Apr 17, 2009

The Guardian puts a clonk on it

If you're quick, you can still get the Guardian's tribute to Warp Records, cut it out with your mam's sewing scissors, and plaster it on your wall like a great big fanboy.

'Bleep Of Faith' is a neat little feature looking back on 20 years of the electronic music label.

It contains all the obvious gems of Warp mythology, listed here for your easy digestment, plus one or two lovely stories. I especially like the image of LFO fighting on stage like they were some kind of Kraftwerkian Gallagher brothers.

- Warp Records was conceived in a bedroom. Arf!;

- modern electronica was born with the release of the Artificial Intelligence album;

- the first release (Track With No Name) was flogged from the back of a car;

- they fooled Pete Tongue into thinking the future of music was something called "clonk";
- they happen to make some pretty bloody good films (the best of which is This Is England)


- LFO used to fight on stage. Like Brian Jonestown Massacre;

- the label was started with a £40 Enterprise Allowance grant;


- Richard David James, a.k.a. Aphex Twin, is something of a 'maverick'. You'd never guess;

- signing the likes of Maximo Park had purists spluttering into their chai tea;
- the early releases apparently sounded exactly like Sheffield, which makes Warp totally different from Pulp, who also sounded exactly like Sheffield... who were, incidentally, totally different from the Human League, who also .... you get the idea.

1 comment:

steve said...

I'll have to check it then - thanks. I've got that wonderful Warp book, but don't recall a mention of any LFO brawls onstage. Sounds hilarious.