The crazy magic realism of Chris Cunningham’s work on Aphex Twin’s brutally antagonistic ‘Windowlicker’ video just about says it all really. Funny, disturbing, sexy, malicious, edgy, surreal, groovy, artistic, post-modern and beautifully, beautifully shot. Welcome indeed to the world of Warp – a label always teetering precariously on the edges of taste and decency and always at the proverbial cutting-edge of dance-music. This DVD compilation is a mind-blowing testament to all that shit and more. With two stunning, rarely seen before videos for Aphex Twin and Jamie Lidell, there’s also a preposterously classic line up of visual treats courtesy of LFO, Sweet Exorcist, Seefeel, Autechre, Broadcast, Chris Clark, Plaid, Luke Vibert, Mira Calix, Prefuse 73, Beans, Antipop Consortium, Sabres of Paradise, Squarepusher, Jimi Tenor, John Callaghan, and Nightmares on Wax. 32 incredible videos. 32 incredible tracks culled from 15 years of excellence, and in a neat, simple and concise chronological order.
Style masters Warp have always (yes, always) blurred the boundaries separating music and design. You have only to look at the album art and the flyers to bear witness to that, and the videos take it one step further. Everybody must surely be familiar with the marauding eerie, doppelganger children in Aphex Twin’s ‘Come To Daddy’ – but how many of you remember the Martin Wallace and Jarvis Cocker (yes, him from Pulp) acid manifestos that accompanied Sweet Exorcist’s ‘Testone’ and LFO’s ‘LFO’? Remember the BBC ‘Girl & Blackboard’ test card? Then you’re likely to remember this little chestnut popping up on the UK’s videofest chart-show in 1990. They skipped through it? Well that’s hardly surprising, as everything here is that little bit more difficult, more different and more edgy than is usually deemed suitable for release. Warp is pop-culture turned on its head, ripped apart and stuck back together with glue, fuzzy felt and shreds of the Time’s Art Review. It’s the thinking man’s club music. Dance music you can’t dance to.
Retrospectives are rarely more forward thinking than this, music rarely this tantalising to watch and at a very reasonable price, it’s a DVD any self-respecting arthouse geezer should have in their collection. This is not just a history of Warp, this is the history of dance music. The history of late twentieth century culture.