RFI: warp's brief electro phase

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WAP057 - drexciya - the journey home
WAP065 - elecktroids - kilohertz
WAP066 - ultradyne - e coli

what's with these singles? they have a very distinctive graphic look.

was warp trying to brand an electro series? were there plans for a sublabel or something that fell through?

or was this branding based on the idea of drexciya / elecktroids / ultradyne being the same people? (which we now know not to be true but i'd heard floated at the time)

oh yeah, and this is really good stuff if anybody's wondering. go buy it now at bleep.com

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:14 (twenty-one years ago)

also a much more general question: what was warp's media profile in 1995? like were they taking out big ads in magazines yet, and if they tried a branding exercise would anybody notice? or were people not quite to the level of dissecting record sleeves that they're at today?

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:22 (twenty-one years ago)

hey vahid, interesting question about the sublabel and the graphic design. they are definitely all tdr.

i thought elektroids and drexciya were the same people. i love "midnight drive" by the elektroids.

also, derrick may released on warp as did the other people place who are definitely of drexciyan origin.

― tricky disco (disco stu), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:28 (twenty-one years ago)

designer republic: if it wasn't for them, warp would have no media profile.

the drexciya ep is excellent; haven't heard the other two

― Nik (Nik), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:29 (twenty-one years ago)

i think the branding thing has always been a part of warp's strategy. i don't remember any of their ads from 95, but i do remember being inundated with artificial intelligence graphics when that series came out.

― tricky disco (disco stu), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Indeed in 1995 literally every review mentioned it when the sleeve was done by the Designers Republic.

― Siegbran (eofor), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:31 (twenty-one years ago)

please don't make me look at the TDR site = every time i do i come one step closer to spending $55- on a t-shirt!!

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Wait a minute, Drexciya was part of Elecktroids, wasn't he?

― Siegbran (eofor), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:34 (twenty-one years ago)

tricky - i think it's one of those "all elecktroids are drexciya, but not all drexciya are not elecktroids" subset sort of things.

kind of like dopplereffekt, japanese telecom, other people place, shifted phases, maybe?

ultradyne definitely isn't any of the above.

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:35 (twenty-one years ago)

t-shirts are the new compact disc

― tricky disco (disco stu), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:35 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost: further confusing matters is the eternally dwindling membership of drexciya - i think they started as four, dwindled to two, and eventually it was just james stinson.

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:36 (twenty-one years ago)

whoops i said dwindling twice.

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:36 (twenty-one years ago)

at the risk of derailing this thread, what did everyone think of the last dopplereffekt album? i liked it a lot, but there were no beats!

― tricky disco (disco stu), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:37 (twenty-one years ago)

maybe it had something to do with the passing away of stinson?

― tricky disco (disco stu), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

OMG it was beautiful.

the first half = my favorite electronic-oriented ambient music (since uwe schmidt gave up on atom heart, anyway).

the second half = hands-down best john carpenter homages ever.

i took it as a concept album, dopplereffekt working hard on particle physics - trying to focus gravitons to create a wormhole, go back in time and prevent stinson's death? trying to contact alternate dimension stinsons with z-bosons and myon-neutrinos? or studying the ghostly, mysterious virtual higgs-mechanism particles to gain insight into stinson's higher dimensional whereabouts?

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:46 (twenty-one years ago)

the music is suitably very sad, anyway.

and the photos on the inside, where the dopplereffekt guy's "clean suit" makes him look like a grieving nun are classic creepy/sad/funny drexciya material.

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:48 (twenty-one years ago)

classic creepy/sad/funny indeed! not so far away from the world of "porno star" either. i'm going to have to give that cd a listen tonight for those john carpenter homages. i didn't listen to it much after i first bought it because the precision/sterility actually put me off. a few times through though and i warmed to it, it's very kubrick in a way. methodical.

― tricky disco (disco stu), Monday, 12 April 2004 21:36 (twenty-one years ago)

please don't make me look at the TDR site = every time i do i come one step closer to spending $55- on a t-shirt!!

i *did* buy a t-shirt. well made, but no t-shirt should ever have cost that much.

― the surface noise (electricsound), Monday, 12 April 2004 21:46 (twenty-one years ago)

do the sizes run big or small?

also which one did you get?? i want the Pho-KU soundsystem and the No! tshirts badly.

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 12 April 2004 21:53 (twenty-one years ago)

i got one that looks like a starry night sky. sizes run probably a little small

― the surface noise (electricsound), Monday, 12 April 2004 22:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Alex Lugo and Dennis Richardson are Ultradyne. Gerald Donald and James Stinson were Drexciya. They are unrelated projects.

― The Rebukes of Hazard (mjt), Monday, 12 April 2004 23:43 (twenty-one years ago)

two years pass...

There is a rumor that Elecktroids = Ultradyne + Drexciya

the elektroworld sleeve says "Based in flint, michigan, usa, the FOUR young sons of an electrician, known simply as the elecktroids, have welded together their debut album."

If not Ultradyne, i'm sure it is some other detroit producer. some of them, they're so secretive so don't expect this mystery to be cleared up soon.

― e.s.p.e.r, Wednesday, 19 April 2006 09:49 (nineteen years ago)

ten years pass...

Ultradyne's Antartica has been reissued on vinyl. Never heard it before (was tipped by recordstore owner) - what fantastic dark electro techno trip! (feels like opener "Ice" needs to be played at 45 and then slow down to 33 for the rest of the album)

― willem, Friday, 17 February 2017 09:33 (eight years ago)

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