Warp factor

In 1989, Steve Beckett and the late Rob Mitchell set up the legendary Warp label from the Sheffield record shop where they worked. Thirteen years later and releases on their label by LFO, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada, Plaid and many, many others have are among the most popular and influential electronic recordings in the world.

This May and June, the Warp family take a break from the office and are hitting the autobahns and motorways of Europe in an magic bus.

“The idea is along the lines of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour,” explains Steve Beckett. “That whole romantic notion of a load of your friends getting on a bus and setting off on an adventure and not having a specific goal in mind.”

Warp has also always been synomous with superb design, video production and audio visuals that have graced everywhere from the small screen to the art gallery. The Magic Bus Tour also offers Warp afficionadoes an exclusive sneak preview at some of the output from the newly formed Warp Films.

“We’ve just started a film company so we’re going to show some films we’ve made for DVD on the tour,” Steve explains. “The main shorts we’re making at the moment include the new Chris Morris film which we are shooting in July. Chris Cunningham (director of Aphex Twins’ ‘Come To Daddy’ and ‘Windowlicker’ clips) is also shooting a short as we speak and should be ready by the summer. It’ll be very interesting to see what Chris Morris will do in film format, as it's being shot on 35mm film which he has never done before. It could be a step for him into doing feature pieces, and God knows what kind of feature Chris Morris is going to make!”

The enfant terrible of satirical media terrorism is just one of the many off the wall geniuses the label has dealt with (Morris also released a 2000 album Blue Jam on the illustrious imprint).

“The great thing about life is when you start something you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Beckett observes. “If you knew what was going to happen you wouldn’t bother. Like with the Bus tour, we don’t know exactly why we are doing it, but by the end of doing it I bet we’ll know why we did it. If there is one kid that comes to me in Dublin and passes a tape over and I stick it on and it's amazing and we end up signing him, then the whole tour would have been worthwhile just for that one tape. I think lot of people think purely along the lines of whether or not something is the right thing to do, so they get caught in that paralysis of whether it’s the right thing or not. There isn’t a right thing. You just do what you feel and follow your instincts and see what develops.”

Warp has developed into a formidable artistic and commercial entity, providing inspiration to Radiohead, Super Furry Animals and Tool to name a tiny handful and a home to an impressive roster of artists that have produced over 100 albums to date.

“I think it’s brilliant that we have artists like Mike Bell from LFO and George from Nightmares on Wax who are the first two people I met and signed,” raves Steve. “They are still there 13 years later and are making a really good living out of it and still releasing really brilliant records. When our contract expired with Mark, Sony offered him a lot of money. He stayed with us even though we couldn’t offer him anything like the advance Sony were talking about, but now he has reaped the dividends as he has probably made more money by staying with us. We do a 50/50 profit share so its more like a partnership than a record label really. We jointly make decisions about how much money to spend and split the profits equally.”

The Magic Bus is calling to a stop near you soon. Do your eyes and ears a favour and hop aboard.