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Warp, the granddaddy of electronic music labels, has finally thrown us a bone with this abridged collection of video output. What took 'em so long? It's anyone's guess: Warp is usually ahead of the curve, but here they were beaten to the punch -- Ninja Tune released their own video anthology at the beginning of 2004. Not that I'm trying to incite a bitter rivalry... but it's worth mentioning Ninja Tune in this review to add a little perspective on Warp's overall style. Where Ninja Tune's phuture b-boy aesthetics are akin to graffitti-laden brick walls at the mercy of software punks pushing CGI and video editing to the max, Warp is more on the film school end, each director bent on pissing off the professor with trend-bucking, (sometimes) psychotic interpretations. Ninja Tune, buzzing from a dozen bong hits, likes it light and playful; Warp, with its army of auteurs let loose on triple-dipped blotter, is the darker, trippier cousin by far.
WarpVision spans 15 years of video making and that's an awfully long time when you consider how technology has changed, but the early stuff doesn't suffer much at all when compared with Warp's vid stream in, say, the last five years. In fact, you can sense the envelope bending to its tearing point during the label's early '90s period, with bleep acts like LFO and Nightmares On Wax giving 120 Minutes a circuit-breaking kick in the pants during the show's twilight years.
WarpVision runs in chronological order, starting off with four early works from directors Martin Wallace and Jarvis Cocker. Sweet Exorcist's "Testone" (circa 1990) dives right into the nascent computer age and the early UK rave scene; anyone old enough will remember how fantastic and alien the Warp school of bleep bloop disco sounded when it was introduced. On "Testone", Wallace and Cocker capture the moment with a collage of dancers (enhanced by a sort of infrared imaging) superimposed with iconic video games like Pong and Space Invaders. For an early video, the effect is nothing short of revolutionary. Later, their craft gets sharper with LFO's "LFO" (a strobe-lit acid test featuring fast-motioned images of circuit boards and a jittery hand spelling things out in sign language) and Nightmare On Wax's "Aftermath" (where Cocker goes it alone with shots of the band "performing" over crazed dadaist nonsense).
In 1993, Cocker was commissioned to put Aphex Twin's "On" on celluloid; Richard James, that weird prodigy from Cornwall, who was just blowing up at the time, gets an excellent visual from the director, a stop motion exercise that took "LFO" to the next level with its nautical-themed Dali scene manipulated in "real time" by a gigantic (God's? The director's?) whimsical hand. James, it should be noted, appears in his own video as a cut out, cardboard figure -- an interesting image when compared to later videos (read on).
The mid to late '90s are arguably the richest period of Warp's video lexicon, vitalized most of all by Chris Cunningham's imaginative and groundbreaking work. Cunningham later went on to direct some stunners by Madonna and Björk, but his early stuff for Aphex Twin is truly in a class by itself. Try to erase from your mind the terrible images of "Come To Daddy" (wherein a dozen children -- all sporting James's bearded, grinning mug -- run amok upon the streets of London) and "Windowlicker" (a pisstake of hiphop video cliches, with James being pawed in a white stretch limo by a bunch of voluptuous babes -- all wearing beards and Aphex grins themselves). These two vids will haunt you to the grave and, by themselves, make this collection worth the price. Throw in Cunningham's work on Squarepusher's "Come On My Selector" (a Japanese-style sci-fi/noir piece featuring a young girl and her dog breaking out of an asylum) as well as a handful of others from this period (with a special mention to Jimi Tenor and Soko Kaukoranta, who give Tenor's sweaty disco cut "Total Devastation" a quirky and mildly disturbing cinematic counterpart), and you've just about captured Warp's golden age in video.
Once Warp reached the Y2K mark, the label began using more directors and -- if the index of this DVD's contents is to be believed -- started cranking videos out like never before. Unfortunately, the earth shattering appeal of Warp's visual bent tapers off a little (come to think of it, the same might be said of the audio), but it would be unreasonable to expect otherwise. They released some real gems between 2000 and 2004, but the ratio of unforgettable vids to those that are merely good takes a bit of a hit. (See what happens when you raise the bar so high, so early?)
LFO's "Freak" -- directed by Daniel Levi in 2003 -- takes a scene from The Shawshank Redemption as inspiration, telling the tale of a school girl who locks her headmaster in the toilet and broadcasts the utterly funky robo anthem through the PA across the school grounds. Her mates -- a group of Japanese girls in uniforms -- go fucking nuts, breaking into wild dances (enhanced by cool, choppy editing) that will tickle the pedophile bone in more than a few viewers. Other worthy nuggets move away from the label's cinematic standard into animation: Plaid's "Eyen" (nodding to Mr. Scruff's child-drawn, paper cut out animations), Luke Vibert's "I Love Acid" (with an animated cat taking us on a psychedelic ride that owes much to the track's title) and Autechre's "Gantz Graf" (probably the best abstract CGI exercise I've ever had the pleasure of seeing) give Ninja Tune a run for the money in this department.
Fans of Warp's hip hop stable shouldn't sweat it: Prefuse 73, Antipop Consortium and Beans are all here too, though their videos are on the more typical end. One glaring omission, since it's Warp we are talking about, is that there is NO BOARDS OF CANADA STUFF! Boards happen to be prodigious directors themselves, so their lack of presence makes you wonder what happened. This and the lack of DVD extras (unless you count the bonus audio mix -- think Blech 2 -- which happens to be quite a good listen) are my only beef. I would have liked some behind the scenes interviews with the directors involved, but maybe an indie label budget put the kibosh on any of that. Otherwise, you can't go wrong with WarpVision, a one-stop collection of one label's cool-ass, visionary output, great for parties or just catching up with all the great videos you missed. I've watched the damn thing three times and I'll be going back soon, so I can vouch for its replay value.
-- Walt Miller
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