Many albums have a claim to being the best compilation ever put together. But whatever other people might say, Warp Records’ Artificial Intelligence II is, for me, the finest of them all. It highlights a key moment in the evolution of Warp and, indeed, in the development of modern British electronic music. And yet, despite its totemic status, it remains relatively unhailed. But in my view, with contributions from Autechre, Global Communication, Black Dog and Aphex Twin, this is possibly the album that set the tone for electronic music in the 1990s.
At certain points in musical history, everything comes together at just the right moment. The 60s saw the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and others rise to prominence at about the same time. The 90s - for good or bad - saw the emergence of a string of Britpop bands all clamouring for attention. Not all of them have stood the test of time - indeed, perhaps most of them definitively have not - but the period did at least signal the vibrant fertility of British music in that period. Ironically, Britpop’s ascent served to overshadow what I think is unarguably one of the most interesting eras in modern British music: a movement of electronic artists whose sound has had a lasting impact on the direction of popular music.
People will argue about when it began, but for me Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is a convenient starting point. Released in early 1992, the album was one of the first really coherent long-players constructed by an electronic artist in the UK in the post-acid house era. It came out at a time when rave culture was at its peak, when bands like The Prodigy and Utah Saints were storming the national pop charts. And its release helped to dispel the notion that electronic musicians - so often working in a culture of the 12” single - could not make albums. While breakbeat culture, with its insistence on the blare of the siren and the snare drum snap, ruled the airwaves, this album revealed a quieter, more involved side to electronic music - and pointed the way towards something far more nuanced. While the beats were still there, the focus now was on sound, on melody and on the treatment of melody - and not just on quick-fix klaxons and drum-kicks.
Albums by other bands working at the same time could equally stake a claim to have kick-started the period that followed. Among them, Future Sound of London’s Accelerator, Orbital’s Green and The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld - all released in 1991 - showed that electronic music was capable of great breadth, depth and creativity. Again, all used many of the same tools being employed by artists on the breakbeat scene - the acid sound, the delight in sampling - but to very different ends.
This was music for music’s sake, and nothing more. It had its antecedents in Detroit techno, Kraftwerk, the 80s hip-hop scene, Eno and Tangerine Dream - but slowly the emergence in the early 1990s of these and other bands who were looking to make serious electronic music helped firmly stamp the sound finally and permanently in the nation’s culture.
It was against this backdrop that Warp Records began its Artificial Intelligence series in 1992. The label bosses described the sound the series was aiming for as “electronic listening music”. The very first Artificial Intelligence release - a compilation of music by people like The Orb’s Alex Paterson, the Aphex Twin and the Black Dog - even had a man sitting relaxedly in his armchair, as though to make perfectly clear that this wasn’t music designed for the dancefloor. The series saw the release of six albums, as well as two compilations of material by them and others on the scene. Those involved included Aphex Twin, Autechre, Global Communication and Black Dog. Today, it seems astounding that all of these artists were working on the same label at the same time. Aphex Twin - who even by 1992 was being hailed as a revolutionary musical innovator - was the label’s pin-up, a personality figure whose conspicuousness gave the sound a public face. Others were far less media-friendly, with Black Dog going so far as to refuse to have their photographs in the press. Yet the two both worked together on the same label, and released long-players as part of the series that are among the finest of their era - Richard D. James with Polygon Window’s entrancing Surfing on Sine Waves, and the media-shy Black Dog with Bytes. Autechre’s Incunabula was also released - beginning a relationship with the Warp label that stands to this day. The series also featured subtle, spacey, but more dancefloor friendly albums - B12’s Electro-Soma, a meditation on Detroit techno, FUSE’s - aka Richie Hawtin’s - Dimension Intrusion and Speedy J’s gorgeous Ginger.
Yet it was the contributions of Aphex Twin, Black Dog and Autechre that really set the series alight. Each of these albums were clever, complex, polished artefacts - works that easily stood comparison with the great electronic records that had come before them: albums by Model 500, Eno, the Art of Noise and others.
