Steve Beckett

Benji B

Time to welcome our next guest, Mr. Steve Beckett [applause].

Steve Beckett

Thank you.

Benji B

And where have you come from?

Steve Beckett

I’ve just come in from London a few days ago.

Benji B

How was your flight?

Steve Beckett

It was fantastic. You’ve looked after me well, I’m in a nice suite looking over the water.

Benji B

For those who might not be aware what you do for a living, and have been doing for a while, can you please fill us in?

Steve Beckett

My name is Steve Beckett. I’m the MD of Warp Records and Warp Films. I started the label from my bedroom 17 years ago, and luckily I’m still here today. I don’t know how we’ve managed to survive, but we have done, and I’m really proud of the musical history we’ve got so far and I hope we’re going to continue to do that.

Benji B

So you’ve been running an independent record label for 17 years. I think that, in itself, deserves a round of applause. (Applause) In this day and age that’s truly incredible. What’s the secret?

Steve Beckett

The secret is signing incredible artists who’ve got a vision about where they’re going and have mastered the instruments for whatever form they’re working in, so the instruments and technology don’t get in the way of their personality – so the personality of Aphex Twin or Boards Of Canada start uniquely coming through the music they’re creating, so people can hear that direct emotional contact with the artist, rather than just hearing what the equipment is. There’s a real danger with modern electronic music that sometimes the equipment can get in the way. I think that’s a key part of why we’ve been successful.

The other side of it is the so-called boring stuff that a lot of labels don’t take seriously, like the accounting and paying people, paying people that you’re booking studios from or the crews you’re using for the tours. All that’s taken care of so the artist will be supported and knows he’ll get paid and make a living from what he loves doing. We’ve got a great reputation and I’m sure Mark [Pritchard] will confirm this, but we’re one of the few labels that actually pay people right on the dot when we say we will and really clearly account to them, so we’re still working with artists we’ve been working with for 17 years, like Nightmares On Wax or LFO, Autechre and Aphex Twin… we’ve been working with those guys for ten years. That’s a key part of why we’re successful.

I always look to the future and try not get to stuck in the way the music business is going. The music business at the moment has such a negative, paranoid fear about what’s coming in the future, but I haven’t got any fear at all. We’re looking into the future really positively about the way music is going to be enjoyed and used by people, and we’re making moves to make sure our artists are taking advantage of that, too, rather than putting our heads in the sand and hoping nobody downloads music and saying it shouldn’t be like that. It is like that, and we’ve got to adapt to the way ahead.

Benji B

You started one of the very first electronic download sites, can you tell us about that?

Steve Beckett

Not just that, we started one of the first label sites, selling CDs and physical vinyl through the internet. That was probably about 12 years ago. We weren’t even using emails at that time, but somebody told me there was this thing called the internet and you could go on it and surf. It took us about ten hours to get on it and surfing was the most miserable experience. I’d imagined these sort of virtual-reality suits, where I could go and have virtual sex with people, but it was like watching a newsgroup talking about a Black Dog 12” for fucking two hours. We were there really early, but as soon as I realized everyone would be connected I saw that would be the future of music. So, straight away we built a website, telling people about the catalogue. Then we started to physically sell CDs and vinyl, and then five or six years later made the move to sell downloads.

Benji B

And what’s that website called?

Steve Beckett

The website is warprecords.com and the download site is bleep.com and we’re selling other labels’ catalogues as well.

Benji B

And how have you seen that progress over the last few years?

Steve Beckett

It’s like anything, it starts off really slowly. If you’re ahead of the game, you’re waiting for people to catch up. Now, it’s really taking off and between Warp Mart and Bleep it’s probably about 25% of our turnover. If we hadn’t done that, we’d probably be in trouble now, like a lot of other labels are. But we’ve just had our two biggest years, which is definitely due to those moves we made ten years ago.

Benji B

You’ve spoken about the artists on the label. What was your vision and your ethic when you started it?

Steve Beckett

When we first started we were running a small shop in Sheffield, a tiny thing about the size of the corner of that room.

Benji B

What year was that?

Steve Beckett

The shop was about 1986, and at that time we were doing rock music and a little bit of dance music, but mainly hip-hop. Then about 1987, ‘88 all the Transmat stuff started coming over and the Nu Groove and Big Shot and all these exciting labels from the States and it really pricked up our ears. To us it was a musical revolution, and we kept hearing about this strange drug called ecstasy that we were all trying to get our hands on. Then the whole scene took off with the imports coming into the shop and with massive warehouse parties of 3,000 people; completely illegal, no lights whatsoever, huge sound systems, 25 foot high. All you’d hear was bass and everyone completely off their heads with all the gangsters selling tickets to get in. It was an amazing time. [Laughter and applause] I was completely off my nut, it was like “Jailhouse Rock,” you know when you see those metal walkways and people on them dancing their heads off and the whole thing is starting to collapse? It was so dangerous but you just think this is great, and then the police turn up with their dogs and clear everybody out, with them all off their heads on ecstasy trying to hug the dogs. What were we talking about?

Benji B

I think you’re talking about an era, and that sounds like it sums up an era for you.

Steve Beckett

There wasn’t much vision at that time. The vision for the label, we’re right in the middle of this revolution and all these DJs would come into the shop, buying their tunes for the weekend, but at the same time they’re all trying to make their own tracks. You’d get people like Nightmares On Wax and DJ Martin from LFO coming in with their own tunes, and we’d try them out in the club at the weekend and the audience would go insane. So, it just seemed like the right time to press up 500 records, hire a car, drive around the country and try to sell them.

Benji B

What was that first record?

Steve Beckett

Forgemasters “Track With No Name.”

Benji B

And how long did that creative period last for you?

Steve Beckett

About 20 years [laughs]. No, probably about ten years. Around ‘88, ‘89 was the whole northern house scene, bands like 808 State and Unique 3, and we had Forgemasters and LFO and Nightmares On Wax, and those guys who were just dominating the scene at the time.

Benji B

Sheffield is in the north of England, just to place it for you geographically. What were you listening to before dance and rave culture hit the UK?

Steve Beckett

We were listening to a lot of indie rock, avant-garde stuff, or Danzig, Black Flag, people like that. Then we were just starting to pick up on some of the hip-hop stuff as well, Eric B & Rakim, EPMD and those guys. That was just starting to open our heads up to different sounds.

Benji B

Do you want to play us something from the early days of the label?

Steve Beckett

I’ll play a rarely heard B-side from Nightmares On Wax that used to absolutely destroy people.

(music: Nightmares On Wax – “I’m For Real” / applause)

Benji B

Who was that?

Steve Beckett

That was Nightmares On Wax.

Benji B

… who were one of the first signings to the label?

Steve Beckett

They were the second signing, yeah.

Benji B

Do you want to tell us some of the artists you signed in that early period?

Steve Beckett

We signed Sweet Exorcist, which was Rob Gordon and Richard Kirk who used to be in Cabaret Voltaire. We signed Nightmares On Wax and LFO from Leeds. We did a lot of different offshoots with those guys, but they were the main artists at that point.

Benji B

And a lot of them stayed with you for many years.

Steve Beckett

Those are all still with us. George from Nightmares is living in his villa in Ibiza and Mark Bell is still making music, he just produced the last Björk album. He’s still doing well, but he doesn’t do as much music for us as I’d like him to.

