In the late summer of 1989 a handstamped record started to appear in dance shops, first in the north of England, then gradually permeating it's way into the whole country. This record heralded the birth of an new label and confirmed the emergence of a brand of twisted music inspired by the pioneers of House in Chicago and Detroit. It was tagged Bleep. They just called it good music. The label was Warp and the record Forgemasters' "Track With No Name".It seemed so easy in those days. Forgemasters went on to sell 11,000 copies and the next record simply walked in through the doors of the Warp shop that Rob Mitchell and Steve Beckett had set up two years previously. George Evelyn brought the Nightmares on Wax "Dextrous" white label into the shop hoping to sell a few copies and walked out with a record deal. The new scene started to inspire the old hands, with Richard Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire combining with DJ Parrot to produce The Bleep Anthem "Testone". Around the same time word got out of a track which was being played off tape by a DJ in Huddersfield which had a subsonic bass that threatened to blow club systems and shatter windows and eardrums. The track's creators were hunted down and signed up. The speak and spell mayhem of "LFO" by LFO was unleashed on the nation's dancefloors and from there, romped up the national charts peaking at No. 12 and selling 130,000 copies in the process. The next week "Tricky Disco" by Tricky Disco entered the charts, followed six weeks later Nightmares on Wax "Aftermath". No-one knew it at that time, but this was to be the last hit record for 3 years, during which time the label would have to reinvent itself both to survive and to continue its mission of releasing the products of the most exciting original musical minds on the planet. /continue reading../
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