The Night I Lost My Head

Now, this took me back. Back, in fact, to Jabez Clegg, 2005, where I saw Maximo Park play for the first time. They were about to release their first album, and there was a palpable sense that they were on the cusp of something rather big.

This was despite the venue - which has to be the worst place to watch gigs in Manchester. The sound is terrible, it gets no passing trade and it smells. Fast forward to 2007, and all three of these things came together in a perfect storm. Yeasayer played in the bar room, they had to battle against a metal band practising next door, and there were literally six people there. Including me. They actually had the conversation (we could hear everything) about whether it was worth playing at all. So it was quite satisfying, in a perverse way, to see sold out signs when they returned to Manchester last week to play their rather good new album - which meant I couldn't get in.

But play they did, and it reminded me that for a lot of bands, touring to Manchester is still a big deal. They're often nervous, they sometimes naively mention Manchester United, they always mention The Smiths. Does this happen when bands tour to Norwich? Don't judge me for this, but the only time I can remember any kind of reference to the fine city is when, ahem, Ned's Atomic Dustbin moaned about Norwich beating Aston Villa 3-2 in 1992, hours before the gig.

While I digress, that was one of Norwich's best away performances of the 1990s. Daryl Sutch got the winner, it was great, and I wish it was on YouTube.

Anyway, back to some sort of point. She won't be nervous because she's from Manchester, but I'm looking forward to seeing Lonelady tomorrow. Like Maximo Park, her debut is on Warp. Unlike Maximo Park, there's not much buzz around her. Yet. But Nerve Up is really arresting - there are satisfying shades of early REM in its jangle, and there's a minimalism in the clattering drum machine which makes Lonelady really stand out.

Let's hope there are more than six people there.

Warp Factor 20

This week I've been writing about the financial problems of Nicolas Cage and been wholly unsettled by Paranormal Activity. So it was something of a relief to immerse myself in the world of Warp Records this morning, in preparation for speaking to George Evelyn, he of Nightmares On Wax fame, about the worldwide Warp20 celebrations.

Warp is no longer a Sheffield label of course, but I can clearly remember going into their record shop in Sheffield in my early 20s and being utterly terrified by a) the records they were playing and b) the cool people looking at the floppy fringed indie kid (ie, me - I really hope I wasn't wearing my Kingmaker T-Shirt) nervously flicking through the vinyl.

Anyway, seeing as everyone is doing end of year/decade lists, here are my Top 5 Warp tunes from the past 20 years, in no particular order. Most of them are on the Warp20 boxset, which, ahem, would be a rather good Christmas present for a once inquisitive indie kid who's now very much in his thirties...

1. Nightmares On Wax: Nights Interlude/Les Nuits

My memory of the mid 1990s is, er, hazy. But I'm pretty sure I came home from Sheffield that time with Smokers Delight tucked under my arm. This was the fantastically chilled out first track from that record, destined to soundtrack a million holiday programmes featuring desert islands. It was also on his follow up album as Les Nuits, too. I never quite understood that, but Evelyn told me this afternoon that Les Nuits is with a full live orchestra. Record DNA fans will be interested to learn Nights Interlude is based around a sample of a Quincy Jones track, which is in itself a cover of Summer In The City by The Loving Spoonfuls.

2. LFO: LFO

Again, this takes me back to my days as a student in Yorkshire. Not least because the possibly more famous remix (no video, sadly) is called the Leeds Warehouse mix, and I used to frequent that very club. Fantastically Kraftwerkian synths give way to a properly mean, deep bass breakdown. Perhaps all dubstep comes from here.

3. Aphex Twin: Windowlicker (video not safe for work!)

No Warp list would be complete without an Aphex Twin track. I've always filed him under 'easy to admire, difficult to love' and he is often wilfully unlistenable. But Windowlicker is intriguing beyond the headline-grabbing and unsettling Chris Cunningham video (I didn't realise until today it had a four-minute spoken word intro - without it you can see why its take-off of hip hop bling was misconstrued as being misogynistic). Back then it sounded like nothing else on earth, now it sounds like it could the backing to a pop song Justin Timberlake might sing over. So much of The Neptunes' sound surely came from this song.

4. Maximo Park: Apply Some Pressure

Walking into the Warp shop, my 20-year old indie kid self would have loved this. So there's something very satisfying about this bouncy pop song ending up being massively out of place on the Warp label. I know, I could have included Boards Of Canada or Squarepusher, or Autechre. But for a while at least, Maximo Park were a great indie-rock band. They're still a great live band. And this is them at their best.

5. Battles: Atlas

And finally, a song that seems to sum up where Warp are at now. What sounds a little like the Windowlicker vocals laid upon a thumping post-rock freak out, it somehow contains a little bit of everything Warp throughout its 20 years: the electronics, the strange sounds, the tribal percussion and most importantly, the sense that this is something completely new. I can't wait to see them live in Manchester in a few weeks.