Warp Records Research
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A987627
Co-founder Steve Beckett introduces the dance label that turned left.
listen to warp audio features
14 years of warp records
steve’s classic warp tracks
all about warp films
Potted history
“The label grew out of a record shop in Sheffield in 1989 at the height of the acid house boom,” remembers Steve Beckett, co-founder with Rob Mitchell, of Warp records. “There were loads of people bringing tapes and white labels into the shop and we just realised we were at the heart of a revolution.”
Warp artists: Nightmares On Wax and Beans
So the pair began to put out records. The first was Forgemasters’ Track With No Name. “We manufactured 500 white labels and drove around the country selling them to shops,” Steve grins. “It was a direct thing. We’d get a record, take it to the club and you could just physically see the dancefloors going insane… Then the fifth release went into the Top 20.” That release was LFO’s El Ef Oh which went on to sell 130,000 copies, almost unheard of for a DIY release at the time.
Since then, the label has consistently grown in stature, taking on electronic boundary pushers like Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada and the aptly named Squarepusher. Sadly, Rob Mitchell died last year of cancer. However, the label has continued to expand, launching a hip-hop imprint, Lex Records in 1999 and Warp Films in February 2003. Their first film, My Wrongs #8245-8249 & 117, won a BAFTA for its director Chris Morris. “It feels just like the record label, where we did the second or third release and we were in the Top 20,” says Steve. In the words of Warp artist Mira Calix, “They’re blessed”.
Warp artists: Aphex Twin and Autechre
What makes a Warp artist?
“When we first started, the only thing we wanted to do was put records out that absolutely killed dancefloors… in a positive way.” Nowadays it tends to be “quite maverick people who are pretty much on the fringes of music. A real cross-section of artists - Beans, Vincent Gallo, Nightmares On Wax, Aphex Twin. It’s a diverse spread, but they’ve all got their roots in experiment and pushing the boundaries of whatever music they make. It’s difficult to make electronic music and make it sound your own. Someone like Aphex Twin puts himself into the music and you can hear that.”
An alternative approach
Alongside its leftfield A&R policy, Warp were one of the first labels to promote dance acts like indie bands. “We realised that the way for longevity was to develop artists who released albums. We were looking up to labels like Factory and Mute and Beggars Banquet where the label takes a back seat. The artist is what develops you as a label, rather than just sticking to one sound.”
Warp artists: Broadcast
Warp artists
LFO, Nightmares On Wax, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards Of Canada, Squarepusher, Beans, Chris Clark, Prefuse 73, Mira Calix, Broadcast, BrothomStates, Richard Divine, Vincent Gallo, Jamie Liddel, Plaid, Two Lone Swordsmen.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/17/warp-records-20-years
Bleep of faith
For 20 years, Warp Records has been wrecking clubbers’ eardrums and delighting fans of electronica. Dave Simpson celebrates the pioneering Sheffield label
o Dave Simpson
o The Guardian, Friday 17 April 2009
It’s one of the UK’s greatest independent labels, responsible for introducing the world to Aphex Twin, LFO, Boards of Canada and Squarepusher. But the origins of Warp Records, which celebrates its 20th birthday this year, were much humbler. The track that would inspire a revolution in UK dance music was conceived in a teenager’s bedroom.
In 1989, George Evelyn was already a music veteran, having made his first track aged 14. Together with his pal Kevin Harper, he ran a club night in Leeds called Downbeat, where they would play a mixture of rare groove, hip-hop and dance. When they heard primitive British electro tracks such as A Guy Called Gerald’s Voodoo Ray, they decided to make their own music, creating a bleepy track called Dextrous using a bedroom-based sampler. Having failed to spark much interest from record labels either here or in the US, they pressed up a white-label single and took it around record shops. One of those was Fon, an independent retailer in Sheffield run by Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell. The pair decided to help Harper and Evelyn - now calling themselves Nightmares On Wax - by setting up a label.
