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 »

GRIZZLY BEAR
Friend EP
WARPCD163
Warp Records 2007
10 Tracks. 43mins18mins
Format: CDS, 12″ and Digital

Originally the solo project of Daniel Rosen, whose lo-fi debut album, Horn Of Plenty, was recorded in his bedroom and released on Rumraket in 2005, Grizzly Bear are now a fully fledged formation counting four permanent members. Following its release, Horn Of Plenty got the remix treatment from a wide range of artists, including Efterklang, Dntel, Solex, Ariel Pink and Alpha to name but a few. Friend EP comes over a year after Grizzly Bear’s stellar second album, Yellow House (Warp Records), and collects alternative versions, demos, new songs and covers by Band Of Horses, Alias Sound and CSS.

The first impression filtering out of this record is the somewhat rawer and heavier nature of the music. While Horn Of Plenty appeared fragile and almost amateurish, and Yellow House was carried by beautifully light and airy melodies and arrangements, Friend at times reveals a moodier Bear, more prone to dig its sharp claws in. Continue Reading »

GRIZZLY BEAR
Yellow House
WARPCD147
Warp Records 2006
10 Tracks. 49mins49secs

The urban Brooklyn continues to spill oddball folksters onto the world, one of the latest additions being the magnificent Grizzly Bear. Originally the solo project of singer songwriter Edward Droste, the project has since grown to a full band with the addition of multi-instrumentists Christopher Bear and Chris Taylor and singer Daniel Rossen.

Droste began shaping up Grizzly Bear at home, recording songs inspired by a then-recent break-up in his Brooklyn apartment. Christopher Bear came in late to add some more textures before the songs were collected into an album, Horn Of Plenty, originally released in 2004. Harking back to a bygone era when melodies and how they were interpreted were the most important things on a record, the fourteen songs hinted at delicate psychedelic folk structures and melancholy-drenched melodies. Continue Reading »