One morning in the summer of 1989, Sheffield DJ Winston Hazel was chatting with Rob Mitchell and Steve Beckett, the owners of the record shop where he worked. The conversation soon turned to his pirate radio show, and specifically the reaction he'd gotten to an exclusive track he'd played—a cut he'd made with his friends Sean Maher and Rob Gordon.

The record was Forgemasters' "Track With No Name." Within weeks, white labels of it were flying out of the shop. Mitchell, Beckett and Gordon decided to pool their resources and launch a label: Warp Records.

Today, Warp is one of the most influential and respected institutions in electronic music. Three decades since it was founded in a room above that record shop, it has grown into an international concern, having spawned a successful film division and championed some of the most groundbreaking artists of its generation.

In a 2007 RBMA lecture, Beckett said Warp's early aim was to showcase a strain of techno that had grown out of the clubs, raves and bedroom studios of Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield. This was bleep and bass, a distinctly British mutation of techno that married the weighty sub-bass of "steppers" reggae with the rush of rave culture and futuristic vision of Detroit techno.

With releases by LFO, Nightmares On Wax, Tricky Disco, Sweet Exorcist and Tuff Little Unit (all of which were given the Midas touch-up by mixing and mastering maestro Rob Gordon), Warp did more than any other label to define bleep and bass. The label's striking logo and vivid purple sleeves were instantly recognizable in an age when dance music was becoming increasingly disposable.

As bleep faded, Warp Records began to shift shape, first by championing "home listening" variations of electronic music—what became known as "intelligent dance music", or IDM—and later via all manner of experimental, progressive and left-of-centre sounds from across the musical spectrum. Warp became a label where the electronic mutations of Aphex Twin and Autechre could sit side-by-side with the post-rock stylings of Tortoise and Battles, the hypnotic pop of Stereolab, the lounge-core quirkiness of Jimi Tenor, the stoner soul of Nightmares On Wax, or the innovative hip-hop beats of Flying Lotus, Prefuse 73, Rustie and Hudson Mohawke.

How did Warp get here? For starters, Steve Beckett, Rob Mitchell and their long-term right-hand man (and now label chief) Kev Fleming quickly realised that pushing artists to make albums and perform live was key. From the beginning, they knew that the way they presented music to prospective listeners was vital. They were also early enthusiasts for the internet, realising before most labels the potential of e-commerce (something embodied today by their online shop, Bleep).

Warp was always guided by an outsider ethos, something rooted in Beckett and Mitchell's punk roots, the strength of the UK's north-south divide at the time the label was founded, and an inherent desire to take on the establishment. Warp may have been based in London for the last 18 years, but it was forged in Sheffield, a steel city steeped not only in electronic music history, but also radical politics.

The following oral history is divided up into sections focusing on key aspects of the Warp story, the musical movements it has championed, and milestone records from the last 30 years. It contains excerpts from dozens of interviews with label artists conducted especially for this piece, as well as archival quotes from Beckett, Brian Eno, Jon Hassell and others.

The meeting room in Warp's London office is stacked to the rafters with photos, artwork and memorabilia from the label's first three decades.

The Prehistory Of Warp Records

Rob Mitchell and Steve Beckett met and became friends in the early '80s. They were soon recognisable faces on Sheffield's indie music scene and in 1986 were offered the chance to take over a failing city centre record store.

Steve Beckett: I first met Rob in a rehearsal room, where a singer of our band had brought him to try him out. My memories are mainly of getting wasted, taking local magic mushrooms and having intense trips listening to music—turning into animals, meeting Jesus, that kind of thing. [Rob Young, Labels Unlimited: Warp, Black Dog Publishing, 2005]

Richard Barratt (Sweet Exorcist): I'd seen Rob Mitchell about a bit. Around that time, slightly before he took the shop on, you'd see him down at FON, hanging out at the recording studio. They were more part of that Pulp indie world. Rob and Steve had been in bands together.

Phil Wolstenholme: Sheffield was self-sustaining. You had all these big recording studios churning out a lot of stuff. [Collective Rendering: The Early '90s CGI Designs of Phil Wolstenholme, RBMA, 2017]

Richard Barratt: There used to be this miserable sod that ran the FON record shop on Division Street called Nick. There was a falling out between Nick and Dave Taylor, who ran the FON Studio, and Dave drafted in Rob Mitchell to run the shop instead. This was around 1986. Rob brought Steve with him because he was his best mate. They knew something was happening with dance music because they'd been to our clubs, but they didn't know much about it at that point so got Winston [Hazel] in as their import dance buyer.

Winston Hazel: Along with Parrot [Richard Barratt], I was the resident DJ at Jive Turkey, which started in late 1985. The nights were getting popular and we had a mixed crowd. I knew what the dancers wanted: they wanted to hear the freshest American dance music. At that time it was house.

Richard Barratt: The shop was still called FON Records at that point. The name changed to Warp a bit later, around the time the label started.

Richard Benson (RAC): There wasn't another record shop in Sheffield like it. It was like its own little world in there, like a lot of dance shops at the time. I wouldn't say that they had a hierarchy, but they definitely had their favourites. You had to put the hours in at the counter to get any juicy bits.

Winston Hazel: Word got out from the nights we were running at the time that we were playing a lot of techno and house. People started to bring music into the shop for us to hear. FON was the shop in Sheffield for dance music imports and it had a reputation all over the north [of England].

Richard Barratt: If somebody in Bradford or wherever had pressed up some records, they'd drive round the key shops in the north and drop them off. One day in October '88, "The Theme" came in. I remember hearing Winston playing it [at the counter] and asking, "What the fuck is that?"

