No pressure.

'Unknown Plunderer' is a two-track, twelve-inch single by Andrew Weatherall, aided and abetted by Nina Walsh, on Walthamstow's Byrd Out records. As the press release says it "arrives in strange circumstances" and is, basically, pretty hard to review objectively.

Weatherall seemed like a man who'd pretty much cracked the secret of life fulfillment - being in love and doing the things he loved most of the time. And negotiating around the things you think are going to make you happy, or the things that are supposed to make you happy but don't, and the things that distract you from what happiness actually is - the trappings of fame, glory, money, social media, and so forth. A lot of this, akin to Billy Childish, who I believe he very much admired, was as much about the process of creation as the finished product. And not delaying creation - procrastination isn't very punk. He never stopped working, 'making things' (as he called it), broadcasting, producing (and consuming) art, being interested - no mean feat after some years in the acid house trenches.

It would be easy to say he was on his way to becoming a national treasure, but his choices and maverick spirit always kept him close to ground level and on the cutting edge - he was so present. In record shops, walking around Shoreditch, talking to the staff in Son of a Stag, doing shows on NTS, and other niche radio stations wherever he went. It's hard to get your head around a world without him.

So this record is part of that flow of making things, those 'futile gestures' that give life its shape, that work ethic that showed no signs of abating. But it's the first one to appear in his absence, so comes weighted with heaviness and meaning that wasn't intended. It's business as usual apart from it isn't. It's a record that seems to look back somewhat. Not in a nostalgic way, heaven forbid, the notion was anathema to him. Even the choice of one of the remixers, Radioactive Man (Keith Tenniswood, the other of the lone swordsmen), feels like a glance back to the past.

'Unknown Plunderer' is more dubwise than some of Weatherall's more recent work. There are shades of Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart project and the kind of 80s alt-reggae / post-punk sound palette encapsulated on Nuphonic's superb '9 O'Clock Drop' compilation. While immaculately produced, you can still 'hear the room' as he would put it - there's a slightly dank, oppressive feel about the music. It's topped with the guitar of long-time compadre Andy Bell and some proper melodica work. We're back to the haunted dancehall with this one for sure.

'End Times Sound,' despite the dread title, is a lighter piece than its companion on the a-side. Here the delay and reverb are airier, and it bops along on a boxy electro pulse until a serious foundation-shaking sub-bass drops.

As Scott Fraser said in his touching tribute, asking ourselves what would Weatherall do (WWWD?) is a pretty good barometer for our artistic lives. So let's make more things, stay interested, be engaged with what matters, not let ourselves drift into cynicism, remember the transformative power of art. And buy this excellent record.

'Unknown Plunderer' is out now on Byrd Out records