Sweet Droog by Nina Walsh

SWEET DROOG

The Sweet Droog EP is the latest excavation from Nina Walsh’s colossal archive of previously unheard treasures, presenting three diversely emotional gems led by the gently poignant title track celebrating Droog, the Wheaten Terrier who came into her life in 2002 and remained by her side for the next sixteen years.
Two days after Droog passed, Nina created a heart-melting instrumental tribute that will resonate deeply with anybody who’s lost a faithful canine companion, its pastoral melodic beauty charged with the warm glow of eternal love and timeless doggy memories.
The track also illustrates the uniquely idiosyncratic studio methods that characterised Nina’s years working with the late Andrew Weatherall. “I gave Andrew open access to mine and (late partner) Erick (Legrand)’s hard drives. If he was working on something at one end of the studio and it was just getting going, I would work on something else until I could hear what was needed, pads or whatever. Then I’d start creating bespoke loops for whatever it was. This was one of those pieces.
“It was the first day I returned to the studio after my dear Droogie passed away and I wanted to write him a piece of music. This is what it sounded like originally. Droogie was a plodder so it’s got those ploddy drums! When Andrew came in we had a coffee and listened to stuff and he asked if he could have these parts to work with. So I chopped them into loops and gave them to him on condition he called the track ‘Droogie’. Unfortunately, when it came time to naming the tracks - we always used to leave it till the last minute - he forgot and called it ‘Somnium’ (AKA YAT-WAT36) when it became one of our monthly W.R.F. digital releases. Now you can hear it in its original different form how it was composed before.
“Droogie came from Cornwall. He was an absolute lunatic but a very cool dog, and part of the deal when Andrew came to work with me. I think Andrew probably kept him alive for the last three or four years by bringing sirloin steaks every day! He got quite attached to Droogie. He was a good studio dog and part of the family. As Droogie was dying in my arms we were listening to the Unthanks. There’s a little element of that I can hear. I knew he was gonna go that day so I phoned Andrew and said, ‘I can’t come in; Droogie’s on his way.’ I made him up a bed, read my book, The Dog’s View of Love, Life and Death, the perfect book to read if you have a dog that’s about to transcend in your arms and listened to the Unthanks.”
Loping, quirky and curiously cinematic, ‘Wonky Dog’ is the EP’s other Droog-inspired piece of music; “that I wrote in the programming room in one of those solitary moments before Andrew got to the studio. He just started laughing when he heard it. He could see I was having a lot of fun. I wrote the song when Droogie’s legs were going so he had this funny gait.”
Quite startlingly, the track’s “definitely got Moondog energy and feel in it,” the jaunty melodic string motif and light bounce of arcane mischief supernaturally conjure the blind self-costumed New York street poet known as “the Viking of Sixth Avenue” who became a fixture on the city’s streets in the fifties. Moondog also released several mesmerising records, including the extraordinary orchestral jazz-classical mutants on 1969’s self-titled Columbia album.
These cerebral Droogie tributes sandwich heart-wrenching early 2000s ballad ‘Narcissus’ which, garnished with oaken strings and subtly deployed guitar feedback, unfurl as one of the riveting ballads Nina has turned into a time-stoppingly atmospheric art form. The song is built around an evocative poem by Max Garrett - “the seven-foot laser-eyed face of Lee Cooper with white spiky hair on the adverts who’s no longer with us as he had a penchant for the wrong stuff from Mexico. The original all got a bit dark so I redid it as ‘Narcissist’. That version did appear on an obscure Russian compilation but has just been sitting on my computer since, so I went back, rejiggled it and brought up the vocal from the previous whisper. The track’s got Audrey Riley playing cello, Virpi Kettu from Finland on violin and my brother Darren playing piano. Matt Pod played the 606.”
The song completes Nina’s deftly-woven latest statement. “The strings are holding the tracks together. There is a cohesion there; dogs and strings, some of them synthesised, some of them real thing. I think there’s cello on all of them.”
Although Andrew’s longest-running studio collaborator, the full story of Nina’s journey to her current exalted position revisiting such astonishing studio endeavours - both solo and with Mr Weatherall - form just part of her Punkadelica! biography coming later this year. The book also stars Binky the mad Podenco, her much-loved current doggy friend.

Words by Kris Needs

Whilst embracing the late 80s acid house revolution Nina met rising DJ Andrew Weatherall, together they started the Sabres Of Paradise & Sabrettes record labels. She went on to create her own 7" label C-pij, collaborate with The Orb & Two Lone Swordsmen before releasing her own Bright Lights And Filthy Nights. Walsh & Weatherall continued their work together as the Woodleigh Research Facility.

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