Benji B

One of the biggest recordings, one that made me aware of the label, was the self-titled “LFO” track. Did that have a huge impact when it came out?

Steve Beckett

That was the one that turned us into a “real label”. We just weren’t really prepared for what would happen with that record. It was at the time when a single could come out and keep sneaking up and up; at first it was just into the top 40, next week it was in the top 20, then it was 12. We sold 130,000 12”s, which was just unbelievable, you’d get the same position now from selling 3,000. Shall I give you a blast of that?

(music: LFO – “LFO” / applause)

Steve Beckett

A lot of people get confused with the sound of that time, they think it’s all about the bleeps. But it was nothing to do with the bleeps for the people making it, it was all about the bass. There’d be ten or 15 versions of that song for testing it out in the clubs. We had this cut-off section where everybody had drinks, and then the main dancefloor, which had a window, and if you were on the other side and could hear the window shaking, you knew you had the right frequencies for the bass. And the same thing with the mastering, too, because everything was around vinyl at that time, we had this great guy who’d give us as deep a cut as possible. You used to have the limiters on the mastering lathe to protect the cutting heads to stop the temperature going too high, or you’d lose these £20,000 cutting heads. But he used to take the limiters off for us and we’d stand there watching the temperature get as high as he thought he could get away with before taking it off, because he was afraid of tripping it out. He’d do loads of different cuts to get the maximum bass we could possibly get. I don’t think people really comprehend the amount of time and effort that went into making these basslines so people’s balls would shake [laughs]. That was the attitude. But it was a great time, that record blew us up into a different level.

Benji B

And how did things change at that point?

Steve Beckett

We all started wearing suits and ties, getting the accountants in and making it real. No, it was more like the lights going on and realizing we could have a long-term vision for the label. And I think the key was – and we did this with LFO – having had the background of the record shop, we’d really seen the difference between the rock labels and dance labels. Dance labels would come along and be very trendy for a year, and then no one would be interested. But with the rock labels we looked up to from the indie side, like Mute and Factory, they had a whole look and really developed the artists, recording albums, sending them out on tour. We took that model and applied it to dance music, so LFO were the first people we worked with where we were, “Come on, guys. You’ve got to make an album.”

They were like, “Why do we need to make an album? We just do 12”s for people to dance to.”

But it was really getting that into their heads, then them going into the studio and making albums they realized could work electronically, like Kraftwerk or Pink Floyd or Tangerine Dream, making electronic albums people could appreciate from start to finish, rather than just being one-off dance records.

Benji B

Factory is from the north of England, too, and some of the artists you mentioned are from Leeds and Sheffield. It’s all from the north. How important was it for you to represent that scene? Was there a north/south divide on the party scene?

Steve Beckett

There was a terrible divide, we were just convinced the south hadn’t got a clue what was going on. There was a time when it had gone from house music into rare groove, but we weren’t interested in rare groove, we were into acid house. We’d have all these guys come up from London going, “House music’s over, we’re all into rare groove down there.” “This isn’t house, this is acid house, just listen to it.” Then gradually, the whole thing took off, just these huge parties, that’s what we were into; a definite north/south divide.

Benji B

How many people at your average party?

Steve Beckett

Anywhere from 500 to 2,000. It was all the football hooligans, the ecstasy had started getting into the football hooligans, and instead of going out and getting hammered on beer and fighting, they were suddenly selling all the Es, hugging each other and having a good time. There was a real edgy feel to it. I remember going to this blues club, you walk into it, there’s a shotgun, someone sticks the shotgun in your face, then just smiles, pulls the gun down and blows smoke in your face. There was shit like that going on all the time [laughs].

Benji B

What were the records and artists from the US that were influencing DJs at the time?

Steve Beckett

It was all about labels back then, so first there was Big Shot from Canada that was a massive label, then Nu Groove and later on Transmat. Trax, of course, when “Acid Trax” came in, that changed everything.

Benji B

Did you work with those artists?

Steve Beckett

Not really. Network from Birmingham tended to do that, they were licensing a lot of stuff from the States, whereas we were more interested in finding the people who were hearing that sound, but putting their own unique spin on it.

Benji B

When you realized the sales were going through the roof, how did you make the decisions of who to sign and how to develop the artists? It seems unlike many independent labels there was a great deal of investment going in.

Steve Beckett

Even though it was new music, we were coming at it from a rock angle. So we encouraged them to go out on tour and put a great live show together, do videos and press interviews and photos: very much marketing it in a rock way, where you send the band out for six months to a year and have singles to support it. That’s the way we worked it, then other artists saw that they were making a career from it and got it into their heads. It seems obvious now, but at that time people weren’t interested in doing it, they were just doing 12”s.

Benji B

At that period in the ‘90s there started being dance music subsidiaries of major labels and some indies were bought up. Did you get the calls?

Steve Beckett

I remember getting a call from Richard Branson’s right-hand man at Virgin, and getting us up into the top rooms. I remember he had pictures of all his sports cars on the wall, like Aston Martin. I thought, “If these are the things he’s proud of collecting… where are all the artists?” It just didn’t feel like it was right for us, we were very independent-minded.

Benji B

Has it been hard over 17 years resisting those phone calls over time?

Steve Beckett

When you first start off you get a lot of calls, but when you’ve been going as long as us, there’s no one who’s just going to pick up the phone and say, “Hey, do you want to sell your label?” It just doesn’t happen. It’s more that we get a call from a major saying, “Why the fuck are you trying to sign this artist? Keep away from them.”

Benji B

As we get into the ‘90s, can you tell us about some of the artists who came along?

Steve Beckett

Obviously, we came through at the end of this musical revolution, and it felt like it was repeating itself. What was interesting for me was when you were coming back from the clubs at four or five in the morning and people were playing tracks they’d made themselves that weren’t necessarily intended for the dancefloor. I started realizing these tracks were appearing on B sides, and you’d get these artists like B12 and Black Dog and Polygon Window and Autechre and Aphex Twin, people sending tapes in, who were making music that had a reference to dance music but wasn’t aimed at the dancefloor, they were more for listening. There was a scene there, and that’s when I started putting together this compilation called Artificial Intelligence. That was the second phase of the label, where we signed Aphex Twin, Autechre, Black Dog and B12, and we went onto a different level, because these artists became really respected in their own right making real cutting-edge music that was pushing the boundaries of electronic music. Shall I play a B12 track?

(music: B12 – “Telefone 529”)

Benji B

Do you want to talk a bit about Plaid and Black Dog, because over the years they’ve consistently come up with more and more inspiring stuff, and they’ve also done a lot of work with Björk?

Steve Beckett

Yeah, I can’t remember how Björk got involved with them. I think she just heard some of their music and became obsessed with them and took them on tour with her, and they produced some of her songs as well. But then they split… so there was Ken Downie, who was the third member of Black Dog, and they sort of fell out, and Ed [Handley] and Andy went onto become Plaid and recorded a number of albums with us.

Benji B

Who was the other artist you mentioned from the Artificial Intelligence comp?