Winston Hazel: It was mind-blowing to hear it. It was so fitting for where we were going with what we were doing. Unbeknownst to us, it just dropped in our lap at exactly the right moment.

The Birth Of Warp

In the spring of 1989, Winston Hazel's friend Rob Gordon, a rising star as part of the FON Force production team alongside Mark Brydon, celebrated a big payday for work on Yazz's debut album by buying some equipment for his home studio. He spread it out across the floor, connected it together and invited Hazel over to show him how the AKAI sampler worked.

Winston Hazel: Without that lesson from Rob, I wouldn't have known where to start. He invited me to come round the following night. I decided I'd take a record with me—the '85 remix of Manu Dibango's "Abele Dance" on Celluloid.

Rob Gordon: They were my friends. I knew they liked house, so I thought I'd produce a record for them.

Sean Maher: Me and Rob were just chilling, having a smoke, listening to some tunes and playing around with his new equipment. Then Winston came round carrying this record.

Winston Hazel: My idea was that we should make something like the Manu Dibango record, not sample it. When Robert put it on the turntable and started to record it, that sample is what we ended up with, chopped off at the end. We needed a techno beat for it and Robert already had this snare pattern that he liked to use on everything.

Rob Gordon: There's a very particular drumbeat programming style on there. It's in the background, but it's steppers. I did that drum programming to say, "I don't like house music, but if I heard these beats it would get me going."

Winston Hazel: We finished it in four hours and couldn't think of a name, so we called it "Track With No Name." The next day I played in on my SCR radio show and the phones went ballistic. When I went into work the following day, the other guys in the record shop told me they'd heard the show and that we should put it out.

Rob Gordon: Winston called me a few days later and told me to come down to the club. So I went down and he called me over to the DJ booth. He said, "Watch this," and played the tape of "Track With No Name." It tore the place down. I pressed up 500 records and took them down to FON to sell. That's when the idea of starting a record label came up.

Richard Barratt: Rob Mitchell was smart and had already thought about starting a record label. He knew that running it from a record shop allied with a recording studio made sense. We actually knew people who had technology. It wasn't like we were going home and trying to make a record on a four-track with no understanding at all. Sheffield had an infrastructure to do that which Leeds and Bradford didn't.

Sean Maher: I remember being in FON when we were talking about putting out the record and setting up a label. As well as Steve and Rob Mitchell, Rob [Gordon], Winston and me also pitched in ideas.

Richard Barratt: I'd already been down to London with Rob [Mitchell] and Steve before that to try and get a deal for DJ Mink's record [Hey Hey Can U Relate].

George Evelyn (Nightmares On Wax): When we were trying to sell copies of the first Nightmares On Wax EP that we'd pressed up ourselves, one of the shops I visited was FON. When I played them "Dextrous," Steve Beckett said that he'd heard DJ Martin [from LFO] play it at the Warehouse [in Leeds]. He said they were starting a label and asked if we wanted to sign.

Steve Beckett: I approached Rob Mitchell about setting up a label. Then I think me and Rob Gordon had a conversation at this rave, at a community centre, about setting up a label that he would contribute music to and be part of. [Rob Young, Labels Unlimited: Warp, Black Dog Publishing, 2005]

Rob Gordon: I wanted to do a label to represent what was happening and release music that appealed to both my black friends and white friends: techno sounds, but with heavy sub-bass from reggae. It worked. Bleep was not black music or white music: it was working people's music.

Steve Beckett: One of the scouts at Rhythm King picked up on "Track With No Name" and made an approach to us to do a label deal. We thought we'd done the deal of the century. We signed everything for £10,000 and just walked out of Rhythm King going, "Yes, we've done it!" [Richard King, How Soon Is Now: The Madmen And Mavericks Who Made Independent Music 1975-2002, 2012]

The Colour Purple

With a deal to fund Warp done and dusted, thoughts now turned to how the label's releases should be presented. The job fell to local designer Ian Anderson, whose company The Designers Republic had worked with the FON Studio's offshoot record label.

Ian Anderson: I had a background managing bands, so even before the idea of doing artwork came up they tapped me up for any knowledge I had, which I gave willingly. I was just one of the people they asked. When we had the conversation I obviously said, "Well if you need any design..." [Rob Young, Labels Unlimited: Warp, Black Dog Publishing, 2005]

Steve Beckett: It felt like a lot of dance music around at the time had got quite throwaway, just white labels from people jumping on the bandwagon to make a quick £500 or a grand. It felt like somebody should start paying attention to the production and the artwork—the whole way music was presented. [Rob Young, Labels Unlimited: Warp, Black Dog Publishing, 2005]

Ian Anderson: What we were trying to do was something that looked futuristic that was, in some way, already dated, but dated to a degree that it had matured. I told them that they needed a colour [for the sleeves] that other people weren't using, to give them a point of difference. It was the idea of using something that's instantly recognizable. If you look at other Designers Republic sleeves around that time, there was a lot of purple being used. [Rob Young, Labels Unlimited: Warp, Black Dog Publishing, 2005]

Ed Handley (Plaid): The first time Warp came to our attention was through noticing the purple sleeves. Andy [Turner] and I both remember thinking that this label from Sheffield didn't only sound good, but it looked good as well. Warp releases were genuinely a big deal because you noticed the colour and the clean, futuristic design.

Steve Beckett: We got our first sleeve back and we were like, "What the fuck is Outer Rhythm? Where's our logo?" That was our introduction to the music business. We just thought, "Oh my God, what have we done?" [Richard King, How Soon Is Now: The Madmen and Mavericks Who Made Independent Music 1975-2002, 2012]

Warp And The Birth Of British Bass Music

Thanks to the success of Forgemasters' "Track With No Name" and an eye-catching sleeve, the newly founded Sheffield label made a big impression. During 1990 Warp, notched up a number of dance floor hits, most of them made in Sheffield or Leeds, including tracks by Nightmares On Wax, Sweet Exorcist, Tricky Disco and LFO. The bleep revolution had begun.

