The end of May saw the release of Red, Yellow and Blue, the debut album by Toronto three-piece Born Ruffians. Nothing remarkable about that I hear you say. And you'd be almost totally right, but not completely. The reason this has at least a shred of pique is because of the band's label Warp.
Founded during 1989 in the northern provincial city of Sheffield (better known now as the home of the all conquering Arctic Monkeys), Warp's management team of Rob Mitchell, Steve Beckett, and Rob Gordon initially operated out of a specialist record shop, fascinated by the rapidly emerging rave movement in the UK and by classic house and techno from Chicago and Detroit. Heralding the beginning of an era in which the recognized dynamics of guitar music were to be - at least temporarily - relegated to the role of bystander, the label rapidly became synonymous with the sound of young Britain’s nocturnal pursuits.
With local acts such as LFO and Nightmares on Wax finding popularity they also benefited commercially, at one point in 1990 claiming 1.4% of all weekly record sales in the UK, a previously unheard of feat for an independent label. Helped by a distribution deal with U.S. outfit Rhythm King, times were good indeed.
It was to be the label's next move however which would not only redefine electronic music but also prove to be a millstone which the likes of Born Ruffians are instrumental in shifting. By 1992 rave was subject to rapidly diminishing creative returns, reduced to nudge-wink drug referencing self parody. With Gordon also now having departed in a haze of acrimony, Beckett and Mitchell decided that they would shift their energies to mapping the post-club experience, releasing a series of works by a wave of new artists such as The Black Dog, Richie Hawtin (As F.U.S.E), and Richard "Aphex Twin" D. James under the collective title of Artificial Intelligence.
Mixing the dynamics of more traditional techno with more wistful, post-ecstatic timbres, it was a sound which swiftly became a movement, attracting a whole new audience to electronic music who had felt alienated by the perceived elitism of club culture - as well as ridicule from hardcore dance fans who mocked its pseudo intellectual overtones.
In the subsequent decade plus much has happened at Warp; in 1998 they released Boards of Canada's seminal album Music Has The Right To Children, signaling the end of the "Intelligent Techno" era they had created and a more organic, analogue sounding approach to electronica. Controversially they left Sheffield in 2000 for London, citing better access to their collaborators in art, design and the industry in general. Three years earlier they had pioneered online sales via their distinctive Warpmart website. Tragically, Mitchell died in 2001.
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