Steve Beckett

Aphex Twin [laughs]? Obviously, his career just blew up. He’d done Ambient Works 2 and a Polygon Window album with us. He’d done Ambient Works 1, sorry, and a Polygon Window album and then did Ambient Works 2, which was the album that took him onto a different level. It was so different from anything he’d done before. It was completely ambient, no track titles whatsoever, and he made the whole thing while forcing himself to lucid dream. He was putting himself in these tough situations where he couldn’t sleep, so you’d be sitting with him and he’s falling asleep while he’s sitting with you. Then he’d get up in the middle of the night and forcing himself into these dream states. Then in that state he’d write these songs and force himself to remember them when he was awake. From Ambient Works 2 onwards, his career went to a different level.

Then after that, there was the big Chris Cunningham video, so we did a single called “Come To Daddy,” which took him to another level, and then he did “Windowlicker” – the video and the music became one thing, much to his annoyance. People would come up to him and say: “I love your video.” “It’s not my fucking video, I didn’t make it.” Aphex Twin became one of the biggest artists we’d worked with at that time and one of the defining artists for the label. What I love about Aphex, and I’m sure a lot of other people do, is it’s not necessarily the A sides or the tracks that he’s known for, but to me it’s all the little B sides and the tracks that are tucked away, where he’s really pushing the boundaries of his own abilities. This track I’m going to play you, “Bucephalus Bouncing Ball” … I don’t know if we’re out of sync in terms of timing, but to me it just sums up his creativity and the way he’s pushing the boundaries of the equipment he’s working with. Most people who know his work don’t necessarily know these B-sides, but I just think this is an incredible record.

(music: Aphex Twin – “Bucephalus Bouncing Ball” / applause)

Steve Beckett

It would be rude to fade that one, wouldn’t it?

Benji B

Actually, I was just talking to Marco [Passarani] about when Aphex plays in Italy, and also in the UK the other day. I don’t think there’s anyone else working in electronic music who has so much hysteria surrounding them. Can you talk about the cult of Aphex and when did that start to emerge and how did it affect you as a label?

Steve Beckett

It began when he was doing interviews. He was getting so bored with interviews, because he was doing so many, that he’d entertain himself by throwing little myths in there about whatever, owning a nuclear bunker or living in the middle of a roundabout in the middle of the Elephant and Castle.

Gradually, these things started gaining more and more momentum, so he’d start adding to it. But then you’d get the things that were real, like he really did buy a tank and have it down at his place in Wales. So, you’d just get all these weird myths and all these obsessive people turning up. Like, he’d be doing the wires for his plugs and if the equipment wasn’t working he’d leave them on the side of the stage, and these people would be picking them up and taking these pieces bit of wire back. Just weird shit like that, people turning up to his house.

The best one was, he was living in this bank in the Elephant and Castle, in this disused bank, and there’d be these old security windows. And you’d get tourists, coming up, tracking him down to where he lived, they’d put their faces right up to the window and wouldn’t be able to see anything, but he could see them. He’d stick his face right up to the window and suddenly this ghostly Aphex figure would come out of the darkness and disappear again. He used to enjoy things like that.

Benji B

You mentioned Chris Cunningham who did the Aphex videos. Tell us about Warp Films and when you started working with Chris. And you did some work with Chris Morris, too, is that right?

Steve Beckett

Yeah, we were making videos for a lot of the artists, and we realized that some of the people we were making them with, like Chris Cunningham, had similar personalities to the artists that we were dealing with. People thought they were weird or so-called difficult to work with, but they weren’t, they were just pushing the boundaries of what they were doing and just knowing exactly what they wanted, and they expected other people to step up to the plate for whatever they wanted to deliver. They couldn’t see any point in stepping back from an edge that they could see, they wanted to get to that edge they imagined they could hit. We realized we could get the relationships with these sorts of directors and make films as well as the music we were doing. It just seemed like a similar situation to when we started the label ten years before. The technology was changing so that people could make much lower-budget digital films, and we could actually get involved in those technologies and create our own, at first short films and now feature films.

Benji B

And what are the feature films you’ve been working on more recently?

Steve Beckett

We’ve just finished two features films with Shane Meadows, which are Dead Man’s Shoes and This Is England, and we’ve got another five going, with different new directors, basically.

Benji B

And what’s your role in that?

Steve Beckett

Similar to what it is in the label, really. I’ve got ten people working in the film company. It’s seeing what the talent is that we want to work with, looking at scripts and directors. None of the day-to-day.

Benji B

Following Artificial Intelligence and the albums from Autechre and Black Dog and Aphex Twin and loads of 12”s in the ‘90s, there was what some people might call a change of direction, others might see as expanding the horizons. You started doing more live music, more organic live recorded music; what some people might call indie or rock. When did you make the decision to go in that direction?

Steve Beckett

I think it was after Artificial Intelligence 2, when I was talking to my partner Rob and we realized we couldn’t just keep doing Now That’s What I Call Artificial Intelligence 3, 4 and 5, just doing the same thing. I’d always wanted to push boundaries and keep working in different areas. I started from an indie rock shop back in ’86-’87, so it seemed like a natural progression for us to work with other artists who had different influences but still had roots in electronic music. I think Broadcast and Seefeel were some of the first acts we worked with who knew the whole history of musique concrète and [Bernard] Parmegiani and Stockhausen and John Cage and Steve Reich and all these great classical avant-garde composers, but they were using all those influences and bringing it into a rock environment. When I heard it, it seemed to totally fit the ethos of the label and they seemed to fit with the other acts we were working with.

Benji B

And where were Broadcast from?

Steve Beckett

Birmingham.

(music: Broadcast – “Echo’s Answer” / applause)

Benji B

How was that received when it came out?

Steve Beckett

It was like people in the know knew they were an absolutely incredible band, but with the journalists and the media, it sort of went over their heads. As a label, that can be really frustrating. Sometimes you’ve got great music and it lands at exactly the right time when you’ve got this wave of enthusiasm for a particular sound. Other times you’ve got great music and you release it when there’s this wave of enthusiasm in the media about some other genre or hip thing. Obviously, from the media perspective, they need new stuff because they don’t want to be writing the same old, same old about a new band, it’s just not that exciting for them. Broadcast are one of the acts who, when I’m signing a new band, they want to be on Warp because Broadcast are – it’s always either Broadcast or Aphex – so they’re one of those musicians’ bands. There’s a lot of depth and subtlety to the music. With the English media, [music has got to be in people’s] faces and they’ve got to get it in five seconds or they don’t really talk about it. But they’re one of my favorite bands on the label, and I’m so proud we’re working with them.

Benji B

And have they got a new record coming out?

Steve Beckett

They’re finishing one off now, they’re really slow workers so they really go through it when they’re releasing an album. It’s like a four-year birth period, they’re just in total agony going through it. Every time they say the next one will be easy, it’s not going to be like this, but it’s always like this. I think it’s some sort of karmic obligation of an artist, that you’ve got to go this self-searching place to deliver this piece of new creativity that wouldn’t have existed if you hadn’t gone through that experience. That’s part of the job of you guys to go through that.

Benji B

Tell us about some of the others on the label.

Steve Beckett

There’s the lost hero Jimi Tenor and Jamie Lidell. I don’t know if any of you guys have seen Jamie Lidell live, he’s just an incredible force. I’ll play you one of his tracks.

(music: Jamie Lidell – “A Little Bit More” / applause)

Benji B

We should talk about Jamie, because you seem to find these artists that are completely unique. There’s definitely only one Jamie Lidell, anyone who’s managed to see him live, he really takes the whole live electronic performance to another level.