Winston Hazel: There was a club somewhere round the back of the train station in Huddersfield called Sunset Boulevard. I used to go and play there on Monday nights. It really began to kick off and we started to get dancers coming from all over Yorkshire. There were other DJs from Leeds and Bradford who would play like DJ Martin, Nightmares On Wax and Unique 3. That was very helpful in terms of being able to break new tracks. Loads of things got played off cassette there first.

Aiden Whalley (Darkstar): When we were working on our third album, Foam Island, I shared a taxi with Steve Beckett after a gig in Brixton and we spoke about what we were doing in Huddersfield. Steve told me about the night in Huddersfield. When I went back up to West Yorkshire I tracked down building where the Sunset Boulevard club used to be. It's just another derelict building in the city centre now.

Gez Varley (LFO): When we started out, there were three of us in LFO: me, Mark Bell and Martin Williams [DJ Martin]. We used to go and record in his attic in Chapeltown. Without Martin's input, "LFO" would never have turned out the way it did. He was a very popular DJ and understood the dance floor, so knew how to arrange things. Because he was DJing a lot, he could test our tunes. One night we went over to Sunset Boulevard with him. During his set, he dropped "LFO" off our demo tape.

Rob Gordon: I'd gone up there with Sean [Maher] and Winston. When we heard Martin play "LFO" we were blown away. We went up to the decks and said, "What is this?"

Sean Maher: It sounded incredible. After Martin's set we went outside and sat in his car with Gez and Mark and listened to their demo tape. We knew Warp had to sign it.

Gez Varley: Rob Gordon was going, "We'll take that, we'll have this one, this one sounds like more of a B-side." Soon after that Rob [Mitchell] and Steve [Beckett] came up to Leeds and we signed to Warp while sat in Martin's car outside the Warehouse.

From their iconic logo to their striking record sleeves, design has always been one of Warp's strong suits.

Dave Lee (Joey Negro): When "LFO" came out, it was the pinnacle of that bleep sound. It was just one of those dance records that was everywhere. Even if you liked soulful house, hip-hop or R&B, you still liked it, because it had that low bass. It was like: "Wow!" I'd never heard anything on a record that was quite that bass-heavy. It was like a whole new level of bass recorded to vinyl.

Rob Gordon: I insisted that we got the records mastered by Kevin Metcalfe at the Townhouse, so we could get a really good, bass-heavy cut. I attended quite a lot of the mastering and cutting sessions for early Warp releases to make sure they sounded right.

Steve Rutter (B12): The first things we did before B12 were as Infamix and we were basically copying "LFO." "Hypnotic FX" was a very bleepy record and that was 100 percent influenced by what was coming out of Yorkshire and what was being released by Warp in particular.

Mark Pritchard: I loved those early Warp releases, especially the Sweet Exorcist and LFO ones. I decided to drive up to Yorkshire from Somerset in my battered old Ford Escort to see of I could get any interest in the Shaft tracks we'd made from either BASSIC Records in Leeds, who were pushing a similar sound, or Warp. I tried to have a meeting with Steve [Beckett] but it didn't really happen. It was really bad timing—"LFO" had just blown up and they were really busy.

Richard Barratt: Timing is everything. Those records came out at a time when British dance music was on the up and they were all really well received and sold well, apart from the DJ Mink record.

Richie Hawtin: Records like "LFO" and Sweet Exorcist's "Testone" were incredible and they were a big part of my sets. From the beginning Warp was very influential to me. The first record on Plus 8 that I made with John Acquaviva, States Of Mind's "Elements of Tone," was really our interpretation of Detroit inspiring Sheffield, and then Sheffield inspiring Windsor and Detroit.

Steve Beckett: A lot of people get confused about the sound of that time. They think it's all about the bleeps, but it had nothing to do with the bleeps for the people making it—for them it was all about the bass. I don't think people comprehend the amount of time and effort that went into making these basslines so people's balls would shake. [Red Bull Music Academy lecture, 2007]

Pioneers Of The Hypnotic Groove

In late 1990, with Warp Records riding the crest of a wave thanks to the popularity of the bleep and bass sound, a split emerged within the label's three founders. It led to the departure of in-house producer and de-facto A&R chief Rob Gordon, and an 18-month period in which the label struggled to survive after Mute's Daniel Miller helped Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell get out of Warp's pressing and distribution deal with Rhythm King offshoot Outer Rhythm.

Steve Beckett: We were always arguing, especially the two Robs. [Rob Young, Labels Unlimited: Warp, Black Dog Publishing, 2005]

Rob Gordon: The first big argument was after we went to see the two guys who made Tricky Disco. As well as the tracks we signed, I wanted to sign another track they'd done but Beckett and Mitchell refused. That track became a massive hit. It was GTO's "Pure."

Steve Beckett: After one big row where [Rob Gordon] threw something at me, we said we wanted him out. [Rob Young, Labels Unlimited: Warp, Black Dog Publishing, 2005]

Rob Gordon: I'll tell you what the row was about: I said that we should license this Chicago house track by Plez. It was massive in Sheffield. They said, "We have no money." I said, "They'll probably accept £500." They said, "No, we don't license tracks."

Steve Beckett: We did a deal and bought his shares for, at that time, a huge amount that we could barely afford. [Rob Young, Labels Unlimited: Warp, Black Dog Publishing, 2005]

Rob Gordon: I was ejected from the label I founded. I was young and they did a number on me.