Two decades later, Dextrous is remembered as a seminal British dance track, while the label has become a pioneer of sorts. The name Warp is synonymous with electronic music but has a cultural reach stretching into guitar music and film. This summer, Warp celebrates its platinum anniversary with events around the world, which must have seemed the stuff of fantasy when Beckett and Mitchell started with the aid of a £40 Enterprise Allowance grant.
Their first release, Track With No Name by Sheffield techno outfit Forgemasters, was distributed in a borrowed car. But with the Nightmares On Wax track, everything exploded. Evelyn remembers being in a rave in an abattoir in Blackburn when he saw the dancers’ frenzied reaction. “My spine went cold,” he says. “It felt like a revolution.”
Dextrous sold 30,000 copies and made the top 75. It might have gone higher had Warp not been a rather hapless operation.”We didn’t realise at first that for a single to qualify for a chart position, you have to have a barcode on it,” says Steve Beckett, laughing. “Duh!”
Initially, Beckett says he was just glad to have another excuse “not to get a proper job”, but he got more involved in Warp, conceiving it along the lines of Factory Records: a northern-based independent, with profits shared 50/50 between artist and label. Sheffield firm Designers Republic created a distinctive purple Warp record sleeve, which became synonymous with the sound known as “bleep”. This minimal, funky techno re-energised Sheffield’s electronic-music history, which had been all but seen off by Def Leppard’s 1980s glam metal.
“I’d stopped going out,” says Richard H Kirk, who had been in Cabaret Voltaire before creating an early bleep hit for Warp under the name Sweet Exorcist. “But suddenly you were getting white kids, black kids and Asian kids in the same clubs, because of the dub element. It rejuvenated Sheffield.”
Those early Warp releases even sounded like Sheffield. “You’d drive through and see Forgemasters steelworks,” says Beckett. “You’d almost see sparks and hear anvils clanging.” Warp didn’t need to look for acts: the music was around them. People would run up to Beckett in clubs, saying, “I’ve done a bleepy tune, I’ll bring it in on Tuesday.”
But with Warp’s fifth release, Beckett realised that his emerging operation could have a major effect on the industry. LFO by LFO (“low frequency oscillator”) sounded like an avant-garde collision of Kraftwerk and Detroit techno, but it was the product of two teenagers who invented a hugely influential, bass-heavy form of techno in a bedroom in Leeds. With “vocals” from a Speak & Spell toy, the track erupted over eardrum-bashing sub-bass, which, Beckett admits, made it unplayable on the radio. Nevertheless, they sold 130,000 records to clubbers hypnotised - or deafened into submission - by the boom.
“There’s a website now listing tracks that should never have been released, and LFO’s in there with The Birdie Song,” sniggers Beckett. “Which of course, is exactly what you want.” While clubbers danced away their tinnitus, LFO reached No 12, causing baffled DJs such as Radio 1’s Steve Wright to resort to playing cow noises over the music. Beckett was thrilled: “It felt like Djs were losing control.” Warp’s next act of subversion was to wind up Pete Tong by declaring that bleep was dead and that the future of music was “clonk” - the title of Sweet Exorcist’s next 12in. “He went for it,” says Beckett with a laugh, sounding less like a record mogul and more like a naughty schoolboy.
Beckett has headed Warp since Mitchell’s death from cancer at the age of 38, in 2001. He wears comfortable trousers and is as far from the geeky, techno image of his label as it’s possible to imagine. “The first record I bought was Gudbuy T’ Jane by Slade,” he says. “I only discovered electronic music when we got a dance section in the shop.” However, his indie-rocking past was crucial to Warp’s development, as they outflanked rivals by using rock techniques to sell dance music: they made efforts to have their acts named in NME, and bands were encouraged to tour - not always with success.
“LFO started fighting on stage,” says Beckett. “They were slamming keyboards into each other’s heads, citing ‘the pressure’. This was after three gigs.” Unsurprisingly, LFO fell apart; the band’s Mark Bell has since become Björk’s producer.
But Warp were once again in the right place at the right time as electronic music slowed down in the 1990s. Kirk recalls how things changed after the success of the Orb, who initially recorded for Sheffield label Wau!. People starting sending Warp tapes that “weren’t really floorfillers, but almost by accident had become something else”. When Beckett put acts like B12 and Plaid on an album called Artificial Intelligence, “electronica” was born. The genre turned a generation of rock kids on to electronic music, especially in the US, where, when Aphex Twin toured the States with Orbital and Moby, “it went totally insane,” Beckett recalls.
