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 »

NIGHTMARES ON WAX
Thought So…
WARP159CD/WARP159LP
Warp Records 2008
11 Tracks. 53mins23secs

Nightmares On Wax’s George Evelyn is one of the original Warp artists. While his first releases, centred around the1991 A Word Of Science album, shared with the rest of the label’s early roster a taste for bleepy electronica, albeit tainted with occasional smokey grooves, his consequent work demonstrated a much smoother and soulful approach. With the seminal Smokers Delight (1995) and Carboot Soul (1999) Evelyn, now sole master on board the NoW ship following the departure of Kevin Harper, combined hazy hip-hop grooves and funky soul melodies into effective laidback compositions which seemed to feel most at ease deep into the night.

Nearly twenty years on from the first NoW twelve inch, Evelyn returns with his sixth album, Thought So… Continue Reading »