Warp Vinyl, CD & Tape 167 Items

Yves Tumor shows the world that it's Safe In The Hands Of Love with his debut album for Warp.

Released into the wild with no fanfare or prior warning, Yves Tumor makes good on the audience following astonishing singles 'Noid', 'Licking An Orchid (feat. James K)' and 'Lifetime'. Whereas each of these showed a different side to his sound, one that arguably wasn't afraid to immerse itself in the close running interests of skinny-jeans 'n' all indie, heartfelt romantic ballads and soulful RNB bangers, Yves Tumor's seeming refusal to be creatively pigeonholed is the most vital and compelling cog within his musical identity. Walking a tightrope between being on the one hand, one of the most seductive, soulful musicians of modern times, while also being a serious aficionado of harsh n0!se, as made evident with his recent years' live sets which have become something of a legendary experience/assault for each audience that has entered into the high-intensity sound-field that his on-stage presence creates.

Safe In The Hands Of Love captures each and every side of Yves Tumor's musicianship with an elegant mix of pop numbers and more "experimental" de-constructions. With the spirit of Danish noise/synth/punk/tekno institution Posh Isolation running through the lifeblood of the music, so much so that in a perfect bonding two of the Posh Isolation crew's finest Loke Rahbek and Frederikke Hoffmeier both appear on the album in solidarity with Yves' vision. The recordings are uncharacterizable as anything other than Yves Tumor music. From the gothic cloak 'n' dagger cyberpunk punishment of 'Hope In Suffering (Escaping Oblivion & Overcoming Powerlessness)' featuring Oxhy & Puce Mary, through to the 'Economy of Freedom' produced with Croation Amor and moving along with all the sludgy heaviness of a thousand broken hearts, the feelings explored upon offer a kaleidoscopic union of classic songwriting and lobotomized sound experiments. Chapters like 'Recognizing The Enemy' and 'Licking An Orchid' capture a sense of near blissful introspective blues, sounding like Yves is rushing into the deepest moments of winter while his words that are seemingly spun out of tears, begin to freeze in the cold night air. Before 'Let The Lioness In You Flow Freely' could be the Whitehouse and Steve Albini post-rock record that never materialized back in the 1990's, while 'Recognizing The Enemy' further explores the gothic soundscape rock 'n' roll (original and authentic shades, slick back and leather jacket) of 'Noid', ensuring that his stadium-sized approach to crafting earworms is well and truly represented.

Repeatedly carving out a new path within the diamond cut musical trajectory of Klein, Dean Blunt, Radiohead, Coil and Kevin Shields, Yves Tumor's Safe In The Hands Of Love builds upon his recordings for PAN while setting the stage and informing anyone still unsure that Yves Tumor is truly one of the most visionary and singular artists of his generation.

Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) takes us beneath all the bedazzled glam stardom as Yves journeys through the limbo of life and love, escaping toxicity to get higher and holier. From the raw, unapologetic drawl of 'God Is a Circle' comes a mercurially shifting tracklist where Yves picks apart their psyche, discerning lovers and enemies both spiritually devoted to. 'Lovely Sewer' captures the incendiary spark of love, heart racing to the red flags under sunset coloured new wave guitars; a total flipside to the later sultry sighs and strong shuffles of 'Echolalia', where heat rises from the spiralling synths and funky dance grooves.

Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) takes us beneath all the bedazzled glam stardom as Yves journeys through the limbo of life and love, escaping toxicity to get higher and holier. From the raw, unapologetic drawl of 'God Is a Circle' comes a mercurially shifting tracklist where Yves picks apart their psyche, discerning lovers and enemies both spiritually devoted to. 'Lovely Sewer' captures the incendiary spark of love, heart racing to the red flags under sunset coloured new wave guitars; a total flipside to the later sultry sighs and strong shuffles of 'Echolalia', where heat rises from the spiralling synths and funky dance grooves.