He is reluctant to name his most important signing, but admits that Aphex Twin (real name Richard James) is “up there”. The godfather of ambient techno sold 1m Warp records, including 1999’s notorious Windowlicker, whose sleeve featured an unforgettable image of James’s grinning face pasted on to a female model’s body. But subsequently, the maverick creator has virtually disappeared. Warp is hoping he might produce an album later this year, but Beckett can understand why James has seemingly wrecked his own career. “He’s the person the least interested in the music business I’ve ever met. He has no comprehension of why you would do anything to please anybody else.”
In recent years, Warp have faced a wider problem. Thanks to the resurgence of guitar bands, says Kirk, the bottom has fallen out of the market for electronica. Beckett insists he was getting bored with it as well. “I didn’t want to end up doing Now That’s What I Call Artificial Intelligence,” he says, explaining the thinking behind signing different types of electronic acts, such as Andrew Weatherall’s dub outfit Sabres of Paradise and Birmingham psychedelicists Broadcast.
However, when Warp signed Newcastle guitar band Maxïmo Park, purists were up in arms. “Everyone went, ‘How dare they?!’” says Beckett. He points to Warp’s roots in an indie record shop and suggests he has always just wanted the best music. That enthusiasm led Maxïmo Park to opt for Warp over majors who wanted to change their sound, as singer Paul Smith explains: “They’d say stuff like, ‘You could be the new Radiohead if you did this.’ We were worried about what was going to happen to our songs.”
Warp has also had great success with its move into films. Director Shane Meadows had been considering giving up film-making after his experience with his 2002 movie Once Upon a Time in the Midlands: “I was sick of bigger budgets and more pressure.” But the fledgling Warp Films offered another way. Like the music arm, its origins were strictly DIY: “Mark was producing from his garden shed, and the film crew fitted in a minibus,” recalls Meadows. Warp wanted him to make a feature film in the same style as he had made his early shorts: quickly and spontaneously, with no script.
The first Warp film, Meadows’s Dead Man’s Shoes, was made with Lottery funding, and won a Bafta nomination. And his movie This Is England took 2007’s best British film Bafta. Meadows says he has found a lifelong home at Warp, even though he doesn’t like all the label’s music. “Some of it sounds like someone falling down the stairs with pots and pans.” he says. “But if they like it, they back it, whether it sells 100,000 copies or 1,000. Warp believes in artists.”
• The British Warp events are in Sheffield and London this summer. Details: www.warprecords.com. Vote for your favourite tracks at www.warp20.net
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/label-profile-warp-records-398605.html
Label Profile: Warp Records
Friday, 2 November 2007
Warp Records started out in a similar fashion to Rough Trade – as a small shop that realised it was in a prime position for discovering artists.
“We started in 1987 and by 1989 we were a label,” recalls founder and managing director Steve Beckett. “Like most people in the independent business, Rob and I were in bands together but realised our music was pretty shit. Starting a shop and then the label was a way of still being around what we loved: music.”
Rob Mitchell, Warp’s co-founder, died of cancer in 2001, having seen his tiny shop grow into an international label with a spin-off film company and interactive website at the forefront of the independent music market.
But it all started back in Sheffield, and was a case of being in the right place at the right time.
“We were slap bang in the middle of the acid house movement and immersed in the club scene,” recalls Beckett. “We pressed 500 copies of our first record, Forgemasters’ ‘Track With No Name’, and distributed it by driving around in a borrowed car.”
By only their second release Beckett and Mitchell realise they could make a go of being a label full-time rather than just as a hobby.
Less surprising when you learn that their second record was by Nightmares on Wax, DJ and musician George Evelyn, whose chillout music needs no introduction. It sold 30,000 copies for Warp, without any marketing or promotion. As Beckett puts it, “it just went bonkers.” That was followed by the hugely successful Frequencies by LFO, one of the first British house-techno albums.
