Fri 15 Dec

All Night Long: Sean John­ston (Christ­mas Party!)

About this event

Begin­ning the sto­ry with ALFOS (A Love From Out­er Space) — now con­tin­u­ing on in his galac­tic jour­ney through oth­er-world­ly ener­gy and sounds, Sean John­ston treats us for a spe­cial cos­mic christ­mas night this Decem­ber 15^th at Faith in Strangers, all night long.

Cast­ing the pow­er of the eter­nal hyp­not­ic groove far and wide – and nav­i­gat­ing every­where from the psy­che­del­ic excess­es of kos­miche to gnarled house, cab­i­net shak­ing dub and rain soaked post punk in the process- A Love from Out­er Space has, since 2010, been a steady­ing anchor on the under­ground, sus­tain­ing one of the most ded­i­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ties around with reg­u­lar dance­floor epiphanies. 

Found­ed by the late Andrew Weather­all and Sean John­ston – friends, acid house vet­er­ans and fear­less son­ic adven­tur­ers — ALFOS was, ini­tial­ly, the result of a shared love of slow­er paced sounds. Dub — in par­tic­u­lar, the skewed glo­ry of the On U Sound Records back cat­a­logue – and seedy slow motion dis­co were par­tic­u­lar obses­sions, and the seeds for ALFOS were cul­ti­vat­ed on a series of late night car jour­neys. Trav­el­ling the length and breadth of our scis­sored isle dri­ving to and from gigs, the pair sound-tracked these noc­tur­nal B‑road ses­sions with a pletho­ra of slow­er son­ic won­ders. Decid­ing on tak­ing their idio­syn­crat­ic jour­ney­man vibe out­side the rain lashed high­ways and into the back­rooms and dis­cos, ALFOS was thus hatched with a broad — but firm – remit: nev­er know­ing­ly exceed 122 bpm. Oth­er than that, it was all gates open; all points west. 

By mak­ing a con­scious pact to low­er the pace, Weather­all and John­ston offered respite from the more gar­ish excess­es of late 00’s club­land: name­ly, the cul­ture of instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion, the nar­cis­sis­tic pos­tur­ing, all that was super­flu­ous to the glo­ry of the rit­u­al dance. 

Rather, slow build­ing atmos­pher­ics and a sense of grace­ful, deter­mined sleaze was the order of the night. An undu­lat­ing throb that could move seam­less­ly from Neu! to Tim­o­thy J Fair­play by way of New Age Step­pers, ALFOS estab­lished itself as a place to get beau­ti­ful­ly lost in gnos­tic son­ic befuddlement.

Schedule

10:27 PM