Incunabula, Bytes and Surfing on Sine Waves were, in their different ways, major milestones for Warp Records. Incunabula’s sound was rich, textured and took time to reveal itself. Bytes hinted more strongly at a Detroit influence, but Black Dog infused it with their own warmth. And Surfing on Sine Waves was singular and unnerving, by turns offering up Aphex-branded ambient techno, Eno-esque soundscapes and percussion-led frenzies.
But it was the Artificial Intelligence II compilation that was, I believe, the high-point of the series. Apart from Hawtin, everyone who had released an album in the Artificial Intelligence project contributed. The album also saw participants who would later go on to big things in their own right - including Seefeel, Global Communication and Beaumont Hannant. And it saw less permanent fixtures on the electronic music scene produce what were perhaps their most interesting moments.
Unlike the great majority of compilations, this record had its own very definite sound, a mood of detached, austere melancholy that is adhered to throughout the album, but one that allowed each producer to make their own mark.
It opens with a Beaumont Hannant remix of a track by Mark Franklin, a man who has since fallen almost entirely off the musical map. Hannant’s effort - a mesmerising mix of bass and breathless vocals - is an extraordinary opener that revealed the kind of music he could produce when at the height of his powers. And, with its weightless sense of beauty and delicacy, it set the tone for what followed.
The Higher Intelligence Agency’s contribution, Selinite, matched it for potency - offering up flickering twists of melody wrought over sauntering tribal drum effects. It was another from an artist not working on the Warp label - but again served to illustrate the pool of talent then emerging on the British electronic music scene.
Global Communication - who within a year would release the brilliant Pentamerous Metamorphosis and go on to produce the classic 76:14 - remixed one of their own tracks, while Autechre explored glitch at length for the first time on Chatter, a track that accurately sums up the band’s pre-Confield sound.
Seefeel, who would later release the stark and haunting Succour on Warp, pointed towards a different kind of electronics on Spangle, a track whose jagged, distorted guitars pre-empted the work of people like Fennesz and Tim Hecker by several years.
Black Dog’s piece - the driving, melancholy Parasight - plumbed depths of emotion even they would struggle to match again, while Speedy J and B12 produced what might be their finest efforts with the haunting Symmetry and Scriptures respectively.
Hannant - another prodigious electronic musician of his day who would vanish almost without trace within two years - also chipped in with Utuba, which mixed dark, low-toned synths with brittle kettle-drums to powerful effect. And there were contributions from Darrell Fitton - who would later work at Skam as Bola - Detroit star Kenny Larkin and renowned audio experimentalist Scanner.
But perhaps the most surprising moment on the album is the contribution from one-time Cabaret Voltaire member - and ceaseless musical innovator - Richard H. Kirk. While the rest of the contributors were in the early stages of their careers, this was a man who had already been involved with music for more than a decade and helped Warp get up and running with early releases as part of Sweet Exorcist. And the success of Reality Net, his beautifully delicate piece for the compilation, highlighted the label’s historical continuity with other electronic musicians working in the years before them.
All in all, the album revealed the incredible musical richness of the electronic music scene at the time. Some of the artists would go on to have celebrated careers, while others would slide into anonymity. Aphex Twin and Autechre have since become probably the most successful performers to have ever worked for Warp. Indeed, they pretty much created the label’s trademark sound. And Black Dog, although later splitting up as a trio, continue to make music as Plaid, and have themselves enjoyed considerable acclaim.
After 76:14 and a number of influential side projects, Global Communication broke up by the late 90s, but the duo of Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton are still high-profile performers and DJs today. Seefeel had slipped off the radar by the mid-90s, but critics have since showered garlands on debut album Quique. They even returned last year with an impressive, self-titled album on Warp.
Hannant, who released four LPs and a string of other pieces, was hugely productive for a couple of years in the early to mid-90s, then effectively vanished from the music industry. His story is as much of a mystery as any in modern music.
The Higher Intelligence Agency lasted a little longer, continuing to release music throughout the 1990s, and collaborating on more than one occasion with Biosphere, but now seem also to have disappeared without a trace.
Their fates may have differed, but there is case to be made for saying the compilation they worked on was the high watermark for Warp Records, and, in that era, perhaps for electronic music itself.
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