But as dance came and went in six-monthly to yearly cycles, Warp realised they couldn’t be complacent. They sought to emulate labels such as Factory, who were enjoying success with the rock and dance mix of Joy Division.
“The dance scene was changing and we were hearing b-sides that weren’t dance but were interesting and fitted into experimental, progressive rock,” says Beckett. “So we decided to make the compilation Artificial Intelligence, which became a milestone.”
Artificial Intelligence came out in 1992 and gave Warp a whole raft of new artists such as Aphex Twin, The Black Dog, Autechre and FUSE, who all went on from having tracks on the compilation to releasing full albums and kick-starting the ambient movement.
“It felt like we were leading the market rather than it leading us,” says Beckett. “The music was aimed at home listening rather than clubs and dance floors: people coming home, off their nuts, and having the most interesting part of the night listening to totally tripped out music. The sound fed the scene.”
The artists’ individual releases went on to be successful in their own right, none more so than Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker which, accompanied by Chris Cunningham’s video, caught the zeitgeist of the time and catapulted him into the international market.
The early nineties continued to be successful for Warp, bringing the next wave of fusionists, spearheaded by Andy Weatherall’s Sabres of Paradise. They artfully merged genres as diverse as rock and dub and broke the 200,000 sale barrier for the label.
And in 1998 Warp hit another high by signing Boards of Canada. Music Has the Right To Children, their debut album, is now considered a defining moment in British music. The Scottish duo are lauded for their rare ability to imbue electronica music with spirit.
“We usually find our artists based on recommendations or hearing music in clubs,” says Beckett. “We found this freaky Finnish artist, Jimi Tenor, at a festival playing his keyboard and stroking a huge salami that he’d found in a bin nearby. You’ve got to sign someone who does that, but that’s not the normal way.” The normal way brings good things. The extremely hotly tipped Battles, who signed to the label in 2005, were recommended by another Warp artist, Preface 73. Beckett signed the band without even seeing them play, but he is convinced it was Warp’s best signing for a long while. And it seems he was right.
“Their experimental rock has had them likened to Radiohead and after a recent gig Brian Eno came and told me it’s the best thing he’s heard in 10 years!” says Beckett.
With two gold albums in the UK, Newcastle’s Maximo Park, have also been a remarkable landmark in Warp’s recent history. They still have a huge live draw, with recent gigs in Brixton quickly sold out.
But now Warp is turning its attention to its newer acts including Born Ruffians, whose music is compared with Pavement. They signed to the label at the beginning of the year and are currently sorting out the schedule for single releases.
“Jamie Lidell is our other big hope,” says Beckett. “He’s a singer-songwriter – closest to Stevie Wonder – with an amazing voice and live performance. His album which is out next year landed on my desk today.”
All very positive for Warp, but what does Beckett think of the current UK music scene? “There is good music coming out of the States but not the UK,” he says. “There is more depth there at the moment. Primarily because bands in the US have to tour their arses off before they get noticed, whereas in the UKthey do one single, get signed to a major, lose the plot and disappear.”
Warp does have a significant number of Canadian and American signings among its roster of 30 artists. But Beckett is not too worried about the scene in this country.
In what appears to be characteristically optimistic tones, he is confident about the future of music in general. As he puts it: “Great music always has been and always will be.”
Introduction: Since founding the label in 1989, Steve Beckett (pictured left) and the late Rob Mitchell have established Warp Records as one of the most pioneering independent labels in the history of music. Specialising in house, indie rock and electronic music and home to Boards of Canada, Warp Records has continued to expand to its current roster of around 30 artists.
History: Warp started out as a shop in Sheffield, putting out records on the side as the acid house scene took off. Nightmares on Wax’s 12-inch “Dextrous” was their second release and it charted, giving the label the success it needed to grow and turn its full attention to producing rather than just selling music. Warp is renowned for its electronic artists and in the early Nineties it was at the forefront of ambient music before moving into indie rock.
What they say: “With artists, I’m not necessarily seeking something new, just music that’s uniquely them. In other words, something authentic and rea,” says Beckett.