Steve Beckett

When you start off, you don’t necessarily have a big attraction to these artists, but obviously now we have a track record with these sorts of maverick people. We’re maybe one of the first places people will come to for a deal. So, if you’ve got somebody like that and you see him live… I’d just fly anywhere in the world and hold onto his ankles to try and sign someone like that. It’s a no-brainer for me, if you meet someone as talented as that, you want to work with him.

Benji B

And let’s talk about Jimi Tenor.

Steve Beckett

Another unsung hero.

Benji B

What’s it like working with him?

Steve Beckett

Same again, really. People like that just totally push you. We recorded this album called Out Of Nowhere and Jimi said he wanted this 30-piece orchestra. We said there’s no way we can afford that. But Jimi said: “I’ve found the orchestra, they’re in Poland. We need to go over there and record the album.” He actually made it happen. He’s a real character. I saw him come on stage in Spain on a white horse with a red cape and transvestites on either side of the stage. He likes to put on a good show. This is one of the tracks that came out from that recording in Poland.

(music: Jimi Tenor – “Better Than Ever” / applause)

Steve Beckett

We could play records for five hours solid. Vincent Gallo is another incredible person to work with, and there are still other great electronic artists coming through. Around that time we signed Squarepusher, who was doing what we felt was our slant on drum & bass. A lot of drum & bass felt too straight for the Warp label, but then this freak called Squarepusher started coming out of the scene. He had the depth of musical knowledge, and had that link into musique concrète. Obviously, he was an incredible bassist, so he had that real musicality. He was someone I really wanted to work with, and obviously after that we worked with Boards Of Canada as well.

Benji B

Play Boards Of Canada…

Steve Beckett

I’ll play maybe one Boards Of Canada track and one Squarepusher. We could go for ever, but then we’ll open it up to questions, yeah? Where’s Squarepusher? This is just another 12” he did, but I love this tune.

(music: Squarepusher – “Venus No 17”)

Then we’ll maybe just do one Boards track, can’t not do a Boards track.

(music: Boards Of Canada – unknown / applause)

Benji B

So, that’s Boards Of Canada.

Steve Beckett

That is Boards Of Canada.

Benji B

Highly recommended. One question I suddenly thought of while I was listening to that: is there any artist that you really wanted to sign over the years but couldn’t, didn’t get to? Is there anyone that you wished you’d signed, in hindsight?

Steve Beckett

Reload. The first Reload album, that should’ve been on Warp, for sure. Absolute classic.

Benji B

Pritchard! Pritchard!

Steve Beckett

But he’d already, unfortunately signed to ... Actually, we tried to get you to sign us before you’d signed to, who are you on? Infinite?

Mark Pritchard

Yeah.

Steve Beckett

Yeah, so we tried to sign this guy but it was too late. One of the forerunners of Artificial Intelligence but it didn’t get half the praise that it should’ve got. Unique 3 as well, we tried to sign them. They’d done this classic track called “The Theme” which was really the first bleep track that pricked everybody else’s ears up. Then newer acts, things like ... I would’ve loved to sign Kraftwerk. Then there’s a few acts, things like… Godspeed You! Black Emperor, we tried to sign. I followed them around the world but couldn’t make it happen really. There’s always acts that you’d love to sign that you don’t. It’s one of those unique situations that a lot of the artists that we sign to really want to sign to us as long as we can get a deal that works and they can make a career out of. We can usually get the deal compared to a major because we’re… all of our artists are on a 50/50 royalty deal. Even though at first the royalties come for a bit slower than maybe they’d come… well they’d never come through on a major anyway [laughs]. They might come through slow at first but then after a few years you start getting this flow through of royalties from your back catalog. Like I said, we’re working with the artists that we’ve been working with for 17 years so they really can make a career out of doing quite strange music on a 50/50 deal.

[Applause]

Benji B

What’s the signing process when you want to sign an act? In terms of creative discussion with the team around you. We should probably talk about your partner in the business, Rob, who sadly passed in 2001.

Steve Beckett

Oh at that time, we were both doing the A&R. Usually getting recommendations from people around you. Especially… the best recommendations I’ve got are from artists on the label. So, somebody like Aphex would bring in Squarepusher. Prefuse 73 brought in Battles and literally just went, put the mobile phone to their number going, “Sign this band, sign this band now!” It’s very much like ... looking at people’s taste that you really respect and then obviously checking out the music yourself and seeing if you truly relate to it. That’s the first step. If you don’t even relate to it I don’t take it any further. Then after that I’d go and either meet the artist or talk to them on the phone and just see what their long-term vision is for their career. See if they’ve got anything… I can just usually see it in their eyes if they’re the sort of people I want to work with really.

Benji B

Would you like to talk about Rob Mitchell for a moment?

Steve Beckett

Rob was my partner for 12 years at the label and then in 2001 he got diagnosed with cancer. He got diagnosed two weeks after his wedding, and six months later he died of cancer. Still got really fond memories of him. We totally built the label up together working every day for 12 years. It was a huge change for me and all the artists and all the staff that were working with us. He was very much like a brother. A lot of the artists, we divided the roster between the two people, so suddenly all the artists were being taken care of by me. It was like a sort of doubling of the workload just in a week. It was a really tough period, but also I’d just say it’s the most important event that ever happened in my life because I was actually with him when he died. It just really put my life into perspective and made me realize what was important, which is just putting love and creativity out into the world and nothing else really matters. That sounds like a cliche but when you’re actually facing death it’s like those cliches just become real.

[Applause]

Benji B

Before we open the questions up to the floor, we should talk about Warp in 2007. I know that Mark [Pritchard] has an EP coming out soon.

Steve Beckett

He’s got an EP and an album hopefully.

[Laughs/applause] We’ve also signed an act who did the Red Bull Music Academy last year called Flying Lotus.

[Applause]

Benji B

Now, one of the tracks on the EP actually features a vocalist who was part of the Red Bull Music Academy in Melbourne and I believe that track was actually recorded at the Academy.

Steve Beckett

You’re not charging us anything for that, are you? And we’re talking to another guy here, Hudson Mohawke, who hopefully can get a deal penned this week.

[Applause]

So yeah, there’s some good stuff coming out of here, as far as we’re concerned.

Benji B

It’s cool that the area of hip-hop-tempo music via the electronic side, you’ve put out stuff from Anti-Pop Consortium, Prefuse 73 and now Flying Lotus…

Steve Beckett

And Harmonic 33.

Benji B

You seem to be supporting that side as well, which is really positive.

Steve Beckett

It’s not about supporting it, I just love that sort of music. When we started the shop all we were selling before the house really took off was hip-hop, so I feel like it’s really in my blood. The artists, too, someone like Autechre, even though people who hear them would imagine them as just being anal electronic kids, they’re B-boys. They were tagging when they were fucking 11 years old round Manchester. They totally know their hip-hop and that sort of funk of hip-hop is underlying a lot of their beats, that fusion of musique concrète and really experimental music. That’s what I love about bands like that, bringing it into the present day with Prefuse 73, Harmonic 33, Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke. It’s just got that funk in the music and that rawness, and I love being able to bring that into electronic music. A lot of the electronic music I don’t like – it’s just too timid, not really taking its own space.

Benji B

Is Lex a subsidiary of Warp?