Richard Benson (RAC): Rob Gordon is a good bloke, but he can be a nightmare to work with. He is a genius though, and most people who have a bit of genius are difficult to deal with sometimes.

Steve Beckett: The Outer Rhythm deal collapsed because we were selling lots of records and not getting paid, so we walked. [Rob Young, Labels Unlimited: Warp, Black Dog Publishing, 2005]

Gez Varley: Myself, Mark and Martin got £1000 in royalties between us for a record that sold 130,000 copies.

Daniel Miller: By 1990 [Mute Records] had parted company with Rhythm King, but I wanted to help those labels that came to me and said they were having problems and needed to get out of the deals they'd signed, like Warp. When that happened Warp came to me and said that they wanted to work with Mute. For various reasons it didn't happen. First of all, I thought that they should do it themselves as I had done, and secondly we were so overloaded at that time. Warp was growing as a label and I loved what they were doing and the artists on the label, but it wasn't something we could help with at the time. I'm delighted that they did go off and do it on their own and have become such a successful label.

Artificial Intelligence

1992 saw the release of Artificial Intelligence, a groundbreaking compilation of "home listening music from Warp." With 3D computer graphics on the cover and complex mutations of techno and electro inside, it introduced a number of artists that would go on to shape the label's sound, including Autechre, Richard D. James (as Polygon Window), Speedy J, B12 (as Musicology) and Black Dog Productions (Ken Downie as A.I.O). The series of artist albums that followed under helped to popularize the term "intelligent dance music," or IDM for short.

Chantal Passamonte (Mira Calix): My understanding was that Artificial Intelligence was Rob's baby. The compilation became the springboard for artist albums by people like Richard D James, Black Dog, Speedy J and Autechre.

Richie Hawtin: Rob [Mitchell] was our contact at Warp. Rob and John [Acquaviva] had a meal where they hypothesized about a new compilation series and threw ideas around. That's when the name "Artificial Intelligence" came up.

Steve Rutter: We had a label called B12 Records. One day this fax came through, which invited us to a meeting of electronic musicians in a London pub. It had a date and time on it, but it was really, really vague. I don't even think it said it was from Warp—it was just very odd and mysterious. I remember getting in touch with other producers and asking them whether they'd had the fax and whether they knew what it was about.

Ed Handley: A fax came through from Warp saying that they liked the Plaid album [Mbuki Mbuki] and asking if we wanted to meet. I don't think that they had worked out that we [The Black Dog] were working as a collective and that Plaid was just one of the things we were doing. It think that became clear after we had the meeting.

From the beginning, Warp cofounders Rob Mitchell and Steve Beckett encouraged their artists to DJ and play live as much as possible.

Steve Rutter: We went to this pub and sat there. There was all these music people sitting around and nobody was talking—everyone was a bit suspicious and standoffish. This tall, lanky guy came in and started moving from table to table. When he came and sat down beside us he said, "Are you two B12?" He said, "I'm Rob from Warp." We thought he might want to offer us a deal and that's exactly what happened.

Richie Hawtin: There was already enough techno coming out, so many of us who made techno were already looking for something else. We were looking to spread our creative wings and create albums that were works of art in a way that they could be listened to outside of a dance floor context. The album cover for Artificial Intelligence captured our mindset.

Chantal Passamonte: It was cementing something that was happening in one document. It was one album, it flowed well and it offered listeners a chance to discover new artists. It felt like the start of something, which is what it turned out to be.

Chris Coco: Because I was DJing a lot and editing DJ Magazine, I was confused by Warp at that time. They started off as a dance label and then started doing all the electronica stuff. At the time, I thought, "What the fuck is this? You can't play it in a club!'" My musical view was pretty limited at that time. In hindsight, they gained a new audience through doing those compilations and the IDM albums.

George Evelyn: They had to break out of the mould of being a [straight] techno label. If Warp had stuck to being a techno label I don't think it would be here now. Not a lot of people know this, but doing those [Artificial Intelligence] compilations is what saved the label at that time. They actually helped turn the label round.

Andy Turner (Plaid): That period was a golden age for the kind of music we make—it was proper coffee-table stuff. You had to have whatever the latest Warp album that was out.

Mixmaster Morris: "Intelligent techno" was a term I deliberately introduced to refer to the music of The Black Dog. It was meant to describe the character of what they were adding to techno, which was to make it a little bit more complex. I got absolutely hammered by other producers, who thought I meant that they were stupid. To be honest I didn't think about what impact that would have.

Sean Booth (Autechre): Our music is no more complex [than regular dance music], it's just more original. The only reason we get grouped [with people like] Aphex Twin is that we both do things that are original. If you listen to our album and then listen to Selected Ambient Works Volume 2, you'd be hard pressed to find anything that's similar. [Interview with MTV Europe's Party Zone, 1994]

Andy Turner: IDM isn't a great descriptor of the style. Ultimately there need to be some kinds of genre labels. I'm pretty easy about it these days but in the early days I was probably too over-offended by the term. At some point in life you learn to go, "Fuck it—it doesn't matter!"

Warp Motion

In 1994, to coincide with the second Artificial Intelligence compilation, Warp commissioned Sheffield CGI artist Phil Wolstenholme to create an hour-long animated music video. Released on VHS video and Laserdisc, Warp Motion was a pioneering attempt to mix music and cutting-edge 3D computer animation.