As Yves explores the pulchritude of purgatory, they move through electrifying rock strains. The technicolour acoustic guitars of 'Meteora Blues' evolve into a high voltage headbanger as they plead, "I'll always pray to an empty sky," sauntering into a falsetto-powered, scathing examination of the popstar on 'Parody' and the cold wave-meets-emo thrashes of 'In Spite of War'. 'Purified By the Fire' is a plunderphonic gauntlet of alchemical transmutation, with shredded loops and cataclysmic beats leading up to the anthemic and heavenly last hurrah of 'Ebony Eye', where Yves Tumor finds glory and salvation, sitting on the throne as the righteous leader of rock music’s contemporary revolution.

The world needed a new rockstar, and Yves Tumor has the answer. From the chameleonic kaleidoscope Safe In The Hands Of Love, to the visceral fusions of Heaven To A Tortured Mind, and the theatrical power jams of The Asymptotical World, Yves Tumor has proved their prowess in any sound their punk spirit inhabits. Hot Between Worlds distills all of this into a masterclass of pop songwriting and rock captivation, with songs that carry a stadium shaking energy having been teased and refined with their band live across the globe.

Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) takes us beneath all the bedazzled glam stardom as Yves journeys through the limbo of life and love, escaping toxicity to get higher and holier. From the raw, unapologetic drawl of 'God Is a Circle' comes a mercurially shifting tracklist where Yves picks apart their psyche, discerning lovers and enemies both spiritually devoted to. 'Lovely Sewer' captures the incendiary spark of love, heart racing to the red flags under sunset coloured new wave guitars; a total flipside to the later sultry sighs and strong shuffles of 'Echolalia', where heat rises from the spiralling synths and funky dance grooves.

Just over eighteen months on from the visionary success of 2018's Safe In The Hands Of Love, Yves Tumor pushes visceral sonic boundaries with his new full-length studio album Heaven To A Tortured Mind.
In a sense, Heaven To A Tortured Mind occupies the anthemic soundworld of the androgynous underworld that was explored in Safe In The Hands Of Love. Offering up a dozen pieces of vivid avant-pop (the days when he would fill an album with painterly, semi-concrete ambiences, as he did on 2017’s Experiencing The Deposit Of Faith, appear to have passed).

Co-produced by Justin Raisen (Sky Ferreira, Ariel Pink, Charli XCX) this selection also comes off as slicker than its predecessor, less prone to rupture and seemingly more comfortable with its poppier impulses. There are even moments here which present as a kind of variation on the neo-soul sound that has been turned murky and swampy at Tumor’s mephistophelian hand. As such, along with Tumor’s disruptive contemporaries like Dean Blunt.

Heaven To A Tortured Mind finds Yves Tumor growing into his position as an outsider popstar. The result is a beautiful, forthright LP from a supremely unique talent.

Leader of the punk-rap awakening, Wu-Lu pulls inspiration from personal hardship and the underrepresented on his latest for Warp entitled 'loggerhead'. Miles Romans-Hopcraft based his artistic moniker on the Amharic word for water, “wu-ha”. True to his fluid sound and nature, he decided to change it to something that felt more liquid. He ended up with Wu-Lu, a name he has been using since 2015. His first record Ginga opened the floodgates to a career that would take him to various places, people, and genres. From breaking bones at skateparks as a teenager, to DJing as one of the original members of Touching Bass, and eventually getting signed to Warp in 2021.

As an artist, Wu-Lu seems concerned with feeling and communicating the full spectrum of human emotion. Throughout his varied discography, he touches on disparate themes and sounds, straddling a divide between blissed-out beats and grungy guitar dirges, and often mixing both into one amorphous, unclassifiable sound of his own.

On ‘'loggerhead'’, Wu-Lu hones his unique sound. On ‘Take Stage’, a despondent spoken word intro opens with sombre strings and underlying bows dragged delicately across them. Then the lights flicker to life on ‘Night Pill’, and the mosh pit with them - the bassline approaches like a hungry shark and the guitars snarl with a homemade 90s grunge energy. This grunge drawl and punk spirit is peppered with dry old-school drum sounds of classic hip-hop, with laid-back beat-oriented tracks are spread amongst those with intermittent growls, scratches, and shrieks. Sonic elements are constantly rearranged and juxtaposed throughout the album, like on ‘South’ where the fluctuating pitch of squealing guitars and screaming vocals is contrasted with the steady flow of Lex Amor.

