Stano – Content To Write It In I Dine Weathercraft

DJ Sotofett remakes of the debut LP (Content To Write In I Dine Weathercraft, 1983) from Irish post-punk producer Stano. A whole load of styles on this one. TIP! How this record came about has been lost a bit to the midst of (recent) time, back in 2018 when we repressed “Content to Write in I Dine Weathercraft” the 1983 debut LP of one of Ireland’s more enigmatic musical characters – we slid it the way of the versatile Norwegian polymath who suggested a remix, which quickly became two and soon ended up a full suite. We put it aside for a bit, became a bit longer, then the artwork – pieced together by the Sex Tags boss himself cutting up features from Irish fanzine Vox – and the general lag of production in the post covid world and here we are the guts of 5 years later! A member of the legendary punk / post-punk group The Threat which disbanded after lead singer Maurice Foley disappeared to join the Hare Krishnas, Stano set up his outsider stall early on. The Threat had Stano on synths, one of the first female bassists in Deirdre Creed and their debut single was produced by progressive trad musician Donal Lunny of Planxty. His solo career of improvised electronic music continued in this vein of the unexpected – sitting outside both the country’s mainstream and alternative rock scenes. Eschewing both live performance and the spotlight for studio collaborations for this LP he worked with a number of Irish musicians – Roger Doyle, Daniel Figgis and of course Michael O Shea. This remix pack kicks off with the drum machine exotica funk of “Room” and runs the gamut of 80’s pop experimentation via the new wave dream pop of “Emma Wild”, dubbing out the haunted house vibes of “Seance of Klondalike”, adding some menace to the gothic feel of “Melting Grey”, stretching “Out of the Dark, Into the Dawn” into a skrangled baleric dubby house jam and closing it out adding a hypnotic repetitive punch to O’Shea’s beautiful timeless playing on “A Dead Rose”.