"Techno is music that you couldn't imagine hearing before
you hear it. Or 'techno' = 'good', e.g. this sandwich is
techno.'" - Steve Beckett, Warp Records
Gather round children, and let me tell you a tale. A tale
of the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and techno
records were really really good. A tale from the frozen north
of England - from Sheffield to be precise, where two young
men called Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell were working in a
record shop. This was 1989, and acid house was exploding in
the UK. Local producers were flooding the shop with white labels
and customers were queuing up to buy them, but no labels seemed to be
interested. Rob and Steve resolved to do something.
After a failed attempt to sign Unique 3's The Theme, they picked
the Forgemasters' Track With No Name as their first release, and
with an Enterprise Allowance grant pressed up 500 copies. The
new label took its name - Warp Records - from the name of the shop.
The record sleeve was purple.
The Forgemasters were soon followed by tracks from acts like
Nightmares on Wax, Sweet Exorcist, Tricky Disco and LFO (the latter
hitting number 12 in the UK singles chart with their eponymous debut),
and a Warp Sound began to emerge, characterised by speaker rattling
sub-bass, raw but emotional electronic melodies, a minimal aesthetic and bucketloads
of machine soul. These early UK techno records were first generation
children of the Detroit Three, but also drew on electro sounds
(according to Nightmares on Wax's George Evelyn "the Northern crowd
were all ex-breakers - we just heard house as an aspect of hip hop,
like faster electro") as well as the deep ragga bass that would
later fuel jungle and drum and bass. Because of its characteristic
electronic sound, the new style was dubbed Bleep.
Three years down the line, however, Warp began to loose their momentum
as a bleeding edge dancefloor force. The UK dance scene had evolved and
fractured, and bleep's zeitgeist had passed. But their next move, whether
it was part of a masterplan or just a random decision, would reposition them
at the forefront of electronic music in a completely different
direction. They released a compilation, Artificial Intelligences, and
with it gave identity to a new sound. This sound still derived from
electro and Detroit techno, but mixed in ambient and experimental
elements, and soon left the dancefloor behind. They called it Electronic
Listening Music, but as the initial compilation was followed up by
seminal albums from Autechre, the Aphex Twin, B12 and the Black Dog,
the tag became IDM, from the name of the mailing list that sprung up to
discuss the new music.1
Throughout the mid to late nineties Warp continued to develop and
support the sound, signing new artists as diverse as Squarepusher,
Broadcast, Boards of Canada and Jimi Tenor, and become easily the
best known and most respected name in experimental electronica.
After celebrating their tenth birthday in 1999 with a series of
compilations and gigs, Warp finally gave in to the inevitable and
moved to London. They also opened an online store, Warpmart, selling
their records alongside those of fellow travellers from labels like
Rephlex, Skam and Schematic.
In 2001, the techno world mourned the death from cancer of Warp
founder Rob Mitchell. But the label carried on apace. They've launched
Bleep - a DRMless mp3 download service. They've launched two imprints:
the hip hop oriented Lex Records, and Arcola for more dancefloor
friendly tracks. And circa 2004, the core Warp sound has spread to
include experimental hip hop and leftfield indie on an equal footing
with their traditional freaky electronics. This move has predictably
annoyed some hardcore techno heads, but playing it safe and stagnating
was never really on the Warp agenda. As Rob put it, "it's a stamp of
quality rather than a stamp of genre. It's like having a nutty
mate who points out good records to you.... "
Some key records (a personal selection)