Listening through the album you are constantly greeted with about-turns, and through the element of surprise and deft use of contrast 'loggerhead' sits at an exciting point in Wu-Lu’s genre-defying artistry.

Leader of the punk-rap awakening, Wu-Lu pulls inspiration from personal hardship and the underrepresented on his latest for Warp entitled 'loggerhead'. Miles Romans-Hopcraft based his artistic moniker on the Amharic word for water, “wu-ha”. True to his fluid sound and nature, he decided to change it to something that felt more liquid. He ended up with Wu-Lu, a name he has been using since 2015. His first record Ginga opened the floodgates to a career that would take him to various places, people, and genres. From breaking bones at skateparks as a teenager, to DJing as one of the original members of Touching Bass, and eventually getting signed to Warp in 2021.

As an artist, Wu-Lu seems concerned with feeling and communicating the full spectrum of human emotion. Throughout his varied discography, he touches on disparate themes and sounds, straddling a divide between blissed-out beats and grungy guitar dirges, and often mixing both into one amorphous, unclassifiable sound of his own.

On ‘'loggerhead'’, Wu-Lu hones his unique sound. On ‘Take Stage’, a despondent spoken word intro opens with sombre strings and underlying bows dragged delicately across them. Then the lights flicker to life on ‘Night Pill’, and the mosh pit with them - the bassline approaches like a hungry shark and the guitars snarl with a homemade 90s grunge energy. This grunge drawl and punk spirit is peppered with dry old-school drum sounds of classic hip-hop, with laid-back beat-oriented tracks are spread amongst those with intermittent growls, scratches, and shrieks. Sonic elements are constantly rearranged and juxtaposed throughout the album, like on ‘South’ where the fluctuating pitch of squealing guitars and screaming vocals is contrasted with the steady flow of Lex Amor.

Listening through the album you are constantly greeted with about-turns, and through the element of surprise and deft use of contrast 'loggerhead' sits at an exciting point in Wu-Lu’s genre-defying artistry.

Leader of the punk-rap awakening, Wu-Lu pulls inspiration from personal hardship and the underrepresented on his latest for Warp entitled 'loggerhead'. Miles Romans-Hopcraft based his artistic moniker on the Amharic word for water, “wu-ha”. True to his fluid sound and nature, he decided to change it to something that felt more liquid. He ended up with Wu-Lu, a name he has been using since 2015. His first record Ginga opened the floodgates to a career that would take him to various places, people, and genres. From breaking bones at skateparks as a teenager, to DJing as one of the original members of Touching Bass, and eventually getting signed to Warp in 2021.

As an artist, Wu-Lu seems concerned with feeling and communicating the full spectrum of human emotion. Throughout his varied discography, he touches on disparate themes and sounds, straddling a divide between blissed-out beats and grungy guitar dirges, and often mixing both into one amorphous, unclassifiable sound of his own.

On ‘'loggerhead'’, Wu-Lu hones his unique sound. On ‘Take Stage’, a despondent spoken word intro opens with sombre strings and underlying bows dragged delicately across them. Then the lights flicker to life on ‘Night Pill’, and the mosh pit with them - the bassline approaches like a hungry shark and the guitars snarl with a homemade 90s grunge energy. This grunge drawl and punk spirit is peppered with dry old-school drum sounds of classic hip-hop, with laid-back beat-oriented tracks are spread amongst those with intermittent growls, scratches, and shrieks. Sonic elements are constantly rearranged and juxtaposed throughout the album, like on ‘South’ where the fluctuating pitch of squealing guitars and screaming vocals is contrasted with the steady flow of Lex Amor.

Listening through the album you are constantly greeted with about-turns, and through the element of surprise and deft use of contrast 'loggerhead' sits at an exciting point in Wu-Lu’s genre-defying artistry.

Are you sitting comfortably? Artificial Intelligence is for long journeys, quiet nights and club drowsy dawns. Listen with an open mind.

