One more try without cusswords - my report on the Warp Records party:
A quick report on the Incredible Warp Party - overall the bands were great but Warp's organisation was pretty appalling! I guess the last IDM list before I left was a bad omen - whilst Orbital received the 137th declaration that their music was "sh*te" (and the 136th declaration that their music was "utter sh*te") despite being "intelligent" "dance" and "music" for 10 years, Radiohead get their 5000th accolade for being pretty good despite being "wankky shoegazer rock propped up by decent remixers" for far too long (at least Elvis had the testicles to end it all instead of making a career out of bitching about it). First off the place was the most impossible place to find ever - it was literally in an industrial estate somewhere in the middle of the docklands area, and Warp would have made it easier to find by putting a picture of the fish docks next door on the flyer instead of the Millenium Dome located across the river (which any signposts that had been up have now been taken down pending its impending demolishment!) Still driving around London gave us plenty of time to beech about just how bad UK garage and progressive trance is! It makes Radiohead sound good! Finally we find the place and some of the bouncers have blocked off the road and are taking backhanders to let people park or sending them to a McDonalds car park a 20 minute walk away. We decided to bite the bullet and pay a fiver but were then denied the chance thanks to another of their number telling them no more because they have to leave emergency exits. Beeching about another 20 minutes getting there was denied thanks to being able to park on the street 2 minutes away for nothing - would we have been prepared to give them a fiver a couple of minutes earlier knowing that!?! I think not! So finally we were able to walk to the venue to be confronted by the biggest queue in the universe. All those long-haired faggots queuing for Radiohead tickets in subzero temperatures in New York were complete lightweights compared to this queue - it went on over the horizon! Shane being a seasoned queue jumper decided we should walk all the way to the front and try and blag our way into the queue which we did sooo easily it was a joke. So we got in only to be confronted with a second queue to be searched - one guy told us the reason it was taking so long was that 1 person in 3 with bags was carrying a minidisc! Some kid had his flyers which he wanted to give away afterwards confiscated. It felt we were being treated like we were queueing up for gas chambers instead of a £20 a ticket party for a label most of us there had been supporting for 11 years (and so had probably paid out several hundred/thousand pounds for the ticket in the long run). I hope someone got an MD in and bootlegs their show to death! [they did] Finally inside - there were about 7 portable festival toilets which for people waiting an hour and a half in the cold temperatures to get in was yet another queue for them to join. There were two factory units which were probably used as fish docks in real life, one labelled The Boiler and the other unlabelled - on the positive side they had done a nice job in cleaning them up and removing the smell of fish. **SPECIAL WACKNESS AWARD FOR WARP** Its the middle of October and it was a mild night but it could well have turned out to be cold and wet like the previous weekend - there was no indication that it would be a semi-open air do and most people were dressed pretty lightly. So we checked out the two stages... The Boiler was a room with windows that were vibrating manically (just waiting for the moment when the right pitch was hit and they all burst showering the pimply kids in anoraks sitting underneath with vicious shards of glass) where I spent most of the night and seemed to be more of a Skam room than a Warp room... There was a guy playing who looked half oriental and half whippet - he was pretty good playing the standard IDM genre fare to a high standard. We checked out The Other Fish Shed which was the most ill-designed venue ever - firstly there was a wall down the middle - not like a wall you could look over but a wall that went to the ceiling with a door in the middle - Warp had taken the liberty to put speakers in the non-stage area. There was a bar in the non stage half which was totally fing mfing jammed and crammed with thirsty-assed mfers whilst next door there was a bar with bored looking staff waiting for customers. Some hip hop type dudes were playing behind the stage obviously scared that someone may see their performance. We decided we would ask the girl on the soundtable where we could find out who is playing where and when. "Excuse me could you tell me where we can find out where and when the acts are playing tonight?" "I'm sorry I can't tell you that. I do know but its a secret" **SPECIAL WACKNESS AWARD FOR WARP #2** I pay you twenty smackers for a gig and you won't tell me when people are playing!?!!? What am I? Some mindless moron or something!?!?! **** YOU! how many of your records have I bought over the years!?!? How many do I have to buy for you to treat me like an ADULT with a BRAIN!?!?!?! I'm sorry but if there is anyone from Warp who is reading this who would like to explain why they take my money and treat me like a complete imbecile I would very much like to hear their comments! Me and several hundred others I guess! [Warp have posted an apology since for their poor organisation] Can you believe that!?! Its a secret who is playing!!!!! Anyhow, this girl did take pity and told us that the hip hop dudes currently playing were Rescate 73, then refused to accept a tape of Shane's radio show! Time of the month I guess! So we went back to see the oriental whippet guy who was pretty good. I've had a look in WarpMart for some records by Oriental Whippet Guy but they don't appear to have any so the big secret has lost them a sale! So we got a beer. No Guinness. You have a choice - Red Stripe or beech p*ss. We had Red Stripe but that ran out by midnight so we had to have bitch piss which wasn't even a well known brand of beech p*ss, but a sort of Panda Pops version of it with a lot more blackcurrant and sugar in than alcohol! That ran out by the time the last of the queue got in! Next up was Bird With Laptop. Except it turned out she was DJing - she had just been standing in front of the laptop for effect. Bird with Laptop played electro and stuff like that and we sort of deduced Bird With Laptop was Andrea Parker. I think Mo Wax need to take note that they should start labelling her records Andrea Parker (Bird With Laptop) so we make the connection with this performance. Another wackness award - its