ROTWANG
Awful
CEQ001
The Conspiracy Of Equals 2010
12 Tracks. 34mins48secs

Amazon UK: DLD US: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

Putting people’s back up before you’ve even made an impression is perhaps not the best way to get noticed for all the right reasons, but it seems like it is the angle Mark Rahman, a musician from Princeton, New Jersey, chose when he dropped a little bit of white powder in the envelops accompanying the demos he sent to record labels. While it is likely that this closed him many doors, it unexpectedly opened one when one of these demos landed on the desk of Jeremiah Trudeaux and he decided to set up The Conspiracy Of Equals in order to release Rotwang’s debut album. So, it seems almost logical that, pushing the anti-promotion a step further, Rahman decided to mark the occasion by promising titling the record Awful. If this all smells a bit too much like a schoolboy prank too far, and actually feels a tad tired, the resulting record actually proves to be a more interesting slice of electronic music than one could expect coming on the back of all this. Continue Reading »

Tyondai Braxton is a member of supergroup Battles, one of the most celebrated bands of recent years. Their debut album, Mirrored, saw them join Warp on the back of two EPs and a single released in a matter of months throughout 2004. The son of legendary experimental jazz composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton, Tyondai follows his debut solo album, released in 2002, with an extremely ambitious second record, Central Market on Warp, which combines experimental rock, electronics and full orchestral sections. We caught up with the man via email ahead of his performance, as part of Battles, for the Warp20 celebrations in New York to talk about how he made the transition from his earlier work to the vast expanses of Central Market and how he wants to take this even further. Continue Reading »

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Warp20 (Box Set) / Warp20 (Recreated) / Warp20 (Chosen)
WARP20.0 / WARP201 / WARP 202
Warp Records 2009
– / 21 Tracks / 24 Tracks. – / 99mins13secs / 127mins18secs

Warp20 (Box Set)
Boomkat: BX

Warp20 (Recreated)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

Warp20 (Chosen)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

LFO. Three metallic blue letters, straddled by a ghostly shape, set on a black background. Three letters that changed things forever. The year was 1991, I was browsing through the new arrivals in my local records store, and the Designers Republic artwork of LFO’s Frequencies was standing out from the blur, calling out for my attention. An hour or so later, I was left baffled by a record which I was struggling to understand. On one side, the lush flow and shattering bass of LFO or Simon From Sydney irresistibly titillated my appetite for crisp evocative electronics, on the other, I had never experienced anything quite as bare as Mentok 1 or We Are Back. This album bore its influences on its sleeve, literally, and it took a few listens to ‘get it’. But ‘get it’ I did. More than I could have ever wished for. I was hooked. Not only on LFO, but also on Warp.

The brainchild of Steve Beckett and the late Rob Mitchell, who founded the label twenty years ago in the former metallurgic city of Sheffield, Warp found itself at a crossroad between the dying acid scene and the nascent UK techno/electronica movements Continue Reading »

SQUAREPUSHER
Solo Electric Bass 1
WARP174
Warp Records 2009
12 Tracks. 39mins20secs

CD: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Boomkat Download: Amazon UK | Amazon US | iTunes

Ever since he first appeared on the electronic scene in the mid nineties, Tom Jenkinson has injected his sound with great big slabs of live electric bass, yet this has, until now, been quite secondary in his work. Indeed, it has, at times, been buried deep down beneath crashing drums and lively acid squelches, while, at others it bubbled just below the surface, injecting healthy doses of jazz in his otherwise manic drill’n’bass. This was perhaps never truer than on his 1998 album Music Has Rotted One Note, on which he favoured for a moment a more acoustic approach, but the bass, Jenkinson’s instrument of predilection, has overall remained somewhat in the background, only gaining more attention in a live context. Continue Reading »

Rival Consoles first appeared two years ago with a first EP released on London-based Erased Tapes. Since, Ryan Lee West he has delivered two more EPs spanning quite a wide sound world, from Aphex-like abstract drum’n’bass to razor-sharp techno. His debut album, released on Erased Tapes once again, expands greatly on the latter by collecting eleven thumping techno cuts with enough edges to last a lifetime. We took this opportunity to talk to the man about how the album came together, how he uses beats against melody, what it feels like to have his album out in the open and which console is the one. Continue Reading »

CLARK
Totems Flare
WARP185
Warp Records 2009
11 Tracks. 44mins53secs

Buy: CD | LP

It is almost hard to believe that Clark only released his first album eight years ago so much has he become, in that time, one of the strongest, most consistent and emblematic artists on Warp, to the point of challenging the might of heavy weights like Aphex Twin or Squarepusher. His constant deliveries, started with Clarence Park, have since considerably grown in confidence and vision, and his unashamed use of heavily electronic sounds, at a time when others seemed to move away from those, has made him one of the finest purveyors of the genre.