Back in 1992 when Warp released the Artificial Intelligence compilation it almost instantly changed both the course of Warp as a label and arguably what many would consider club music as an entity to be. Artificial Intelligence came housed inside a prog rock styled gatefold sleeve depicting a cover image of a robot blowing smoke rings whilst reclining on an armchair. Its extra long rolling papers and tin of tobacco just out of reach, whilst a high-end stereo plays out the sounds of Kraftwerk's Autobahn and Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, their LP sleeves lay strewn across the floor. This image along with the above text that as printed on the sleeve acted as a guide for the listener on how to best experience this new mode of techno music, one that was designed for those nights when your body stays in but your mind steps out.

Having been in operation for three years by the time they compiled and released the Artificial Intelligence compilation, Warp had already proved itself as a worthy force within the world of quickfire 12 singles of acid house and the emerging hardcore scene. Starting as a predominant pusher of the new bleep 'n' bass sounds of their hometown Sheffield, Warp had enjoyed success with early anthemic singles from artists such as Nightmares on Wax, LFO & Richard H. Kirk's Sweet Exorcist project. These building blocks laid the foundations for what many would go on to define as the Warp sound but it was 1992's Artificial Intelligence compilation that cemented their place in music history.

Artificial Intelligence was notable for early appearances by people who went on to become pioneers of the hypnotic groove for both Warp and electronic music in its entirety. Artists such as The Black Dog/Plaid whose melancholic contribution The Clan (produced under the alias I.A.O.) bears long drawn out strings combine perfectly with the tear-drenched techno of Carl Craig with the trend for looped breakbeats to create a track that still resonates deeply every time it is played. Looking further out than most, B12's Telefone 529 with its recording of an automated incorrect phone number message carries an air of nostalgic puzzlement, while Preminition transports a diva vocal and hardcore piano roll into a zero-gravity soundtrack of space. Autechre's Crystel and The Egg offers the first steps towards the path of abstract oblivion that they would go on to travel throughout the post-AI years. Both pieces focus an acidic gurgle around some cut up vocals, its timeframe existing perfectly within a distinct hip-hop cylinder that brilliantly displays their roots within b-boy culture.

Aphex Twin appears under his alias The Dice Man, opening up the operation with a track that would become an alias in itself, Polygon Window in many ways formed the core sound of the Artificial Intelligence compilation and subsequent album series that followed it. Rolling post-acid dynamics, a strong knowledge of breakbeat techno and some serious subs keep the track in a full forward motion, Polygon Window still stands out as one of the most unbeatable techno tracks within Warp's discography. Elsewhere, chief ambient technologist Dr Alex Paterson put forward a four-minute cosmic ambient piece akin to his work as the central figure of which The Orb revolves around. Whilst Richie Hawtin made an appearance with his euphoric almost gabba track Spiritual High, produced under the name Up! his fellow Plus 8 producer Speedy J stepped in with De-Orbit, a track that you could say on reflection, almost helped shape the early steps towards what would turn into the deeper recesses of liquid drum & bass.

Warp co-founder Steve Beckett was quoted around the time of the Artificial Intelligence compilations release in 1992 as saying you started to hear tracks by B12 and Plaid and Speedy J that just didn't fit into any category, B-sides and last tracks on EPs. We just realised that they weren't meant for 12-inches, it was just that this was the only outlet for that kind of music. We realised you could make a really good album out of it. You could sit down and listen to it like you would a Kraftwerk or Pink Floyd album. That's why we put those sleeves on the cover of Artificial Intelligence - to get it into people's heads that you weren't supposed to dance to it!. This train of thought led to Warp putting together one of the most forward-thinking compilations to appear within the early 90s post-acid explosion, and many others tried to copy the formula but arguably no imprint ever came close to topping or even releasing anything that stands tall alongside Artificial Intelligence for its undeniably experimental, yet sheer futuristic scope and vision.

Listening back now, 30 years since its original release, it's striking how contemporary and fresh the music of Artificial Intelligence still sounds. While many tracks from those days still and will forever sound brilliant, many AI contemporary compilations have taken on the sheen of a more retro and throwback feel. When digested with a knowledge of what has been made within the last quarter of a century, the tracks that form Artificial Intelligence still carry a strong, almost outside of time feeling that's influence shines as strongly today as it did 30 years ago. A timeless record that will continue to point the way forward for electronic music for many years yet to come.