Phil Wolstenholme: I'd started it in 1992 when we did the first [Artificial Intelligence] compilation, because I'd animated the robot guy exhaling smoke rings, and [Warp] went, "Oh my God we've got to make a video of this!" I said, "We're going to need more hardware," and they bought everything. It took about nine months in total to render everything that came from me. It was quite frustrating having to limit myself to things that could be done in the time frame. We didn't want to miss the buzz and it needed to come out with the next album. [Collective Rendering: The Early '90s CGI Designs of Phil Wolstenholme, RBMA, 2017]

Ed Handley: It seemed very futuristic at the time. It looks a bit cheesy now, but it was being sold as the music of the future. It was about the technology not being treated as the enemy, and more in the way that the Japanese treated technology—as this friendly assistant that could help you.

George Evelyn: I remember sitting with Rob and Steve and watching "Warp Motion" for the first time. When the credits came up, it said "A film by Rob Mitchell and Steve Beckett." I remember looking at them and they were both grinning at me. There's a bit in it where there's an acropolis, and there's another acropolis on top of it and it looks like they're shagging each other. [laughs]

Phil Wolstenholme: When it was done we showed it at ICA in London, and we had to show it three times in a night because so many people turned up to watch it. There was massive applause at the end but even then I was thinking, "It looks so cheap to me." I was such a perfectionist that I always wanted to do more than I could. Collective Rendering: The Early '90s CGI Designs of Phil Wolstenholme, RBMA, 2017]

Blech

In the years following the second Artificial Intelligence compilation, Warp continued to prioritize album releases. There were notable sets from Richard H Kirk, Seefeel, The Black Dog, Autechre, Aphex Twin, Sabres Of Paradise and B12, but the hype surrounding the label's trademark IDM sound was fading. Enter Warp press officer Chantal Passamonte, later to become a key Warp artist in her own right as Mira Calix.

Chantal Passamonte: Warp is a big operation now but it really wasn't then. The Warp team was small, and with the artists it was like a little extended family. We all played together and suggested possible signings to Steve and Rob. It was me who brought Squarepusher to them. We could just say, "Guys, you should check this out." At that point getting press was starting to get really tough, so I thought maybe we could do a compilation to remind people of all the great music on the label. Warp was seven years old, so I had this idea for a "seven year glitch" slogan. I suggested doing a DJ mix using material on the label and calling it Blech, because I'd read that it was a certain type of galvanized steel. I suggested Kev [Foakes, AKA DJ Food] because he was my friend and he was probably quite cheap at that point. [laughs]

Kevin Foakes (DJ Food): I'd just done the Journeys By DJ mix with Coldcut and I think Chantal thought it would be good to have something like that—a quite eclectic, all-action mix—but with back catalogue Warp tracks. Patrick [Carpenter, AKA PC of DJ Food] was involved as well. Between us we mixed it all and overdubbed everything. It was a tape and was meant as a sampler for shops and distributors, to remind them what was on Warp, but it was so successful that they ended up putting it out.

Chantal Passamonte: We definitely took a tactical decision to make the Blech compilations look quite fun. The music didn't change, just the presentation, because people had this idea that Warp was quite serious. The two Blech mixes were meant to be cool and get people's attention, which they did.

Kevin Foakes: They did little Blech parties in Sheffield and London as well. I played at quite a lot and Chantal was one of the resident DJs. The monthly one they did at the Raynor Lounge at Sheffield University was very laidback—you know, "Let's go and have a drink and play loads of weird records and if people dance, they dance." The fliers were great. They used to refer to Blech as "the cutest little club in Space."

In the label's first decade, Warp frequently threw parties featuring their biggest artists.

Warpmart

Warp Records was one of the first high profile record labels to launch a website. Soon after, they launched Warpmart, an early online store, to sell physical products. The innovation continued into the early 2000s, when Bleep.com became one of the first digital download stores.

Steve Beckett: We weren't even using emails at that time, but somebody told me there was this thing called the internet and you could go on and surf. It took us about ten hours to get on it and surfing was the most miserable experience. We were there really early, but as soon as I realised that everybody would be connected I saw that would be the future of music. Straight away we launched a website telling people about the catalogue, and then we launched Warpmart to sell CDs and vinyl. [Red Bull Music Academy lecture, 2007]

Tom Brown: I responded to an ad in a Job Centre, working part time for Warp Records. It wasn't a glamorous job—it was dealing with Warpmart orders and packing up records and CDs. I was the first one in the office every morning. I'd print out all of the orders, write down their credit card number and expiry date, then go over to my desk and put the orders through the card machine. Then I'd pack up the orders and send them off around the world.

Nightmares On Wax is one of Warp's best-selling artists, but not the only one to receive awards like this one.

Steve Beckett: It started off really slowly. If you're ahead of the game, you're waiting for people to catch up. [Red Bull Music Academy lecture, 2007]

Tom Brown: They used to do these exclusive records that could only be ordered through Warpmart. Because not many people had an internet connection then, we were still selling those for a year after I got there. It did start picking up though and in the end I became full-time at Warp.

Steve Beckett: Now, between Warpmart and Bleep, it's probably 25 percent of our turnover. If we hadn't done that, we'd probably be in trouble now, like a lot of other labels are. We've just had our two biggest years, which is definitely down to the moves we made ten years ago. [Red Bull Music Academy lecture, 2007]

Goodbye Sheffield, Hello London

In January 2000, a few months after celebrating the label's tenth birthday with a suite of compilations and special events, Warp Records relocated from Sheffield to London.

Tom Brown: Warp used to have a flat in London. Steve and Rob were down doing business in London the whole time, but during the whole period I worked for Warp in Sheffield there was no particular connection to London.

Chantal Passamonte: By that point Rob and Steve were spending half the week in London. It's different now because communication is so much easier, but I think at the time they'd just had enough of travelling down to London all the time.

