Warp
One label, five of our rankings, thirteen years. A shop in Sheffield that kept signing the thing that came next, and kept being right about it.
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Forgemasters / Track With No Name
Catalogue number one, funded by a government enterprise grant, made by people who worked in the shop. Everything else here exists because this sold well enough locally to pay for the next one.
Nightmares on Wax / Dextrous
The bass frequency as the entire point of a record, which is what "bleep" meant before anyone had a word for it. It established that the label's taste was a taste and not just a postcode.
Sweet Exorcist / Testone
Cabaret Voltaire's Richard H. Kirk making a club record, which is the moment Sheffield's industrial past and its rave present turn out to be the same story. The label's first sign that it would sign an idea rather than a sound.
Aphex Twin / Rhubarb
Selected Ambient Works Volume II is where the label stops being a dance label without announcing it. Four minutes with no drums at all, released by the people who had just sold a lot of records made entirely of drums.
Squarepusher / Come On My Selector
Jungle played at a speed and density no jungle dancefloor asked for, by a bassist. The label's habit by this point is signing people who are obviously misusing a genre, and being right about it a few years early.
Boards of Canada / Roygbiv
Two minutes of warmth on a roster known for the opposite, and the most widely loved record the label ever released. It moved Warp somewhere it had not been: melancholy, and legible to people who did not care about electronic music.
Aphex Twin / Windowlicker
A genuine pop single, with a Chris Cunningham video on daytime rotation, made by the artist least interested in being one. The label's tenth year, and it is still signing off on things nobody could have planned for.
Nightmares on Wax / Les Nuits
The most recognisable record the label ever released to people who do not follow it, and the moment its catalogue acquires warmth. A bleep techno act from the label's first year making something you could put on at the end of a night.
Nightmares on Wax / Sueño
Released the same year as the entry above and filed by us in a different ranking again. Ten years in, the label's founding act is still moving it somewhere it had not been, which is the argument this list is making.
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Autechre / Gantz Graf
The end point of the argument this list makes: music arranged past the point where a listener can hold the pattern, released by a label that began with a dance twelve-inch. Whether it is enjoyable is not the claim. That it was released is.