Steve Beckett

We started Lex but I’ve sold it back to him now.

(music: Flying Lotus – “Massage Situation” / applause)

Benji B

Alright, any questions?

Steve Beckett

I’ve got to play one more thing, which is the latest signing, Battles. I don’t know if any of you guys have heard this, this fucking band is unbelievable… making really experimental music but with traditional guitars, drums and vocals…

Benji B

Battles, yeah? Where are they from?

Steve Beckett

Battles are from New York, incredible live band as well.

(music: Battles – “Leyendecker” / applause)

Benji B

Is that one out or coming out?

Steve Beckett

This is out.

Audience member

First of all, thank you. It’s been very interesting to go from acid house to Flying Lotus. I guess you’re trying to share your vision of music. My question is, you pointed out that the key of success can be, most of the time, surfing on a wave and kind of getting your stuff at the right moment, right? But I want to know, for you, what is the key of a long-term vision? Quality and no compromise or something like that?

Steve Beckett

You mean the long-term vision of an artist or of the label?

Steve Beckett

More like the label. Yes. To survive in the long-term vision, not just be the fashionable label for a year and then disappear. You pointed out that it happens a lot, and you’ve been there for quite a long time now.

Steve Beckett

I think it’s back to that original question that we said right at the start of their talk which is… the key to it is two things. Which is, one, making sure that the artist that I’m getting into a relationship with have got a complete mastery of whatever equipment or instrumentation they’re using so that it no longer gets in the way of who they truly are trying to uniquely express themselves. So, if I can sign an artist that’s got a real authenticity to him or her that’s also completely unique, which I just believe everybody’s got that unique thread if they can get the mastering whatever instrumentation they’re using out of the way, people will feel that unique connection to yourself. That’s the first thing.

Secondly, is all the other side, the business side at the other end which is just the simple thing that most labels seem to forget. Which is paying the people that are making the money. It’s almost like labels a lot of the time look at an artist as if they’re doing you a favor. Like throwing you a few crumbs while they pay their staff or whatever. It’s completely the other way around –we see ourselves we’re at service of the artist. Obviously, we have our arguments if we have a different vision about where we think they might go. At the end of the day I always want to sell as many records or make as much money for me and them as possible. Sometimes they don’t necessarily want to do that. I think those are the two key things for me.

audience member

Vision and organization. Thank you.

audience member

Hello. Thanks for informing us of that info. Also, when Squarepusher came to Melbourne for the first time it just blew me away. It was amazing. I just got a question regarding for artists like us that may have small labels interested in signing our tunes, like small independent labels. What should we be looking for as artists in terms of which label we choose, asking for advances, contracts, those types of things?

Steve Beckett

Obviously, it’s just case by case, so it just really depends on who you’re dealing with. You want to be asking yourselves… Are you talking about if you’re taking your music to another label?

audience member

I just had ... I write drum & bass and there are a few small set of labels that want to sign certain tunes and just deciding which label I should choose. Should I be asking for advances? Those types of things.

Steve Beckett

Well, obviously, the first thing I’d do is just contacting the labels that you feel have got other artists on the label that are… you have some sort of affinity with. Then I’d ask those artists on the labels if they’ve got a good relationship with that label. Then, in terms of contracts, just if it’s a small, low-key thing where you’re just doing one 12”, or something like that, then chances are you’re probably not going to get an advance. If they are offering an advance, take it. If you can get it higher, get it higher. It’s just that thing, if it’s in your pocket it’s safe. If it’s not in your pocket it’s safe for the other people. You just have to take a sense on how trustable the people are that you’re dealing with. Also, if they’ve got a track record of doing good work with other people. Make sure it’s totally non-exclusive and you’ve just given those tracks. It’s not necessarily a long-term thing unless it’s somebody who’s got a real strong reputation.

audience member

All right, thank you.

audience member

Hey, that was great man. I’m from New Zealand and my old band, we did it independently for seven years. An EP, released two albums that are kind of gold back home. In a territory the size of New Zealand, it’s four million people, it’s kind of feasible to do it independently. How hard was it in the UK and stuff to be an independent label when you’ve got the majors there in terms of distribution? I was out in the UK last year with a band that signed to Parlophone from home and got a bit of an insight to how the majors do it. It seems to be really cliquey with if you’ve got the booking agent, you can’t get into venues and play festivals, unless the right people put you onto it. Even in radio you can’t get the right radio plugger. How does that mean for you, as an independent label, to kind of break through those establishments, the boys’ club?

Steve Beckett

It’s still difficult, especially on the live circuit, because the live circuit is just getting more and more sewn up. You’ve got the big agents who, obviously, they’ll put the headline act on, so say it’s, I don’t know, Metallica or something… they control that billing then, and so they’re obviously, they’re not going to put your band on that’s some little indie agent’s. They’re going to put their next-biggest band and then their next-biggest band. You’ve just got to accept that’s the way it is in some situations, and it just depends on the size of the band.

With a band like Maxïmo Park, we’ve had to really… it’s been a whole new ball game for me that I just didn’t experience before, where I’m like taking out heads of radio stations and wining and dining them, just really long set-ups of albums, like six months before, so people can see you’ve got a real… because everybody wants to be associated with success, so if they think for a minute that you’re not going to be successful, they’re not just going to back you. You really have to, with a band like that that you think has got a bigger potential start lining up all these… what do you call it? Just letting them know that there’s a plot coming. Basically that it’s a long-term plot and you’re really investing in the artist as a label. Obviously, if somebody from Universal does that they just know that they’re definitely going to put that money in. When a little indie like us sort of crawls in through Radio 1 we gave to convince them by results for them to take the actions that we want them to take. They said to us, “Yeah we will play Maximo on the radio but you’ve got to give us a top 20 record first.”

We have to build that up through the live audience and literally just get email addresses from every single gig they’ve played. Built it up until we got about 10,000 on the list and then started selling seven-inches to those people and actually starting to get chart records so then we could go in a few months later and go, “Well, here you go, that’s our end of the bargain. You’re going to stick to it?”

There are all those games that got to be played and we can either choose to play them in that sort of game or just not play them and I think that depends on the type of artist. A pop artist like Maximo Park, we’ve got to play those games because we’ve got to be on the radio to sell that amount of records but a band like Battles… completely the other way, they just put out 12”s and then they’ve just gone around the world and toured. First they played to 50 people. Then second time around, they’re playing to 200 and now they’re playing to like 1,500-2,000 people and hopefully that’ll continue, so it’s just really finding where each individual act can pitch itself, and then just seeing if you can get the breaks that you need to get.

I think everybody thinks there’s this magic break that’ll get an artist away, but it’s not, it’s just tiny little steps over and over again, whether it’s the way you’re communicating what the artist is about in every single conversation with great enthusiasm, and just being able to look people in the eye and say you’re really behind this. Every little detail that you present in your art work, your photographs. Every mix, every conversation you have, every interview that you do and after a year or two years, this starts getting the momentum going, and I think that’s really what you’ve got to do as an artist. Take responsibility for getting that momentum going and taking the control into your own hands, rather than thinking it’s this big daddy with the checkbook that’s going to make your career. It’s not going to happen.

audience member

I was just thinking, we managed to do it in New Zealand because it’s only small but, like in the UK… are you working with distribution who have the same ethos or do you distribute yourself…

Steve Beckett

No, we work with independent distributors, yeah, but you know in the UK, independent distributors are distributing Arctic Monkeys, selling two million records, Franz Ferdinand, Chemical Brothers, all these guys, so the independent scene in the UK is like 25% of the market. If you’re all together as a unit, which we do through these organizations called AIM, we can go to these different bodies and those 25%, which is as big as Sony, or whatever, and have a bit of power.