Steve Beckett: When we decided to move to London, where we had direct, close access to all the activities related to our business: distributors, radio, press, agents, gigs and international people who were all based in, or regularly visiting, London. Also, we got bored with Sheffield. It just felt really small and often negative. [Rob Young, Labels Unlimited: Warp, Black Dog Publishing, 2005]

George Evelyn: We were brought up on the north-south divide, so to find out that the label was moving was disappointing. When Steve explained to me about the press angle I did understand though. When we released Mind Elevation, the difference in the press coverage was massive. It was one of the repercussions of the fact that they were based in London, which is ridiculous but that's how it works.

Tom Brown We came down in January 2000. Everybody moved in to flats and houses near to the office because none of us knew London that well. Shortly after we moved down I started putting together events for the label. I think Steve wanted us to do something in a bar. I thought it would be good to have a presence so found a super-cool little venue and we went for it. That was what became the monthly Nesh parties.

Rob Brown (Autechre): We all used to live in the same town, Sheffield. We all used to live close by and call on each other and stuff. Now London's a bit bigger and there's more staff and there's new faces a lot of the time. But [change] keeps the label alive, it keeps things moving. [Pitchfork interview, 2008]

The End Of An Era

On October 8th, 2001, Warp cofounder Rob Mitchell died after a short battle with cancer. While everone at the label had known the day was coming for six months, his untimely passing still sent shockwaves through the roster of artists he worked with, not to mention the wider electronic music community.

Ed Handley: We lost a friend, as well as someone we had worked with for quite a few years. We knew Rob's wife and kids and it was very personal. It was really, really difficult for everyone, but most difficult for Steve because they were very close. We were a bit lost after he passed away.

Chantal Passamonte: Losing Rob was a terrible blow. He wasn't a distant CEO—he was like a big brother or a father figure who the bands on the label looked up to. It did change the dynamic and eventually the whole structure of the label changed.

Mark Herbert (Warp Films): Rob was a good friend of mine. We met first through playing football together. Because Steve and Kev were in London, and I was in London, I helped with some of the funeral arrangements. I'd known Steve a little before that, but got to know him quite well around the time of the funeral.

George Evelyn: I remember Steve's speech at Rob's funeral. At one point he said, "The vision is still real and we're going to continue to do what me and Rob set out to do." I could feel that they'd both talked about it and it was Steve's continued mission to do what they'd visualized together. There was no way Steve was going to deviate from that.

Ed Handley: Steve fell apart for quite a while after that. It shook Warp very, very seriously. In some ways I'm surprised Warp survived. I think it was on the edge for a while because Steve didn't quite know what to do.

Chantal Passamonte: Up until that point things had been done in a similar way for years. Between them Rob and Steve were responsible for signing and managing the label's artists. Without being emotional about it, when Rob died that changed. Ultimately, the sound of Warp up until Rob's death was the sound of two people's music taste.

A History Of Warp In 13 Records

Warp Vision

In 2001, Rob Mitchell and Steve Beckett set up Warp Films, initially to produce and release short films by Chris Cunningham and Chris Morris. In the near two decades since, the company has enjoyed critical and commercial success with feature films and TV series including This Is England, Tyrannosaur, Four Lions, Submarine and Yardie.

Chantal Passamonte: Rob Mitchell pushed to start Warp Films. It was his last big project before he died.

Mark Herbert: That's 100 percent true. Rob had links with Chris Morris and Chris Cunningham. Him, Steve and a guy called Ged Day came up with the idea to do a films offshoot. I'd just done my first solo producer gig on Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights. To start with, I just offered advice on their business plan. Rob came to me and said, "I've got this mad idea, what do I need to do?" I became this unofficial sounding board because I was their friend who worked in film.

Steve Beckett: We were making videos for a lot of the artists, and we realized that some of the film-makers who we were working with, like Chris Cunningham, had similar personalities to the artists we were dealing with. People thought they were weird or difficult to work with, but they weren't, they were just pushing boundaries and knew exactly what they wanted. We realized that we could get the relationships with these sorts of directors and make films as well as the music we were doing. [Red Bull Music Academy lecture, 2007]

yes.studio and Dan Holdsworth created this poster celebrating Warp's 20th birthday in 2009. Note the repeated use of purple, the colour of the label's first record sleeves.

Mark Herbert: Around the time of Rob's funeral, Steve came round my house a few times to talk. I had a lot of opportunities to go and work for people and make a lot of money, but I had this weird feeling. After a few beers I said to Steve that I would like to get involved in Warp Films. They knew how to make and release music, but they weren't experienced in film and TV production. It's something you need experience in, so I said to Steve that I could help with it to ensure Rob's legacy and get the business going. The first office was in this shed at the bottom of my garden. All the production from This Is England was done from there.

Steve Beckett: It just seemed like a similar situation to when we started the label ten years before. The technology was changing so people could make much lower budget films, and we could actually get involved in those technologies and create our own, at first short films and now feature films. [Red Bull Music Academy lecture, 2007]

Mark Herbert: We had this, "Fuck it, let's do it" attitude. Our first feature film was Dead Man's Shoes, directed by Shane Meadows and starring Paddy Considine. We pitched the idea in February, raised £750,000 to fund it and shot it in 18 days three months later. One of the things that me and Rob used to talk about was having a punk rock attitude, but in film. People often think of our films have to be dark and gritty, but they don't. Our films have heart and support the outsiders.

Beats, Rhymes And Life

As the new millennium began, Warp Records began to jet off in a few new directions. Their first significant move was to look towards the experimental hip-hop scenes that were developing in different pockets of the US. They snapped up Prefuse 73, Antipop Consortium and later Flying Lotus. The funded the launch of Lex Records, which quickly served up essential releases from Sage Francis, Boom Bip and Danger Mouse.

