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, fuelled by waves of grooves and beats coming from Detroit, and soon gathered a fledging roster comprising the likes of Nightmares On Wax, Sweet Exorcist, the project of Richard ‘DJ Parrot’ Barratt and former Cabaret Voltaire member Richard H. Kirk, LFO, Tricky Disco or DJ Mink, all names who have become synonymous with this then new sound coming from the north. The first release, Forgemasters’ Track With No Name, dressed in a highly visible purple sleeve, sounded as mysterious as its title, and the following EPs, Nightmares On Wax’s Dextrous, Sweet Exorcist’s Test One, DJ Mink’s Hey! Hey! Can You Relate, Tricky Disco’s and LFO’s eponymous releases, all released within a year, started to give a much clearer idea of the label’s direction.

WARP1 came in early 1991, courtesy of Sweet Exorcist. This very first artist full length contained just seven cuts of minimal beats, bleepy electronica and hypnotic loops, and, together with the albums that followed, LFO’s seminal Frequencies and Nightmares On Wax’s A World Of Science, established the blue print of what Warp would stand for in the first half of the nineties. But, while these albums all shared a taste for beelpy house and techno, they had clear individual identities. CCCD was tinted with Afro beats, Frequencies openly referenced Kraftwerk, A World Of Science was soulful and groovy.

The next significant step, and perhaps the single most defining moment of the label’s twenty years’ history, came the following year with the release of a new compilation, entitled Artificial Intelligence, which kicked off the series of the same name. Then, names such as B12, The Black Dog or Autechre were only known to a few, but this collection, and the subsequent albums, changed all that. Six albums, by Polygon Window, The Black Dog, B12, Richie Hawtin, Speedy J and Autechre, bookended by two compilations, released over two years, would forever place Warp at the forefront of contemporary electronic music. Since, there has been the acid jazz/funk of Jimi Tenor, the retro-futuristic pop of Broadcast, the sweet folk of Gravenhurst, the progressive hip-hop of Antipop Consortium, the angular rock of Battles… but Warp remains above all a hive of forward-thinking electronic music, whether in the hands of Boards Of Canada, Squarepusher or Clark.

Twenty years is a very long time in popular music, yet going through the label’s releases, it also feels like a blink. The first outings on the label of Aphex Twin (1994), Boards of Canada (1998), Broadcast (2000), Jamie Lidell (2000) or Clark (2001), the Peel Session series, they are all still vivid markers in the label’s history. Compiling a ten track album out of such a vast and varied catalogue was always going to be an impossible task, and one that Steve Beckett couldn’t manage. His contribution to the Warp20 (Chosen) collection contains fourteen, carefully selected from thousands, lifted off albums or EPs, and often away from obvious choices (Broadcast’s Tender Buttons, Flying Lotus’s GNG BNG, Mike Ink’s Paroles or Aphex Twin’s Bocephalus Bouncing Ball) alongside slightly better known tracks (Grizzly Bear’s Colorado, Squarepusher’s My Sound or Jamie Lidell’s Daddy’s Car). By contrast, the first of the two (Chosen) CDs was selected from votes fans recorded on a special website, and expectedly features some of the most iconic and best known tracks on the labels, from Aphex Twin’s Window Licker, which opens, Squarepusher’s My Red Hot Car or Battles’ Atlas to LFO’s LFO, Luke Vibert’s I Love Acid, Autechre’s Gantz Graf or Clark’s Herzog, all neatly lined up like for an identity parade. Such an exercise is likely to cause controversy through obvious omissions (there is, for instance, no mention of Mira Calix, B12, Prefuse 73 or Two Lone Swordsmen) but covering as wide a catalogue as that of Warp in such a short formatted way is, quite, impossible.

The second half of this Warp20 selection goes much further than the traditional remix exercise, as was the case with Warp 10. Various members of the roster, past and present, were each asked to cover a track released through the label in the last twenty years. The result is, to say the least, eclectic and full of surprises, from the playful (Born Ruffians version of Aphex Twin’s Milkman, here combined with To Cure A Weakling Child, Plone’s On My Bus, as interpreted by Plaid), to the slightly odd (John Callaghan basing a composition on Autechre’s Tilapia), and the poetic (Boards Of Canada’s Kaini Industries as viewed through the eyes of Bibio or Jamie Lidell’s wonderfully impressive revision of Grizzly Bear’s Little Brother) to the insanely brilliant (Luke Vibert’s take on LFO, Mark Pritchard’s excellent 3/4 Heart, originally by The Black Dog, Mira Calix’s exquisite and orchestral In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country, Pivot’s Colorado or Gravenhurst’s magnificent reworking of Broadcast’s I Found The F).

These two collections offer just a glimpse into the first two decades of a label that has unmistakably marked its era, like Blue Note, Impulse, Motown or Island did theirs. (Chosen), with its straightforward selection provides an ideal entry point to the label and proves a worthy companion to Warp 10+2: Classics, released to celebrate the label’s tenth anniversary, while (Recreated) offers a much more oblique and novel way through the catalogue, and is more likely to appeal to fans. In addition, Warp are releasing an extremely limited box set which, besides these two compilations, will also feature a mix CD in the tradition of Blech or WarpVision, plus three 10″ comprising previously unreleased material by Autechre, Boards of Canada, Broadcast and more, plus double 10” of loops to play with, the lot encased in a stunning box and accompanied by a catalogue documenting over 400 record covers designed by some of the most exciting studios around. Now, that’s a compendium! Happy anniversary Warp. Here’s to the next 20 years.

Warp20 (Recreated): 4.7/5 / Warp20 (Chosen): 4.9/5

Warp Records

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