 'Haunted Dancehall' text had been invented especially for the album!

Similarly the inlay of the Versus remix EP from the following year features another couple of passages attributed to James Woodbourne, this time from the sequel 'Return to the Haunted Dancehall'! In retrospect there were clues that they were having a laugh here - one extract mentions an "Eddie Chemical" (the Chem Bros provided one of the remixes for the EP) while the other has "Vogel The Young Modernist" stating "we equate machines with funkiness" (which was actually the title of Cristian Vogel's first release on his Mosquito label).

Anyways, Haunted Dancehall is a great album and the Woodbourne "quotes" add to the atmosphere evoked by the broken beats and moody grooves of Towtruck and the Portishead remix of Planet D; the fantastically haunting beauty of Theme 4, (the second half of) Ballad of Nicky McGuire and Chapel Street Market 9am; the trumpet-led dub of Wilmot and finally the frankly terrifying title-track Haunted Dancehall. I think the Sabres' previous album Sabresonic is a classic UK techno artist LP but if forced to choose a favourite I'd go for this one.

Are Sabres of Paradise one of the most forgotten Warp artists in the age of IDM?? Who knows, but this for me is one the absolute classic Warp releases, up there with the very best from Aphex Twin. Sabres manage to create soundscapes, textures and feelings which are totally unique and totally involving. This is music for the dancefloor and at the same time music for the brain - genius.