Warp 10: Influences, Classics, Remixes

Three compilation albums were released to celebrate Warp's tenth anniversary. The album covers were designed by Michael Place who worked at the Designers Republic for almost nine years.[1] Place stated he designed the covers with the idea of playing "up the famous 'Warp purple' colour, and so we came up with the idea of the colour creeping into our everyday lives."[1] Place stated they originally had the idea actually painting objects like cars and buildings purple but found it unpractical. The photos are of locations in Sheffield and Leeds.[1]

The second album Warp 10+2: The Classics pulls music from the first four years of the label's history containing some of their more rare and earliest tracks. The compilation compiles music that would later be referred to as bleep techno.[2] The third album consists of indie rock and electronic musicians doing remakes of the label's back catalog. The artists who remixed the album included newer artists in 1999 such as Isan and Four Tet.[3]

Reviewing the compilation for The Independent, Laurence Phelan found Influences as "slices of musical history that every household should have if it doesn't already - Phuture's "Acid Tracks", A Guy Called Gerald's "Voodoo Ray" and the one Warp tried to sign as their first release, Unique 3's "The Theme"."[5] Pat Blashill of Rolling Stone found the compilation "wild and often gorgeous" declaring the highlight to be the "slyly beautiful" "Voodoo Ray."[6] Douglas Wolk of the Village Voice commented on Classics, stating that "Ten years later, a lot of it sounds like pretty average bleepity-bloopity acid house, A Guy Called Gerald's deathless "Voodoo Ray" aside."[7] John Bush of AllMusic alternatively proclaimed that "as compilations of obscure but important techno go, this could be the best ever produced" finding that it balanced the best tracks from early Chicago, Detroit and British scenes.[4] Bush continued that though most tracks have been anthologized several times while more obscure tracks like "Computer Madness" by Steve Poindexter.[4] Bush concluded that the electronic music had progressed in years with groups like Autechre and Aphex Twin, "but the energy and power of mid- to late-'80s techno is undiminished with time."[4]

Wolk stated similar comments about Classics that outside of LFO and Sweet Exorcist, "the rest of it is pretty flat."[7] Phelan called Classics as "an essential compilation that preserves the roots of the current scene" and that it "engenders a peculiar sensation of nostalgia towards that dated set of simple beeps and bleeps that sounded so revolutionary at the time."[5] Bush found the album compilation "may not work well for those unfamiliar with the label's complete history, it's a fitting tribute to the beginning of electronic dance's move from the club floor to the living room."[2]

In a 2013 article for Fact Magazine, Simon Reynolds noted that Warp 10+2: Classics 89–92 remains one of the only compilations that covers the "bleep techno" of the early 1990s: "[D]espite its time-defying excellence, bleep is poorly served in terms of compilations: basically, there's Warp's Classics double CD, plus out-of-print comps from the original era."[8]

Phelan found the third album in the series, Remixes as "the most interesting of these three albums" proclaiming that it "got the same blend of pure brilliance, sometimes successful avant-garde experimentalism and occasional unlistenable-to rubbish that characterises the label's output."[5] Alternatively, Blashill found Remixes to be "proves that tinnitus-inducing artists like Labradford can turn challenging music into truly difficult listening."[6] Bush of AllMusic found that the compilation "might be too sprawling for fans of just one or two of the acts included, Warp10+3: The Remixes is an effective statement of the electronic/dance world circa the end of the millennium."[3]