Warp & LuckyMe unite for a mixture of minimal, bass-bleeding hip-hop beats!

While still rounding up Squid’s modern anxieties into electrifying songs, O Monolith is a more refined experience, deep in thought yet buzzing in a freshly post-isolation world.

Circular synth arpeggios and pendulum-swinging guitar licks open with laser focus on ‘Swing (In A Dream)’, subtle yet frantic as a driving beat kicks in and Ollie Judge sings “I worry in my sleep” to right-angled riffs tossing and turning. Themes of displacement and friction run throughout the record, with domesticity and the environment rubbing against each other, and our relationships with violence and being witness to endless streams of it.

Guitar plucks on ‘Devil’s Den’ stalk suspiciously against a baroque backdrop of brass and horns, lilting until theatrical thrashes drop in. ‘Siphon Song’ lurches into a smooth jazz-adjacent vocoder ballad, with spellbinding vocal tapestries intensifying and collapsing under gravitational weight. ‘Undergrowth’ enters a post-punk-funk groove, tense with guitars scribbling viscerally down the frets, exploring reincarnation and animism in the mundane set to music that is anything but. Heavy footsteps lumber on ‘After The Flash’, Judge muses “How hard can it be to live a normal life?” before crashing into the track’s unending ascension.

The world hasn’t gotten any less turbulent since Bright Green Field was released in 2021. Squid’s debut was a definitive outcry in a hyperpolitical era: punk in all senses with its witty defiance of the present shouted over upfront, rocking thrill ride, yielding fierce experimentalism powered by varied instrumental palettes and non-sequitur structures. It didn’t take long for the band to start formulating their follow-up; just two weeks after their debut’s release, their second album O Monolith began to manifest and swerve even further leftfield.

Ever restless, Squid have knocked it out of the park once again on O Monolith, grounded in post-punk but taking off into something entirely new.

While still rounding up Squid’s modern anxieties into electrifying songs, O Monolith is a more refined experience, deep in thought yet buzzing in a freshly post-isolation world.

Circular synth arpeggios and pendulum-swinging guitar licks open with laser focus on ‘Swing (In A Dream)’, subtle yet frantic as a driving beat kicks in and Ollie Judge sings “I worry in my sleep” to right-angled riffs tossing and turning. Themes of displacement and friction run throughout the record, with domesticity and the environment rubbing against each other, and our relationships with violence and being witness to endless streams of it.

Guitar plucks on ‘Devil’s Den’ stalk suspiciously against a baroque backdrop of brass and horns, lilting until theatrical thrashes drop in. ‘Siphon Song’ lurches into a smooth jazz-adjacent vocoder ballad, with spellbinding vocal tapestries intensifying and collapsing under gravitational weight. ‘Undergrowth’ enters a post-punk-funk groove, tense with guitars scribbling viscerally down the frets, exploring reincarnation and animism in the mundane set to music that is anything but. Heavy footsteps lumber on ‘After The Flash’, Judge muses “How hard can it be to live a normal life?” before crashing into the track’s unending ascension.

The world hasn’t gotten any less turbulent since Bright Green Field was released in 2021. Squid’s debut was a definitive outcry in a hyperpolitical era: punk in all senses with its witty defiance of the present shouted over upfront, rocking thrill ride, yielding fierce experimentalism powered by varied instrumental palettes and non-sequitur structures. It didn’t take long for the band to start formulating their follow-up; just two weeks after their debut’s release, their second album O Monolith began to manifest and swerve even further leftfield.

Ever restless, Squid have knocked it out of the park once again on O Monolith, grounded in post-punk but taking off into something entirely new.

