I guess I should start by apologising for being here today.  I am aware that many of you will have booked for this symposium, as part of the Labelled With Love programme, expecting a distinguished writer to present a paper on Warp Records.  But alas events have conspired against him, and so he is unable to be with you today.  So, you’re stuck with me, because in the immortal words of Richard Burton: “If you’re ever in a jam, I’m your man”.  That reference comes from a great story Kenneth Williams used to tell about when he was understudy to Burton, and woefully unprepared.  Erm, moving swiftly on …

Who am I?  What am I doing here?  Well, if you don’t know me, I’m one of you.  A writer, an ideas man, and above all a fan.  Them’s my qualifications.  Perhaps not quite as impressive as your intended host, who has after all written a book on Warp Records, but I am at least a long-time fan of the label.  It’s one of my favourite labels, up there with Rough Trade and Postcard, Mo’Wax and Motown.  Its pedigree is impeccable-ish, but you don’t need me to tell you that. 

I wish I had have had the opportunity to read our missing speaker’s tome – or should I say tomes because there was a subsequent volume on Rough Trade.  I don’t know what his angles were, but the interesting thing is in my mind those two labels are coupled together intrinsically, spiritually, musically, in love and despair.  The backgrounds and stimuli are similar, and if you look at the first 30 LPs or first 50 singles released by Warp and Rough Trade you will see what I mean. 

Interestingly where I think both labels are at their most interesting and appealing – and I’m speaking with the benefit of hindsight here – with sounds from their own doorsteps.  Rough Trade with the London punk bohemian thing of Scritti, Raincoats, Essential Logic, and so on.  And Warp with its homegrown South Yorkshire techno, the beats and bleeps generation that still holds such a fascination.  And I’m a fan not an expert so don’t ask for precise definitions of what’s what, what’s house, what’s techno, what’s not, but I’m thinking of that period in Warp’s history where they were releasing records by the likes of Rhythm Invention, RAC, Wild Planet.  Tenacious techno from the electronic heartlands or artlands of Yorkshire where fascinatingly you’d see recurring names like Richard Brown among the credits.  I like records with Richard Brown’s name on.  I like things he’s done beyond Warp.  Things with Beaumont Hannant, for example, like the Evening At The Grange record with Lida Husik.  That’s special. 

I’m extolling the virtues here some very basic responses to techno music people with perhaps rudimentary programming skills produced.  Records which were wonderfully raw and pretty punk in terms of attitude and expression hence their eternal appeal like some of the early Rough Trade releases.  I am not going to pretend that I appreciated all this at the time.  But I’ve been making up for it.  I guess like many of you my head was turned by the Artificial Intelligence electronic listening series and the glamour of Black Dog, Aphex, Autechre, B12, Seefeel, Sabres, Speedy J et set.  I liked the idea of taking electronic music out of the clubs.  Turning it into functional music.  Active background music, which I think was a phrase the Fire Engines used originally.  That was an exciting time for music.  I still love those records.

But contemporaneously there was this new wave of steely techno which came from within Warp.  These were the next generation on from the Warp originators.  Those early revelatory releases.  LFO, Forgemasters, Nightmares on Wax, Sweet Exorcist, Tuff Little Unit, The Step, and even Tricky Disco.  Records which went way beyond straight house music.  Records which revealed roots in electro, early hip hop, dub and dancehall.  The wider Warp family incorporating Ital Rockers and Unique 3.  Unique 3 especially, for if everything had gone according to plan Unique 3 would have been Warp recording artists in the same way the Fire Engines should have been Postcard recording artists.  Unique 3 who set the tone for Warp and laid the foundation for drum’n’bass.  Just how amazing does their collected works sound now?  Weight For The Bass still sends shivers down my spine.  It’s like a symphony should be, and it’s something that could be played anywhere and still stop the traffic, so to speak.

And picking up on the analogy with the Fire Engines and Postcard Records, there’s a sense they were all Vic’s children, the offspring of the Subway Sect.  So is there a case for Warp and its wider world to be Richard’s children, the offspring of Richard H Kirk and his many guises?  Certainly the Cabaret Voltaire man, who was at the centre of so much groundbreaking electronic music in the ‘80s, entered the ‘90s with more pioneering productions, ostensibly as part of Sweet Exorcist.  Test.  C.C.C.D.  Clonk’s Coming.  And so on.  The scene setters.  The scene stealers.  Fantastic records. 

And indeed the solo records Kirk created for Warp.  Virtual State.  The Number of Magic.  The latter with its fantastic titles like Lost Souls On Funk and Poets Saints and Revolutionaries.  In terms of Kirk’s output these are mere drops in the ocean.  Is there anyone out there who has kept up with all of Kirk’s works?  I am sure there must be people out there who have the many twists and turns he has taken.  Maybe one day I will sit down and work my way through.  Alphaphone.  Sandoz.  And so on and so on.  His work ethic and need to communicate is astonishing.  In marked contrast to Unique 3.

There is a question to be asked of Warp, rather like the way Factory could be challenged, about why there has not been more done to develop local talent as the label developed.  That’s something I would to cover in the question and answer session at the end.  But for me the interesting thing is that I’ve returned to house and techno music of late, and so this flurry of local releases Warp was responsible for, like the old days of local soul and funk and punk labels perhaps, seems really very now.  And that’s come about through stumbling across releases by Luomo and Urban Tribe, and indeed the pirates on the radio who have become saturated by house again, where amidst all the four to the floor, funky house, uplifting vocal house, commercial house, there’s the jaw dropping house which makes you sit up and take note. 

Music that’s all about movement, that sounds fantastic on the move, not just on the dancefloor, which is where Warp were at for a while, which is sort of exactly what Warp via Coco Steel and Lovebomb were saying via the travelogue soundtrack that was It!  And specifically TGV which they said was inspired by train travel.  “Make your own movies with the soundtrack to a dream”.  Let’s close with that track.  And my thanks for your patience and tolerance. 

**** rediscovering house *****

closing quotes from conference

© 2007 John Carney