Audience member

That’s incredible. Great, cheers.

audience member

Hi. In the beginning you talked about how business was, I don’t want to say booming, but definitely everything was fine with respect to say, how some of the majors are saying, “The business is down. We’re not getting this, we’re not getting that.” And you mention also setting up these proper deals with your artists with a lot of back end, with royalties split. In a situation where you hear a lot of, even independent labels who say, “Aw, man. You know what, I’m not going to do vinyl any more. I’m not going to do this, it’s pointless.” And obviously with more and more digital sales and that happening… but also with digital, you start to have a situation where I feel people are just kind of picking songs left and right and grabbing what they want, which is, again, fine. How do you see the future of the business say, for a recent signing, where the old model is like, “OK, we have royalties and we split them down the road.” But do you see possibly with the advent of digital and how that’s going, is there possibly going to be less back-end royalties coming down and are the new signings, say, Flying Lotus, going to have the opportunity to reap the benefits like Aphex Twin did and how is that looking for the whole business as a label and with the situation that you have with some of your newer signings?

Steve Beckett

Artists will still definitely get royalties, but I don’t think they’re going to get their royalties from selling a physical CD. CDs are just dropping through the floor and I see that curve continuing over the next five years. Downloads at the moment are going up, but they’re not going up at the same rate that CDs are going down, but eventually downloads are just going to come down, I think, and music to the “consumer”, in inverted commas, will just be perceived as free.

It’s partly the fault of the record industry and partly the fault of technology, that basically, music’s just being perceived by the consumer as less and less valuable. You just don’t know what the price should be. One minute they’re getting a newspaper with a free Prince CD on the cover, the next minute their friend’s giving them 10,000 tunes from their iTunes catalog, so the sort of perceived sense of value of it from the consumer is going down and down and down so. I think in five, certainly ten years, consumers aren’t even going to have a notion of paying for music in the same sense that you don’t have a notion of paying for a TV show when you turn on the TV set, but people still are making money from that and the people who are creating that content are still making money from that, and I think that’s going to be the new model.

It’s going to be a combination of artists earning money from sync income, which already a lot of our artists probably earn more from sync than they do from record royalties, so they might get crazy amounts, £300,000 for a Jaguar advert or something like this. They can earn more out of one advert sync than they could make out of five album releases. I think they’re going to be earning money in that way and I think also they’re going to be earning money in… there’s going to be more and more creative partnerships with brands. Music is seen as like they key thing that sells products and makes the association with that product cool.

These guys doing this [points to RBMA logo], they’re not doing it out of the pureness of their love for everybody. They want that association with cool up-and-coming artists because they feel it adds to their brand value. The key for us, as people working with artists, is how can we make sure that those things that, in the past, were just seen as promotional or being cool for the artist, that’s not going to be like that any more. It’s going to be like, “How is this brand value addition that this artist’s music that he’s worked his ass off for the last year, that’s putting the association on your brand, how is he going to get paid for that? How is it going to be defined?”

These are all the new conversations that are going on with people like MySpace and YouTube, and these guys who’ve got billions and billions of pounds, but nobody goes to YouTube or MySpace just to have a nice time. Most of it is from original content that people like yourselves have worked hard and put up there, and then other people want to hear and enjoy. I think that’s the future, to me, of artist careers and that’s where we’re moving ourselves in the future.

We’re just sort of seeing ourselves almost like an a la carte service for the artist, so if we organize a tour, we’ll get paid X percentage for that, if we organize sync activity, we’ll get a percentage for that. The artist could do it itself but do they really want to be spending ten hours a day going to see Saatchi & Saatchi or Jaguar or others? We make these sort of relationships with the artists and almost be an interface between people that are monetizing music out in the world, and it is a sort of new frontier, but I can totally see there’s a future for artists, but I’m absolutely certain it’s not going to be through selling individual tracks or albums. That whole model is over.

audience member

To close this conversation out, with the recent signings or even your back catalog, you are pitching these songs as quote-unquote “jingles” to some of these advertising firms in maybe like monthly meetings, I suppose?

Steve Beckett

Oh yeah, like anything, you just get a network of people around the world who are working with the ad agencies and obviously they’re making adverts all the time. Then, for whatever advert they’re making… there are independent people who you can track down, even if you haven’t got a deal, can actually… and they’re quite excited about this, about having music that’s not necessarily signed to a label as long as it fits the pitch that they’re making for the advert, so there’ll be pitches coming around all the time and it’s usually like, “Uplifting, fast, yet mellow with…” just a complete load of contradictions and you go “Yeah, Squarepusher,” and try and get your song on there and you just have to move really quickly and get all the clearances sorted out really quickly, and if it gets to the point where you’ve got your song at the edit stage, you know you’re really in there with the running.

It’s just making sure that you’re totally in the loop with all these ads that are being made and just making sure your music’s in there. I think that’s just the first stage of it. The next stage is going to be really exciting in the interest of creative partnerships with these huge brands who no longer just want to put their banner behind the stage or stick it on your CD. They actually want to create new projects and productions and things that have got more substance to them, and I think that really is where there’s going to be a lot of growth for artists.

audience member

Hi… I’m here. First of all, I want to commend you for maintaining your indie concept through all these years. Most people would probably just kind of sell out and just really go for the money.

Steve Beckett

Thank you.

audience member

Kudos to you. First, what was your main inspiration to start the label and what was it in your background, whether it’s business or musical, that made you so successful?

Steve Beckett

Well, my background was, well, both really. I was trained as a mining engineer (laughs).

audience member

A mining engineer… so no business background at all?

Steve Beckett

No, no business background, no.

audience member

Musical background?

Steve Beckett

Musically, it was the classic thing. I was in bands myself, in punk bands and trying to make a career that way and then started realizing I was actually better at doing the organizing side of things than making the actual music. Then that led into setting up the record shop and then that’s when the whole acid house scene was taking off, and it was just too much of a vibrant scene not to get involved with. There wasn’t any grand vision for the label at that time it was very much like, “Let’s see if we can sell these 500 records, and take them around the country and see if we can get rid of them.” And once we’d done that it just started leading to more and more things.

Audience member

Nice, and you had a partner right away or was it just yourself at that time?

Steve Beckett

No, I had a partner at that time as well, who was a partner in the shop as well.

audience member

OK, and he’s still there to this day?

Steve Beckett

No, I don’t know if you were here before, he died of cancer in 2001.

audience member

Oh, wow. Sorry.

Steve Beckett

No, it’s OK.

audience member

That’s it. Thank you.

audience member

Hi, I’m just curious about Maxïmo Park, because I know a few people were quite surprised when you signed them and obviously you’ve diversified the label over the past 17 years, so what made you decide to sign them?