nice to have all this great music but some visuals would be nice, much that I enjoy seeing a bird or whippet guy behind a laptop. But they did change that with the next guys who I've no idea who they were at all - we thought it might be Boards of Canada at first but they weren't beardy Scottish guys and I kind of expect/demand BoC to be beardy Scottish guys. There was a weasly looking guy in an orange top who was DJing playing stuff that had a Boards but uptempo sound then halfway through his set he switched to some pretty dope hip hop and some more techno flavoured stuff (including "Cubik" by 808 State) and then he was joined by another guy in a white top to play some stuff live - we wondered whether they might be Autechre but when we went next door it looked and sounded like Autechre were playing - sounded pretty wack too. I pointed out that there is a very close similarity between the Autechre sound and UK garage - you just need to remove a bit of the bassiness and put a girl at the end of every bar going uhhhuhhh and Autechre is playing in every XR3i still on the road! So I went back to check Weasly Guy in Orange With Mate and they were very good. Shane found a secret block of real toilets which was completely unmarked and almost empty (whilst a queue for the festival toilets was huge) - inside he overheard a phone conversation by some guy whose mate was still in the queue (this was well after midnight!) In The Other Fish Shed there were no visuals at all. In The Boiler the visuals didn't start until late and they started with the most appalling amateurish visuals ever - poorly rendered insects over a desert but they didn't last long and we had these great graphics which fused elements from insects, plants and bits of machinery together (a still from this film is used for the cover of the last Bola 12") - unfortunately this was all they had and by the end of the night the 5000th repetition of it had stopped being boring and had began to get irritating. The lighting that Warp had hired was denying some school disco of a good evening! We went outside to chill for a bit and see if the Dome would be demolished as we watched - no such luck though it seems mad to pull it down when all around us were crumbling fish factories that by rights should be pulled down first rather than being converted to upmarket apartments. It would be far cooler to live in Millenium Dome Apts than a crumbling fish factory but obviously not everyone thinks that! We enthused about the last guy playing 808 State's "Cubik" which was a good omen, becuase the next guy playing in The Boiler stole the show, DJing and playing live too. I managed to get some information on who it was from the guy on the soundtable - Graham Massey from 808 State. He played a mostly electro set with things like Atomic Nation, what sounded like an old Patrick Cowley dub mix and this wicked version of Landscape's Einstein a-Go-Go which I'm sure wasn't the original! He then played this set which had the sound of the old Creed recordings and at one point was joined on stage by a little Japanese girl who seemed more suited to opera than karaoke! Definitely a high point for the evening! Meantime Shane had caught Bogdan Raczynski live and reported it was good and a little manic. He had also rather sneakingly overseen the set list and saw Aphex was playing last in the other room "with five other people" whatever that meant!?! Next up was some long-haired kid in white top playing live. Long Haired Kid in White Top was pretty good and you could dance to his stuff though it was never what you would call mind-blowing. I kind of hoped the next act might be BoC but it was some DJ who was making the mistake most artists of the evening were making in leaving all the gaps they should take out in (I heard some girl earlier in the evening shout out "Get on with it!!!" to one of the acts deeply embroiled in the middle of one of those long drawn out electronic squiggly bits without beats which is the techno version of all those long heavy metal guitar solos that crappy rock bands like Radiohead tend to do - if you look closely you can see the DJ pretending to masturbate with the tone arm!) I quit The Boiler for The Other Fish Shed and Aphex. Massey was good but Aphex proved once again that he is still a genius. His set was a mix of Stockhausen, drum and bass and gabba and it was quite bizarre how 90% of the room were standing still wondering whether it was any good and the other 10% of us were dancing like we had ants in our pants, or probably more like flesh-eating scorpions in our trousers. Just totally awesome. (We had been given a flyer for another night in November with Aphex headlining but keep it quiet until I have tickets :) ) So that was it - the music was great and the technical organisation on the actual stages was superb (there were no gaps or technical hitches). The rest of the organisation was absolutely appalling - an overbearing security policy (with dishonest bouncers taking backhanders for nearby parking - and also seen confiscating drugs obviously for their own personal consumption) led to some people queueing possibly 3-4 hours to get in. Lack of signposts to toilets and a "secret" set list. A bar which ran out of beer a third of the way into the night. Rancid food - this food caravan was really appalling and flies wouldn't touch what they were serving. A semi-open air venue in the middle of nowhere (despite being in the middle of London!) at a date which potentially could have had very uncomfortable weather. Lack of visuals (the visuals in The Boiler were provided by Skam!). Moreover the night lacked any kind of identity which most raves try to give themselves - Warp had made no effort at all to give it any kind of identity like visuals, lighting, wall drapes etc - thanks for sparing no expense for us!!! So that was it - the artists and people made it a great night but Warp Records slacked big time and didn't even make the most basic of efforts necessary to ensure people were comfortable to enjoy their evening. Still I'm sure that Warp guy Greg Whateverhisnamewas is happy to get a new BMW out of this night safe in the knowledge that some kids in anoraks haven't been able to MD the gig and give free promotion to Warp records by distributing it at their own expense (and have lost an expensive MD recorder and mic in the process too), and that labels like Skam and Schematics best artists have been co-opted to prevent them ever challenging them in the market place. If their behind the scenes organisation is as bad as this its no wonder artists like Aphex are itching to get the hell out now they're successful! Cheers Warp! Cheers for nothing! And thanks to all the artists who kicked it Saturday night! BABY DIDDY