Tom Brown: I think most people at Warp were listening to Company Flow and we were really aware of experimental hip-hop scenes [around the world]. I didn't sign acts but I was a big cheerleader for Prefuse 73. I think I was the first person working for Warp that heard his music.

Steve Beckett: I just love that sort of music. When we started the shop all we were selling before house really took off was hip-hop, so I feel like it's really in my blood. It's just got that funk in the music and that rawness, and I love being able to bring that into electronic music. [Red Bull Music Academy lecture, 2007]

George Evelyn: When they were thinking of signing Prefuse 73, Antipop Consortium and Beans, I remember hearing the demos and thinking, "Really?" And Steve said to me, "I'm telling you, this leftfield hip-hop is the way it's going to go." He was right.

Tom Brown: I'd decided that I was going to start putting out singles on my own [and found Lex Records]. I mentioned it to Steve and Rob; a couple of days later they came back to me and said, "Why don't you do this through Warp? We'll fund it and here are some ground rules." I guess it made sense for them to keep it in-house. We weren't the only label promoting that kind of experimental hip-hop, but when I went to sign someone, we had the benefit of Warp having a good reputation amongst artists and international distribution. Awareness of Warp was still minimal in America at that point though. I remember one of Lex's artists announcing that he'd signed to "UK trance label Warp!"

Warp Rocks

As they embraced experimental hip-hop, Warp also signed more bands with singers and guitars. There had been bands like this on the label since the mid 1990s—Seefeel and Broadcast being the most obvious examples—but far more in the last two decades, including !!!, Grizzly Bear, Battles, Tortoise, LoneLady and, controversially, Maximo Park.

Mark Clifford (Seefeel): When we signed to the label in 1994, I wasn't expecting some of the hostility that erupted from the techno elements of Warp's following early on. That was a surprise because Warp seemed to me about breaking new ground and so to experience that kind of conservatism was disappointing and seemed a little contrary.

Chantal Passamonte: I remember being interviewed about our favourite bands. We were all into indie bands. Even when they were putting out techno records Steve and Rob were never puritans. They would say, "We just put out what we like." That's probably the best way to describe them—they were never puritanical about music, they were quite open.

Andy Turner: Some fans of the labels felt betrayed in some ridiculous way. I've not liked every single thing that Warp has put out but I don't find that a requirement for working with the label. It's a bit daft and a bit possessive to think otherwise.

Tom Brown: Before Maximo Park signed there was a feeling at Warp that the label should have a band like Franz Ferdinand or Bloc Party—a modern rock band who could sell hundreds of thousands or millions of copies. There was definitely a scene in the UK that was blowing up. The early Maximo Park demos were quite raw, but the resultant album was a big, polished rock record with catchy songs. Even with all of the goodwill towards the label from Warp fans, that was really hard for them to swallow.

Nic Offer (!!!): People always contact me and say that they've seen some random Autechre fan online saying that we're not the true Warp. I could be wrong, but I thought that the label's change in direction when they signed us was because what was cutting-edge had changed. IDM acts had stopped taking risks. At that time it was bands like us who were taking risks. If Warp was true to its experimental ethos then they had to take on guitar bands, because that's what was new and cutting edge at that time.

Jon Stanier (Battles): It was Prefuse 73 who told Steve Beckett that he should sign us. We were really excited, because during that "middle period" of Warp, the label was really starting to open up in terms of what they were releasing. We wanted to be on a label that also had people like Prefuse, Flying Lotus and !!!, as well as weirdo left-field electronica.

Tom Brown: In late 2004 Kev [Fleming] came to me and said that I had six months to wind up Lex. We had Danger Mouse signed to a multi-album deal and he was blowing up, but the records of his we'd put out weren't selling that well—not as well as the Non Prophets and Boom Bip albums. The planned cancellation of Lex was against the backdrop of Maximo Park needing a lot of cash to be as successful as they were—and they were really successful. It took a while, but I managed to sort a deal to buy Lex off Warp for what really wasn't that big a sum, so we continue to this day as an independent label.

The Glasgow Connection

Since the late 2000s, Warp has enjoyed a deep relationship with another high-flying bastion of groundbreaking underground creativity: Glasgow's LuckyMe. The relationship began with Warp signing LuckyMe artists Hudson Mohawke and Rustie, but now includes joint releases, a distribution deal and a permanent voice within Warp's London-based team.

Dominic Flanagan (LuckyMe): Both labels started from servicing a scene, then the artists grew to define a new genre at a particular moment in time. Then both labels grew in scope instead of sticking to that sound. Warp fundamentally comes from an outsider perspective and I relate to that. Growing up [in Glasgow] the music industry seemed a million miles away.

Ross Birchard (Hudson Mohawke): I first met Steve Beckett when I attended the Red Bull Music Academy in Montreal in 2007, but we'd been briefly in touch before that. For him to be aware of someone like me, who was just putting out records—we were pressing like 300 copies or something like that—was mind-blowing for me. [Hudson Mohawke Lecture, RBMA, 2015]

Dominic Flanagan: Calum Morton, the founder of Numbers, was working in digital at Warp and kept playing Russ [Rustie] and Ross's music in the office. Steve Beckett and Stephen Christian in A&R liked it. As far as I know, the rest is history.