Steve Beckett

It was exactly the same sort of thing that made me want to sign any of the other acts. I’d just heard some of the demos and there was just something in the music that I found really authentic and I love their lyrics and the energy that was in the music. But at the same time I realized – you know, I’m not stupid – I realized that it would be a real leap for the label and there’s always the argument, “Should you set up a sub-label and do it under a different pseudonym?” But I just don’t like the idea of that. I like the idea of really standing by the decisions that you’re making so I just thought, “Sod it, we’re going to put them out on Warp.” And at the same time, it was like a real step up for us as a company because we were just playing a completely different ball game that we just didn’t even know existed, where we’re competing against Universal and Phonogram and Sony and all these guys that we just didn’t realize the league of backpacking that’s going on, getting the decisions for the gatekeepers i.e. radio and TV, to support these acts. We just haven’t played in that league before. If you look at the chart in the UK, it’s literally just Universal, Universal ... it’s just crazy. There’d be one little indie in the middle of it, like Domino or Warp, or whatever. It was just us playing in a different league really. I quite enjoyed playing it, but I don’t really want to play there a lot of the time.

audience member

Cool. OK, thanks.

audience member

I just got another question. Just going on from what Henry was saying about downloads and that it in music, do you think the extreme access that individuals have these days to whatever music ... any music, do you think that’s increasing listener interest, like more of the public is getting interested in music?

Steve Beckett

That’s what I feel. There’s pros and cons like anything. It feels like people are listening to more music than they’ve ever listened to before. Listening to it in a different way. Very much like track by track, like you were saying. When I was young, people just used to get an album. They put a needle on a record and play from start to finish and that was it. Whereas now, it just feels like you’ve got track after track of different acts. That’s great because people are soaking up loads of different types of music. Obviously with MySpace, there’s two million bands on there, there’s incredible access to unsigned music which has got a real positive side. I think on the negative side, there might be a lack of subtlety to the music, at least getting through. It’s almost like you’ve got a little radio station going on shuffle in your pocket and the stuff that’s instant, gets attention, and the stuff that’s maybe got a bit more subtlety might not get as much attention. It might work the other way, it might cos you’re on headphones you get deeper into it. I don’t really know yet.

audience member

Are there more people going to shows, do you think because of this…

Steve Beckett

The live side is crazier than it’s ever been. It summed it all with Maxïmo Park, when we were pre-selling a download, we pre-sold something like 800 downloads in a week, which is pretty good for a single. At the same time they were selling the tickets for the tour. They sold 20,000 tickets at £20, in less than an hour. You can see where people’s money is going. In a way, they know they can get the music for free but the real unique experience that they know is going to have a limited supply in it, is that fix venue with a 1,000 capacity or whatever. They know that’s the thing they really want to purchase, so they can have a direct emotional experience with the artist.

audience member

What about DJ culture and the world compared to the live bands? Is that going down do you think or up, like in terms of people attending DJ shows?

Steve Beckett

To me, I don’t know if this is international, it feels like it’s lower than it used to be at the moment. There’s still the sort of superstar DJs that can actually sell tickets and are commanding those sort of fees. I would say generally, it feels like it’s not as quite as much demand as there used to be. Again, it’s down to you to take that into your own hands and make sure the people that are in that audience or that venue are having a fucking amazing experience. If you’re just coming along, given the experience that they’ve seen 500 times in the last few years, why would they get excited about it? It’s up to you to bring a new experience to them. Also, just show your general enthusiasm about what you’re doing to the audience.

Benji was saying before, he’s just sick of seeing people sitting there on stage looking like they’re checking their emails and not really having a connection with the audience. That’s the danger of working with computers, it’s very heady, it pulls you into the screen. The DJ used to be standing there with his heart open, just connecting to the whole fucking audience. That’s sort of what people need to see from people that are presenting something. They want to see a genuine connection to the people that they’ve come to see. Otherwise, they just go home and listen to iTunes on shuffle.

audience member

One more question. Has there been times in your career where you’ve thought, this is too much? I’ve had enough of this, throw the whole label in, I can’t do this any more? You know what I mean?

Steve Beckett

Usually, if Aphex Twin blows out a world tour five minutes before he’s supposed to set off, because he wants to go on a picnic with his girlfriend. Things like that can throw you. Obviously, when my partner died that was a huge blow, where I asked a lot of questions about where I was going, why I was doing what I was doing and definitely went through a rocky period where I thought, “What’s the point?” I’ve come out the other end.

audience member

Alright, thank you.

audience member

Hello, now that you’re talking about this live versus record selling, acts like Boards of Canada, Autechre and some other people that are signed to your label, they don’t play quite often. Are you going to push them to play? These acts have been out there for a long time, maybe it’s not important, it’s just an example, but the new acts, are you going to push them even more to play more live? Give more live shows and…

Steve Beckett

As long as they’ve got something to say, I always encourage the acts to play live shows. Autechre that’s a myth, they play all over the world. They just play all the time when they’ve got a record out. Boards of Canada have done about five gigs. I get offers every day for them to play, like crazy offers and regularly go up to Scotland and beg them to go on tour, but they just won’t do it.

audience member

These bands play in the northern countries, I’d say, I haven’t got the chance to see them very often. It’s like !!! and all these live bands are pretty cool. I suppose they’re going to play around the world. This more experimental and more mind-oriented music I would say, well physical as well, might not hear about them very much. Don’t have this experience, yet. Might take them a little further around the world.

Audience member

What advice do you have for somebody who wants to start a label today?

Steve Beckett

The flippant answer will be don’t. It just depends what you’re wanting to achieve. If you want great riches and gold plated taps, I wouldn’t suggest starting one at the moment. If you’re really moved to work with some artists and put some music out into the world, then I would do it. Just depending on what sort of music it is. If it’s just a single release, I’d just put it out on maybe digital only, if you can afford it put it out on 12”. I think the key thing is just making sure you’ve genuinely got great music, not just great music that you think is good, but you’ve checked out with your most hardcore friends who aren’t afraid to give you honest feedback.

If they’re saying this is great music, then release it. I think, even if it’s just one 12” or one album, you’ve still got to do the business side and really work out what your figures are and just be really tight on what you’re spending, and really watch how you’re spending on the art work and the manufacture, and every aspect of what you’re doing. If it just swings by a few $100 or definitely a few $1,000 at that level you’re going to have problems. I think it’s just being really sensible and watching what you’re doing financially about what you’re releasing. If you feel moved to do it, definitely do it.

audience member

You seem pretty involved with all of your groups. Do you have other A&R people working under you or are you usually pretty hands on and go to the sessions and kind of nurture the artist personally?

Steve Beckett

I’m the main A&R person there, but it’s a very musical company, so even if they’re doing the accounts, they’ll be going out to gigs and bringing in CDs. A lot of the guys are in bands, so it’s very… music’s in the sort of heart and the blood of the company. It’s not like people have got specific A&R jobs, but they’re constantly bringing in new music. Especially the guys that work at Bleep and Warp Mart, which is the digital and physical distribution. Obviously, they’re getting new music coming through there all the time. In terms of sessions, again it just totally depends on what the artist is. Some artists might want real hands-on comment on the bassline of every single track they’re doing and every different mix. Other artists like Aphex Twin, you’ll just get a CD mysteriously land on your desk and it’s like this is the album and don’t dare comment or want changes. I tried to get a radio edit of “Windowlicker” once, it was seven minutes long, and he started describing it like I was trying to cut his baby’s arm off, you know? It just depends on the artist, really.

audience member

I’ve met so many A&R people in my career, it’s like they just seem very clueless. Every last one of them. I’ve probably met one or two that I’ve actually really liked and seemed to have a real true personal relationship with the artist.