With Totems Flare, Clark’s follow up to last year’s Turning Dragon and his fifth full length, he continues to create strong and gritty electronic music, and he wastes no time showing off his latest dirty grooves with album opener Outside Plume and Growls Garden, the leading track to his recent EP. Continue Reading »

CLARK
Growls Garden
WAP272
Warp Records 2009
06 Tracks. 25mins18secs
Format: 12″/CD/Digital

Buy: CD

Warp’s enfant terrible returns with another devastating slice of dirty gritty electronic music. Follow up to last year’s Turning Dragon, his most upbeat record to date, Growls Garden ups the ante once again as Clark launches another digital assault on the dance floor. Counting six tracks and clocking just over the twenty five minute mark, this EP is perhaps Clark’s most eclectic release since Clarence Park, as he revisits the dark hues of Empty The Bones Of You or Body Riddle (Growls Garden, Distant Father Torch), and, as he did with Turning Dragon, cuts some fine body-jerking grooves and harsh beats (Seaweed, Gonk Roughage). Continue Reading »

SQUAREPUSHER
Just A Souvenir
WARPCD161
Warp Records 2008
14 Tracks. 44mins24secs

The godfather of drill’n'bass is back once more, with his twelfth album, Just A Souvenir. Since he first appeared, in the mid nineties, with a series of EPs for Spymania, amongst others, and his debut album, Feed Me Weird Things, released on Richard D. James’s Rephlex, Tom Jenkinson has continuously remained close to his manic junglistic roots while exploring a variety of sonic spaces, at times digging toward funkier or more rave-infused sources, and at others sticking to jazzier and more improvised forms. His last album however, Hello Everything, published over two years ago, denoted quite a change of tone, with the melody becoming much more of a fundamental element of the compositions.

Just A Souvenir is said to have been inspired by a dream Jenkinson had earlier this year about a rock band playing an ‘ultra-gig’, whatever that is. The album was then recorded in just two weeks, and sees Jenkinson injecting a big dollop of psychedelic rock and eighties electro into his usual jazz-infused electronica. Continue Reading »

Tom Jenkinson is back, with his twelfth album as Squarepusher. Just A Souvenir is based on a strange dream Jenkinson had some time ago about a rock band playing a gig using modified or unusual instruments. Jenkinson headed down to his studio shortly after and spent a couple of weeks writing and recording, resulting in this fourteen track album.

Just A Souvenir, the first Squarepusher album since 2006′s Hello Everything, will be released on CD and LP by Warp Records on 27 October. The album is already available to download from Bleep.com.

To coincide with the release of the album, Squarepusher will be hitting the road for a few selected European and UK live dates, as follow:

19/11: Paris, France
21/11: Graz, Austria
22/11: Budapest, Hungary
26/11: Berlin, Germany
28/11: Amsterdam, Netherlands
30/11: Ghent, Belgium
5-7/12: All Tomorrow’s Parties’ Nightmare Before Christmas, Minehead, UK
11/12: Glasgow, UK
12/12: Manchester, UK

Squarepusher | Warp Records

VENETIAN SNARES
Detrimentalist
ZIQ211CD
Planet Mu 2008
10 Tracks. 51mins27secs

One thing that Aaron Funk, the prolific Canadian musician behind Venetian Snares, cannot be accused of is boring the listener. Since first taking on the sometimes staid world of electronica in the late nineties with a battering ram, he has gleefully been launching assault after assault with his reconstructed drum ‘n’ bass sounds. Detrimentalist, like the many albums to have come before it, barely takes time out to breathe, such is the manic wellspring of energy at the core of the record. And whilst the dizzying aural barrage will deter the tender, there is a delightfully over the top vivacity at work in his music that at the very least ensures attention. Continue Reading »