‘Feed Me Weird Things’ was Squarepusher’s debut album. Released on 3rd June 1996 by Rephlex Records (jointly run by Richard D James and Grant Wilson Claridge). Tom had previously released the Conumber EP (as Squarepusher) and Alroy Road Tracks (as the Duke of Harringay) on the newly formed Spymania label the year before. The album was preceded by the Squarepusher Plays EP in May of 1996 also on Rephlex. The extra tracks from this EP not on the original album made up the Japanese bonus tracks when it was released there and will be included in our reissue.

The album was a key release for Rephlex and has gone on to be regarded as one of Squarepusher’s best. It marked a time of strong influence and although they wouldn’t have used the term, led to the sub-genre of Drill n Bass.

Tom’s strong jazz influences and virtuoso bass playing come to the fore on this album setting it apart from his contemporaries.

The album including all bonus tracks has been remastered by Matt Coulton at Alchemy.

This will also be the first time the album is available on streaming services.

‘Feed Me Weird Things’ was Squarepusher’s debut album. Released on 3rd June 1996 by Rephlex Records (jointly run by Richard D James and Grant Wilson Claridge). Tom had previously released the Conumber EP (as Squarepusher) and Alroy Road Tracks (as the Duke of Harringay) on the newly formed Spymania label the year before. The album was preceded by the Squarepusher Plays EP in May of 1996 also on Rephlex. The extra tracks from this EP not on the original album made up the Japanese bonus tracks when it was released there and will be included in our reissue.

The album was a key release for Rephlex and has gone on to be regarded as one of Squarepusher’s best. It marked a time of strong influence and although they wouldn’t have used the term, led to the sub-genre of Drill n Bass.

Tom’s strong jazz influences and virtuoso bass playing come to the fore on this album setting it apart from his contemporaries.

The album including all bonus tracks has been remastered by Matt Coulton at Alchemy.

This will also be the first time the album is available on streaming services.

Multi-disciplinary artist Jasper Marsalis, known by his stage name Slauson Malone 1, announces his new album, Excelsior, out October 6th as his debut for iconic label Warp Records. Among the gems within this album, the spotlight shines on his newly-released second single out today "New Joy," a mesmerizing exploration of finding pleasure from submission, complemented by visuals crafted by the talented hand of Parker Corey of By Storm/Injury Reserve fame, and Marsalis himself. The forthcoming album also includes previously-released single "Voyager," which was accompanied by a music video directed by Ryosuke Tanzawa that spoke to the period of aimlessness following the release of his critically acclaimed 2019 full-length A Quiet Farwell, 2016-2018 (Crater Speak), before he moved to Los Angeles.

The word "excelsior" embodies perpetual ascent. Slauson Malone 1 envisions it as a metaphorical sword, one that in someone's possession incessantly grows until it cleaves the Earth in a grand finale. That metaphor becomes his lens to explore all facets of masculinity with a newfound clarity, as he interrogates his own lived experiences through songs and movements across the album inspired by everything from Grammy award-winning composer Wendy Carlos, to the similarities between falling out of love and a nuclear half-life. Excelsior takes the form of a collection of personal essays, with vignettes that intertwine and stand-alone, but ultimately serve the purpose of forming Slauson Malone 1's most personal and enthralling musical work to date.

Multi-disciplinary artist Jasper Marsalis, known by his stage name Slauson Malone 1, announces his new album, Excelsior, out October 6th as his debut for iconic label Warp Records. Among the gems within this album, the spotlight shines on his newly-released second single out today "New Joy," a mesmerizing exploration of finding pleasure from submission, complemented by visuals crafted by the talented hand of Parker Corey of By Storm/Injury Reserve fame, and Marsalis himself. The forthcoming album also includes previously-released single "Voyager," which was accompanied by a music video directed by Ryosuke Tanzawa that spoke to the period of aimlessness following the release of his critically acclaimed 2019 full-length A Quiet Farwell, 2016-2018 (Crater Speak), before he moved to Los Angeles.

The word "excelsior" embodies perpetual ascent. Slauson Malone 1 envisions it as a metaphorical sword, one that in someone's possession incessantly grows until it cleaves the Earth in a grand finale. That metaphor becomes his lens to explore all facets of masculinity with a newfound clarity, as he interrogates his own lived experiences through songs and movements across the album inspired by everything from Grammy award-winning composer Wendy Carlos, to the similarities between falling out of love and a nuclear half-life. Excelsior takes the form of a collection of personal essays, with vignettes that intertwine and stand-alone, but ultimately serve the purpose of forming Slauson Malone 1's most personal and enthralling musical work to date.

