LLS2

Description

LLS2, sub-titled Music from… the Late Late Service 2, is the sophomore album by the Glasgow dance worship pioneers Late Late Service, released as a cassette-only effort on Sticky Music in 1992. (Their first effort, Music from… the Late Late Service, was released on cassette-only the previous year (JUMP 002).)

The following people played, sung, spoke, and engineered on these tracks: Andy Thornton, Andy Wood, Charlie Irvine Sr., Dave McTeague, Dot Reid, Dougie Gay, Jim Falconer, and Kathleen Higgins-Nisbet. Artwork by Cathy Cowern and Rhona Thornton.

Trivia: Initially the Late Late Service was only a one-off youth event, co-ordinated by former Big Sur musician/studio engineer/producer Andy Thornton in 1990. (Thornton became a manager of Greenbelt in 1997.) But sensing its potential, the artistic team who had devised it tried again, and again, and then started a monthly experimental service. It still wasn’t meant to be a church, just a place to explore new forms of worship. But the creative core who prepared each service found they spent so much time together they were becoming a community. They started to meet weekly but realised they needed a variety of services. A cycle of four developed: teaching, meditative or quiet service, fellowship night and celebration, a theme will often followed through all four. The Late Late Service eagerly joined the local ecumenical group (Action Of Churches Together In Scotland), and enjoyed good relationships with other congregations.

The Late Late Service was an experimental Christian Community in Glasgow.

In the 90s I was involved in setting it up with a great bunch of talented folk. It was a committed attempt at reinventing Christian worship for the post-modern era. We had some acclaim for creating visuals, writing music and words and setting them in an original format using references from all aspects of Christian worship over the last 2 millennia.
– Andy Thornton

Anyone who caught their exceptional dance-orientated worship celebrations at the 1992 Greenbelt will know that these radical worshippers from Glasgow are pointing the way to churches grappling with how to find forms of praise and worship that speak to today’s youth. So there’s no guitar strumming in earshot, rather the ubiquitous thud thud thud of drum computers and a set of songs which span both congregational praise and more meditative think-pieces. It wouldn’t be true to call this genuine house music, most of the vocalists are too rock-orientated for that while the material is largely verse/chorus songs rather than simply riffs. And certainly there’s nothing that remotely warrants a ‘rave’ tag, the beats here are gentle enough not to upset your granny. But there are one or two excellent songs (hey organisers, let’s hear «God Is With The Walking Wounded» at Spring Harvest next year) while this all contributes to the pioneering rave/house/dance-style worship that one day Word Records or Kingsway Music will finally wake up to. [Tony Cummings, Cross Rhythms, February 1993]

Cassette tracklist:

Side One
A1. “God Is With The Walking Wounded”
A2. “Turn Around”
A3. “Joy”
A4. “Resurrection Day”
A5. “Do You Want To Be Healed?”

Side Two
B1. “Lift Your Heart” + “Holy Holy”
B2. “Angus Dei”
B3. “Our God Is Heaven”
B4. “Dence Wi’ The Disappeared”
B5. “Weep With Those Who Weep”
B6. “Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled”
B7. “In Your Mercy, Lord”
B8. “I Will Not Let You Go”

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A Brief Statement of Shared Belief

As members of the Late Late Service Community we identify ourselves as the following:
1) Christian people united around the faith of the historical church, as expressed in its most widely accepted creeds and as revealed in the Old and New Testaments. We believe in God, we follow Jesus, and we trust in the presence and the movement of the Spirit.
2) People committed to looking for and living in the Realm of God (traditionally the “Kingdom”) revealed in Jesus Christ: called to love one another and to be a healing community seeking the wholeness and liberation of all people.
3) People seeking to live out and express the following beliefs:
-Each human life is a gift from God and each person has equal worth and value. We are called to take an active stand against any relationships, practices or structures which deny or undermine this belief.
-Human creativity is a gift from God, and a way in which we express God’s image in us. We seek to encourage and embrace this gift in our worship and life and to enjoy and challenge contemporary culture in all its diversity.
-The resources of the earth are God’s gifts to us, for which we are called to take responsibility and show care.
-We are called to live simply, identify with the poor, and know that all material possessions are gifts from God, to be shared for the common good.

The Late Late Service community is our gift to each other, and to God.