| The Essential...Warp Records
 Choosing 'The Essential...Warp Records' was always going to be a difficult task...
Picking ten records that illustrate the breadth and depth of the label's musical and cultural contribution is basically impossible, so instead we've opted simply to choose our personal favourite Warp records. The following singles and albums are nothing other than those that FACT's staff treasure deeply, and continue to cane on a regular basis. 01: FORGEMASTERS
'TRACK WITH NO NAME'
(1989) The first single that Warp ever released, and arguably the best, 'Track With No Name' is a bleep-techno bomb which seems to get better with age, its alien quality actually deepening with time. We defer here to Simon Reynolds, who, in his 20 Best Bleep feature for FACT, summed up as follows: "With a name that doffs a flat cap to Sheffield's ‘Steel City’ mythos and a title that turns acid house's radical anonymity into baleful mystique, Robert Gordon, Winston Hazel and Sean Maher were in the business of 'faceless techno bollocks'. Bowel-quaking bass, an Art of Noise-like vocal lick, and beats as punishing and precise as a foundry's drop hammer." Really, how many labels do you know whose first release was as electrifying as this? 02: AUTECHRE
INCUNABULA
(1993) Amber is probably the most "enjoyable" Autechre album, and Confield more reflective of the foreboding post-acid sound-art direction that they'd become so famous and name-checked for, but Incunabula remains for us, the most intoxicating and enduring. Listening to the record now, it seems ridiculous that people used to accuse Rob Booth and Sean Brown of making "unemotional" or "inhuman" music: to our ears, Incunabula is heart-rending soul music: right from the off, with the opening double-whammy of 'Kalpol Intro' and 'Bike', this is a record which vigorously engages the emotions and doesn't let 'em go for its entire duration. The melodies are gut-punching in their power, the very texture and timbre of the exquisitely arranged synths - which are derived from Detroit techno but invested with a strange, almost Radiophonic quality of their own - seem to conjure the ennui of rainy, post-rave sub(urban) Britain like nothing before or since.  03: SQUAREPUSHER
'MY RED HOT CAR'
(2001)
Tom Jenkinson spent the second half of the 90s making brilliantly weird music like that found on Music is Rotted One Note and Big Loada. He then spent a good part of this decade being awful. But no matter how far Squarepusher beards his way down this current rabbit-hole of bass guitar fan fiction, smug manifestos and hammy rave tributes, he’ll always have ‘My Red Hot Car’, one of the best singles released on any label this decade, and the perfect – yes, perfect – meeting point between the drill'n'bass/glitch-ridden style that seemed to define Warp in the late 90s and the innovative "pop" style we increasingly associate with it. Not the most innovative single the label has put out, no, but probably the catchiest. 
04: PREFUSE 73
ONE WORD EXTINGUISHER
(2003)
Scott Herren’s recent work simply isn't that good, but his early LPs have reentered the consciousness of discerning music sorts of late, and it’s about time. We all know most of that early 00s indie-rap shit didn’t hold up, but One Word Extinguisher is so vibrant, dripping day-glo synth sweat from every pore, that it’s impossible to not be overwhelmed by the impact of tracks like ‘Female Demands’ and ‘Choking You’ – and it was even more so back in 2003, when you didn’t have Rustie, Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke and the rest of dudes that Prefuse influenced as comparison points. Mr Lif raps into a minidisc, Dabrye and Daedelus both feature, and when it wants to be, Extinguisher’s as beautiful as any Boards of Canada record.  05: APHEX TWIN
SELECTED AMBIENT WORKS VOLUME II
(1994)
We could've chosen 'Windowlicker' or 'Hangable Auto Bulb' or anything else, but Selected Ambient Works II - along with the R&S-released Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and 'Xylem Tube' - remains the Richard D. James with the strongest hold over our imagination. You could journey for a hundred years through the vast internal spaces described by SAWII and never exhaust them; like all the best ambient records - particularly Eno's On Land, to which it owes a great musical and conceptual debt - SAWII isn't so much a piece of music as a gateway to an altered state: "another green world" if you like.