Just as paradigm-shifting ideas are met with some cautious scepticism when they first occur, the history of Seefeel’s second LP Succour is a little chequered. Coming in hot from the success of their 1993 debut Quique — regarded as a prophetic example of shoegaze’s eventual transformation into post-rock — a newly minted contract with Warp would prove symbolic of where the group would steer his project next. The few “rock” elements of its full-length predecessor had evaporated, and vast spaces of dub and ambient would come to inform 1995’s Succour. Skeletal rhythmic elements amalgamating into their brooding, elemental and completely singular sound.

Bookending tracks ‘Meol’ and ‘Tempean’ open up like two gaping mouths on a mottled, heavy beast of droning synthesis, laying the groundwork for the world-enveloping tones Stars of the Lid would later produce. The delicate balance of weights teeters throughout the LP, crushing up sheet metal percussion on the techno-minded ‘Fracture’ and ‘Rupt’, which both simultaneously recall Aphex Twin’s rhythmic experiments and large-scale dub textures. The latter style is heavily hinted in the third LP of mostly unreleased tracks in this expanded (Redux) edition, all delay-drenched and booming with bass.

Seefeel proselytised the limitless potential of the post-rock genre with Succour — and produced one of the 1990s’ greatest albums in the process.

There’s a gulf of contrasts to be heard between Seefeel’s 1993 debut Quique and its 1995 follow-up Succour. Both are searching works in their own right, two shining examples of the fertile crossover of shoegaze and electronic, but it’s clear that, somewhere in the album-to-album transition, things got darker for the project.

A growing fascination with the dystopian ends of dub and ambient are thoroughly explored on the Starethrough EP, the first of Seefeel’s recordings for Warp, a spiritual home for a group becoming increasingly jaded with their shoegaze branding. The title track alone is a striking refute of the genre tag; a great, delay-drenched creature of Jah Wobble bass marches and wordless, ghostly vocals provided by Sarah Peacock. The form would later take on an industrial tone in the whip-crack of ‘Tied’, featured on the Fracture / Tied single. ‘Spangle’, famed for featuring in Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series, stands out as the disc’s most upbeat track, its luscious vocal, oil-drum percussion and looping guitar proving to be an early high point for post-rock as well as IDM. Its rare Autechre remix counterpart turns glimmering tones upside-down, sounding more menacing and alien across its 12-minute length.

St / Fr / Sp compiles these interstitial tunes into one package, making for a brilliantly consistent full-length-style Seefeel release all its own.

If Succour was Seefeel’s departure from the cul de sac of shoegaze music to wander through the desert of abstract electronics, 1996’s (Ch-Vox) which has been out of print since its original release is the sound of a group building a civilisation in the remotest spot, revelling in their sound far away from the rest of the world, their tones arriving to us like strange signals through the air. Singular as each of Seefeel’s LPs are, (Ch-Vox) could well be their definitive statement, a compelling album fuelled by deepest mystery.

Chief among its mystique is that it’s often hard to tell what we’re hearing most of the time. The humid drones of ‘E-hix²’ could have been created using samples, guitar feedback or a string quartet. The clipped ambience of ‘Utreat (Complete)’ ambiguously suggests either a piano or a bass guitar, a grainy twang-thump which revisits the closing motif of Succour, signposting the maturation of the Seefeel project. Although, ‘maturation’ isn’t quite the right word; (Ch-Vox) is amniotic in nature, each of its tracks boiled down to elemental values, co-mingling with plentiful breathing space. ‘Hive’ gives us the first hint of a clangorous beat, rendered alien by its ambient backdrop of what sounds like the howling of wolves.

This expanded edition of (Ch-Vox) comes loaded with unreleased material on the second LP that’s just as thought-provoking, delivering an even more rounded experience for this immersive album.

High energy instrumental showcase of Rustie's signature sound at new found heights.