Steve Beckett

I think a lot of the A&R guys haven’t really got the vocabulary to be able to go into a studio and start commenting… they can say things like, “It needs to be more hyper, it needs to be…” just really general terms. When you’re in the studio, in the sort of the nitty gritty of creation really… when people are creating they’re using very specific language because you’re talking about a subjective thing. So, artists and producers have developed very specific language where they can try and communicate this subjective subject to get the end result of what they want.

My experience is a lot of A&R guys and even myself going into a studio, you might think that you can contribute something but I think you can just throw sessions off track and get people in their heads. They might’ve already explored 20 avenues that you’re suggesting one of and decided… I don’t really see it adds a lot. My vision as A&R is more like, I find the people that I trust and I know have got a creative vision. They create what they’re going to create. I then decide which of those creations I’m going to release. If they’ve got something that they want to release, that I don’t believe, I’ll still probably release it anyway.

But then, my job is once we’ve got that, how can I through language, art work, all those sort of very subtle messages that everybody unconsciously understands, how can I get that through the eye of the needle, so that people are going to notice my band, instead of all these hundreds on Universal or whatever? I think I see that as more of my role, which is just finding truly creative people. I find those through having a quite deep, authentic conversation with them, by the end of that conversation, I know whether they’re people I want to work with or not.

audience member

Wow, that’s excellent.

Mark Pritchard

The other thing I think of ...

Steve Beckett

I’m going to ask you a question after this.

Mark Pritchard

The other thing I think of when I think of Warp is the art work. I think it’s been really strong all the way through. Who the people you’ve worked with art work-wise, and how do you see that going with the new digital age of downloads? What’s going to happen to that?

Steve Beckett

That’s a really good question. Obviously, when we start off with these beautiful 12” sleeves for albums, the classic thing if you like. You’d listen to the album, you’d sit there skinning up or drinking your Red Bull, of course, on this beautiful sleeve, you could really soak in what the music is about. But, as it’s going to more and more downloads, you just see this tiny little JPEG that just really doesn’t get anything over. I think there’s going to be a huge change in design in that way. It’s almost going to become icons, where any subtlety or depth in the art work isn’t going to be relevant really, or you need to do some associated art work or interactive artwork that gets that over, because you’re not going to get that over from the JPEG.

I think all that aspect of what you do, it’s just so important. You get some artists, “I don’t care about what the art work is.” It’s all sending messages to the audience and it’s representing you as an artist. I think it’s just so important to get every single sentence of a press release or bio or every photograph, every piece of art work just really truly representing who you are.

There’s just so much noise out there, that people are bombarded with all these different images. The one thing that people are really starved of is attention. If you can get people’s attention, that’s a really key thing that you need to go deeper with people rather than wider… not throw loads of imagery and loads of messages out and loads out of money, but just go as deep as you can, so they hit something on a deeper level with people, so they can really get that direct connection with the artists. That’s what I feel, anyway.

Mark Pritchard

Who’re the people that you use? I think you started off with Designer’s Republic.

Steve Beckett

Designers Republic because they were in based in Sheffield at the time. We were just really lucky that… you’re sort of writing on your lists of things you got to do. It’s like, “Art work? Who does that?” Then, you ask around. “These guys called Designers Republic in Sheffield.” So, we go down to meet and meet them and everything. We didn’t know at the time that they were some of the best designers on the planet. They’ve really like added a lot to and started giving us a really strong look with all of the releases. We were just really fortunate in that case to get involved with them. It’s the same thing now, just look for any great photographers, directors, or art work people that I can… I’m just constantly looking at magazines, websites, or whatever, just seeing if that’s sticking out, that we can work with that can contribute to what we do. And the question I was going to ask you is, if you can sign a contract four years ago for a Reload album, where is it?

Mark Pritchard

I gave you another album instead. It’s coming, next year.

Steve Beckett

He’s been saying that for four years.

Mark Pritchard I’m in the birthing process.

Steve Beckett

Is that it?

audience member

Sorry guys. I know everyone’s hungry, I’m sorry. Just quickly, you’d mentioned, looking at the charts, No 1 through 10, No 1 through 15, whatever it was, it was Universal. Maybe another major. Do you think that some of these mergers that have been happening, obviously we’re down to three or four majors now, whatever it is… do you think to an extent that gives a bit more of a spotlight to some of the greater indies, more of the powerful indies, making a bit of noise – or has it just been exclusively the selection of the music?

Steve Beckett

Sorry, what’s the question about?

audience member

Well, essentially, do you feel that some of these mergers that are taking place, with them just kind of controlling a lot of the music coming… to an extent, do you think that some people are starting to look in other directions and suddenly finding and discovering some of these indies that are sort of making some noise left and right?

Steve Beckett

I think they’re definitely discovering some of the music. The problem for us is when you get these mergers, it really isn’t about the artists or signing – it’s much more about they get much more tighter control of the gatekeepers, so they can buy out front-of-store racking for the whole year, because they know they’re going to have so many releases. It means we can never get our records front of store because it’s all been booked up by Universal. Your records just naturally sell more if they’re front of store from a more casual purchaser than people going into the A to Z, that sort of thing.

There’s all those day-to-day fights that you got with a major… same thing with the radio. If radio knows that 80% of its playlist is going to be coming from Universal and Universal know that they can have all of those records played on Radio 1, they can be flying these guys everywhere, putting them up in amazing hotels, all that sorts of things.

It’s just that they get tighter and tighter control of those gatekeepers. Which obviously from their perspective, is a great thing, because they get their artists through the doors. Then, they get a new set of problems, because they just have so many artists, it’s only the big artists that get the attention. The little ones come through, get their records out, and nothing gets tended to.

With an indie, every single record – from something that’s going to sell 10,000 to something that’s going to sell half a million – gets genuine attention and we try to pitch it to the audience that it should be getting pitched to. So that we’ve got artists that might be selling 10,000 records who were making a living out of it through different associated income streams. It’s like anything. It’s got pros and cons, but I think anything where you get one player getting a bigger and bigger share of the market can just get really dangerous. They just become so powerful and they don’t want other people to get into their… as they see it, their area.

audience member

Really, the last question. You mentioned the referral process about other artists pointing out certain independent artists doing their thing and you getting to hear them out. On a business or musical level, is there another label out there you feel that… or that you have respect for that you may want to mention to us at all, musically or on a business model side?

Steve Beckett

I think there’s a few ... I think Beggars Banquet to me is a label that I’ve really looked up to. They’ve got sub labels like XL, I think Domino obviously have come through in the last few years with all rock stuff. I know those guys. I know they’re really straight and do everything they can, making sure the business side is straight and that they’ve got great relationships with their artists. Ninja Tune, who we’re great friends with, I think they’ve got good relationships with a lot of people they work with. I think the bigger indies are still really worth talking to and seeking out. Is that it?

audience member

Yeah, that’s it.

Steve Beckett

Let’s eat.

Benji B

Much respect to Warp Recordings.

Steve Beckett

Thanks so much. That was really good, I really enjoyed it.

Benji B

Many thanks indeed. Steve Beckett. Make some noise.

[Applause]