Various Artists – Blech II: Blechsdöttir
This is the ultimate cop-out! I picked this to cover so many Warp artists that mean a lot to me, but it still misses out a few, like Boards of Canada, and I'm really sorry about that. But it does have LFO, Squarepusher, Aphex, Autechre, all these artists who mean so much to me. I helped put this and the first Warp compilation, Blech, together, so that means a lot too, and it was mixed by DJ Food, my old flatmate. We had a laugh, we really did. And it makes me laugh now that I put the proposition of a retrospective compilation to Warp back in 1996 – we'd only been going since 1989! And I had an idea of doing them as DJ mixes, so it was a bit of a pet project. The compilation's called Blechsdottir as a reference to Björk, of course – this was the daughter of Blech, after all, and electronic music was so exciting back then, and just everywhere. I was a clubber and a DJ, usually DJing in the second room of a club, the experimental room. I gobbled up music then. I loved Detroit techno, then went through an electro phase, and listened to a shitload of hiphop – I can't believe there's none of that on my list either. I went to ambient back then parties too, which is how I met Aphex. His inventiveness, I just loved it, and the whole outward-looking spirit behind the label was so energising. Let this compilation stand for all of that!