In September 2020, Daniel Avery released Lone Swordsman, a track he wrote on the day his friend and sometime collaborator Andrew Weatherall died. Of all the tributes paid to the revered DJ/producer, it might be the most striking: a simple melody endlessly dancing over melancholy chords, it’s an exquisitely beautiful four minutes of music. Clearly it was the product of a moment where everything clicked into place: Avery has talked vaguely about “the cosmic energy of the universe” having a role in its creation, but whatever was behind it, Lone Swordsman had a strong claim to be called the best thing that he had ever released. But it didn’t appear on his subsequent album, Together in Static. In fairness, it probably wouldn’t have fitted the mood. Together in Static was a collection of tracks he had written for a seated and socially distanced performance he gave at London’s Hackney Church in June 2020, imbued with all the tentative optimism you might expect given the circumstances, and, while there’s a definite warmth about Lone Swordsman, the overriding emotion it evokes is desperate sadness.