Spread over two CDs (or four LPs), it's a record that can't be broken down or picked at; it demands total immersion. And yet there's no waffle or self-indulgence; every track pulls its weight and offers incredible perspectives, alien textures, delightful melodic sequences. From the smacked-out industrial techno of 'Metal Grating' and malevolent fairground drone of 'Radiator' to the elysian soundstreams of 'Blue Calx' and 'Rhubarb', like its predecessor this record interrogates and advances our very idea of what "ambient" is. Just immense.  06: THE OTHER PEOPLE PLACE
LIFESTYLES OF THE LAPTOP CAFE
(2001)
Drexciyan electro-techno at its most raw, emotive and, in a way, accessible. James Stinson died a year after this album was released, and that sad biographical detail injects proceedings with even more of a haunting and heart-rending edge. The music itself sounds as mellifluous and quietly awe-inspiring now as it did back in 2001: from the strung-out deep house of 'Eye Contact' - which foreshadows the modern-day soul mechanics of Omar-S and Jus-Ed - to the impossibly searching, melancholic 'You Said You Want Me' and soaring 'Let Me Be Who I Want To Be', among the best things that Stinson/Donald and Warp have ever put their names to.  07: LFO
'LFO'
(1990)
Simon Reynolds in FACT last year: "Kraftwerk reincarnated as a pair of teenage ex-breakdancers from Leeds, LFO's Mark Bell and Gez Varley took bleep into the Top 20 with this immortal classic. Portentous and momentous like ‘Trans-Europe Express’, the opening synth-chords make you feel like you're being ushered you into the presence of greatness. Then that dark probe of a bassline bores its way into the depths of your brain, via your anus. LFO would go on to record the immaculately inventive Frequencies, one of electronic dance music's All Time Top 5 Albums."  08: VARIOUS ARTISTS
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
(1992)
It almost goes without saying that the first instalment of Artificial Intelligence was among Warp's most radical and influential releases, changing the very way in which electronic music was conceived, construed and consumed. And the second volume, released in 1994 is underrated: certainly there are a few duff tracks on there, and it lacks the brittle, more lo-fi and exploratory quality of its predecessor, but it remains well worth checking for stellar contributions from the likes of Beaumont Hannant and Higher Intelligence Agency.
Volume one is, let's face it, unassailable: released in 1992, it documents a new groundswell of post-acid house creativity, and collects productions from then little-known producers like Autechre, Speedy J and a certain Richard D. James. Working under the name The Dice Man, James contributes one of the most immediate and timeless tracks of his career: the brooding techno masterpiece 'Polygon Window'. Listen to AI now and it still sounds like the future.  09: BOARDS OF CANADA
MUSIC HAS THE RIGHT TO CHILDREN
(1998)
The Old Tunes compilations might be more unique with their touches of proto-Ghost Box wobble and knocked-off hip-hop bump, Geogaddi more intriguing with its location-based titles, the playful occult mythology behind it and ‘Beware the Friendly Stranger’ (the best track under a minute long ever? It’s up there), but Music Has The Right to Children was always going to be our pick. In the space of this one perfectly-formed album, Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin changed the face of electronic music, taking in its history, from concrète to Eno, from the Radiophonic Workshop to The Orb, filtering it through their own unique soft-focus world of Hexagon Suns, Triangles and Rhombuses; informing in turn a decade's worth of IDM and its various mutations, not to mention artists further afield and further into the mainstream. Has it been beaten this decade by anything it influenced? Probably not.
What matters most about Music Has The Right to Children, more so than the melodies, more so than the structure, or the colour, is the texture of the whole thing. Even listening to it today, with electronic music advanced to the point it has, it’s easy to be in total awe of the way these tracks feel as though you could reach out and touch them; the way those loops feel like they’re actually shining down on your skin, the way the beats feel like the ground moving under your feet, the way the synth effects carry mystique like a far-off, cloud-shrouded landmark. The warm analog mixdowns help, but more than anything it’s because BoC are masters at attributing genuine qualities of mood to their music: whether it’s mystery, or intrigue, or joy, or apprehension, everything here feels real. A sacred cow for a reason, and one that will continue to stand the test of time.  10: TUFF LITTLE UNIT
'JOIN THE FUTURE'
(1991)
It was a toss-up between this and Coco Steel & Lovebomb's sublime 'Feel It'. Both are sweet, swinging house tracks, but 'Join The Future' is just that little bit sweeter, and serves the purpose of demonstrating Warp's oft-forgotten willingness to embrace melody and light. It would be wrong to say this track has a "hook" - every single component is a hook, from the buzzing bassline and spectral synths to the jazzy piano runs and, of course, the vocals - inviting you to, yes, come and join the future. Warp have been extending that invitation to us ever since their inception 20 years ago, and we salute them for it.  |