Ross Birchard: [Being on Warp] has been amazing, because there's not many labels I'm aware of that are the size of Warp that give you total creative freedom. I'm still super-grateful to have the freedom to go, "I've made this record that sounds like this, but the next record I'm going to do is going to be entirely different and you're not going to tell me that I can't do that, because I'm going to fucking do it," and they're like, "Yeah, go for it!" [Hudson Mohawke Lecture, RBMA, 2015]

Another Form Of Experimentalism

Over the last decade and a half, Warp has turned its hand to all kinds of experimental music, including avant-garde film soundtracks, conceptual electronic music, neoclassical and the more academic end of the ambient spectrum. The label first dipped its toes into these waters in 1995, when Aphex Twin collaborated with Philip Glass. Even so, many were still surprised when ambient pioneer Brian Eno signed to the label in 2010.

Brian Eno: I love Warp Records and I always have done. I like the kind of people they represent. I like the Warp "spectrum" if you like. I've got quite a lot of Warp albums and the next few projects I'm thinking about seem to me like good projects for Warp to release. [Eno: Warp Really Should Sign Tony Allen, FACT, 2010]

With a roster full of publicity-shy artists, Warp had to think of other ways to generate press coverage. This bizarre Aphex Twin teddy bear was one of the most memorable examples.

Kelly Moran: Warp is definitely well-regarded within the sphere of classical music. I think part of the reason is that Warp isn't afraid to be a little more experimental and avant-garde, so you're not going to find cookie-cutter electronic music that's just trying to follow the most popular trends. Warp's releases are always very forward-thinking and that's something that appeals to people in the contemporary classical world.

Jon Hassell: I'd been releasing on ECM before this, but I knew the relationship wasn't going to last so I made the jump. Matthew Jones at Warp offered me this chance to have my own label [Ndeya], and I thought, "Yeah, you know, I'm more at home here." For Listening To Pictures, it was definitely intentional for it to sound futuristic. Miles Davis is my hero. If he was alive he'd be getting his fingertips or feet wet in electronica. The idea is that you're letting the real world come in, and other possibilities come in. Otherwise, it'd be a really sleepy time! That's why I'm going in the direction I'm going. I'm interested in staying alive, creatively speaking. [The Strange World of Jon Hassell, The Quietus, 2018]

WXAXRXP Sessions

In June 2019, Warp took over the online radio station NTS for three days. This was WXAXRXP Sessions, a celebration of the label's 30th birthday featuring shows, mixes and live sessions from label artists and invited guests. To complete their birthday celebrations, the label is releasing a box set including ten radio sessions from the label's vaults, including near mythical Peel Sessions from LFO, Aphex Twin, Broadcast, Seefeel, Boards Of Canada and Autechre.

Stephen Wilkinson (Bibio): The NTS thing happened fairly quickly and I didn't have much notice. I really wanted to be involved in marking the 30th birthday of Warp. I decided to do some tracks from Ambivalence Avenue, because it was the tenth anniversary of that album and that was extra incentive to get involved. I'm honoured to have made it on to the box set with some of my heroes.

Mark Pritchard: When I was asked to do a mix for the NTS takeover, I figured there would be lots of people doing "classic Warp" type shows. I could have done a mix of my favourite Warp jams, but I'm not sure there's much point doing that. I made sure I started with the Forgemasters tune, put the bootleg "LFO" dancehall remix I've done on there, and threw in a snatch of the DJ Mink track at the end, but the rest was my unreleased tunes. Loads of artists had put a lot of effort into their mixes and I'm still going through some of them as a listener.

Gez Varley: John Peel was the first person to play "LFO" on national radio. He then asked us to go and record a session at Maida Vale in October 1990, a few months after the record was in the charts. We were always going to say yes. Rob Mitchell drove us down and on the way he told us about this nightmare he'd had—hence calling one of the tracks "Rob's Nightmare." It was all tracks that we'd been working on for our debut album, Frequencies, but none of them ended up being used on that in the end. I remember that when we got to Maida Vale we met the violinist Nigel Kennedy. He recognized us as LFO and then we talked about football for ten minutes.

Mark Clifford (Seefeel): I'm happy our Peel Session is finally coming out because we get asked about it often. In terms of the session itself, I mostly remember sitting on the control room floor trying desperately to finish "Rough For Radio," because I wanted to create a track at the studio but didn't realize we had a two-hour slot. So the other three tracks were banged out in the live room and "Rough For Radio" was made in less than an hour.

Kelly Moran: I think I'm the only artist whose recordings weren't originally made for radio, but my pieces were all recorded live in one take so they still fit with the theme of the box set. Warp basically asked me to make live, alternate versions of the pieces I had released already. I was really excited to make them because at that point, I had inhabited this music as a performer for a long time and had new ideas about how to arrange the pieces.

An Independent Icon

Now Warp Records has notched up three decades, how should we view the label and what are the secrets to its success?

Ed Handley: We meet a lot of younger electronic artists and most of them love and admire Warp and would be thrilled to sign to the label. That makes you realize the influence of Warp and the fact that the label is still putting out groundbreaking experimental music.

James Young (Darkstar): Warp has carved out its own place. It kicks the fuck out of everyone else that started around that time, it's kept up with everyone else that came out later, and it has harnessed strands of music that don't have a through-line until they find Warp, and then it's their home. As an artist they're great to work with. They encourage us to evolve. That's why they get great records from their artists. They trust people.

Simon Pyke: What's the secret to Warp's success? I think they made a wise move investing in the world of film and [music] publishing, but on a more artistic level they cover the otherworldly without disappearing into the void. I think they know how to get the balance right between understanding the populous and sprinkling the magic dust.

Julie Campbell (Lonelady): I put Warp's success down to instinct. There's no formula for this kind of thing. They can recognize a magical germ in someone. A lot of artists on Warp arguably have an uncompromising sound, so I'd say fearless experimentation is also a bit part of the label's DNA. It's an absolutely essential lodestone of visionary electronic music and experimentation and beyond... and all from a gloriously northern origin.