Notable acts include: Nightmares on Wax, Boards of Canada, and the rapidly ascending, Brian Eno-endorsed four piece Battles.
Top tips for 2008: Jamie Lidell and Born Ruffians. Both have new albums, as yet untitled, coming out during the first half of next year.
Pub fact: The original Warp shop was sold to Fopp, now themselves defunct.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/audio/2009/sep/30/music-weekly-warp-records
Guardian Music Weekly: Warp Records special
We celebrate 20 years of the iconic Sheffield label with co-founder Steve Beckett, recent signing Hudson Mohawke and music from Aphex Twin, LFO and Boards of Canada
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 October 2009 12.02 BST
Brrnpp! Whhzz! Skrree! That, dear friends, is the new sound of Music Weekly, as we celebrate 20 years of the magnificent Warp Records. From landmark techno records to avant-garde bleep symphonies, the weird noises of Warp have had a huge impact on popular music and provided us with artists such as Autechre, Boards of Canada, Battles and Grizzly Bear.
First up, Rosie Swash speaks to founder Steve Beckett to discover how an indie record shop transformed itself into the world’s best electronica label. Steve recalls working with Vincent Gallo, branching out into films and why Warp has always attracted a rather freaky sort of artist.
We then stamp a strict Warp-only rule on to this week’s Singles Club. Luke Bainbridge joins Paul MacInnes and Tim Jonze to look back on classic tracks by LFO, Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada. Between them, they try to pinpoint the label’s magic, but end up comparing music to plants. That’s what listening to Warp does to your brain.
Finally, Paul chats to Warp’s latest sonic whizz, Hudson Mohawke, to discuss whether a wonky diet of glitchy beats, hip-hop and spliced samples could be the sound of young Scotland. He reveals how he was the UK’s youngest DMC finalist, how he began mixing at the tender age of eight and why his ultimate ambition is to write a classic pop tune.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/27/warp-records-20th-anniversary-album
Warp Records unveils 20th anniversary celebrations
The groundbreaking indie label is asking fans to nominate tracks with the biggest Warp factor for a compilation album
guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 March 2009 11.54 GMT
Warp drive … Will Aphex Twin prove to be the label’s most popular artist?
The British label Warp Records is to celebrate its second decade with a series of special gigs, previously unreleased archive material and an appealingly democratic compilation CD.
They have already invited votes for Warp 20, a celebratory “greatest hits” album that will be co-curated by the public. By logging into the website, fans can vote for their favourite Warp tracks – everyone from Aphex Twin to Grizzly Bear. On 8 May, voting will be closed and the 10 favourite songs of the great unwashed will be combined with 10 picks by Warp co-founder Steve Beckett. Users’ comments, memories and messages will be printed as part of the album art.
Though the voting is currently dominated by actor/director/writer/artist/musician Vincent Gallo, Warp’s catalogue is far more diverse, including the spectral nostalgia of Boards of Canada, the leafy bricolage of Prefuse 73, the Canadian yelps of Born Ruffians and the wistful synths of Max Tundra (although our personal favourite is Battles’ Atlas).
Besides the Warp 20 compilation, the label has also announced a box set of “previously unreleased archive material” by some of their best-known artists. They will also launch a series of special gigs, in Paris (May), New York (July), Sheffield (August), London (September), and Tokyo (November).
Only the Paris concert has been detailed so far. Warp will celebrate at the Cité de la Musique with a two-night residency of live music, DJs, film, video and installation art. Among the artists performing on 8 and 9 May are Aphex Twin and Hecker, !!!, Flying Lotus, Andrew Weatherall and Seafeel. Tickets are on sale now.
Questions
1) When and where was Warp Records founded? and who set it up?
2) What is the ownership structure of Warp Records?
3) What was the original model for sharing of profits between artists and the label?
4) In what way were the early tracks on the label said to exemplify a British (specifically Sheffield / Leeds, Northern British) sound?
5) How did Warp distribute its first records? How does this contrast with methods that a modern record company might choose to use?
6) In what way might early Warp artists be said to be early ‘pro-sumers’ (both producers and consumers of content)?
