I know I am in the minority, because I have always thought that Warp was one of the best albums of the 80s. I played it pretty much every day for six months straight when it came out. I taped it and listened to it in the car (the flip side was one of my other fave albums of the 80s (The Stranglers's Feline). But I also know that the "cool" (and I don't mean "hip") synthetic feel of the album turns some people off.

I have always had a soft spot for Linn drum and such, usually because of the low sound quality (rather than in spite of it). Synthetic percussion is a totally different instrument than a drum kit. Perhaps that's why the TR-606 has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in recent years.

And Warp was an album completely steeped in the synthetic, coupling standard instruments and voices with synthetic. And that's completely in the "old" New Musik tradition. Tony &co always treated the two realms as equal. Synthetic strings, acoustic guitar, human voice, vocoder, etc.

I love the splashing water.

But, and this may be a big factor, Warp was also one of the very first albums I can remember that was digitally mixed. Compact Discs wouldn't arrive for three more years. It is entirely possible that the sound of Warp is marred somewhat by the "hardness" of early digital mixing technology. It is possible that the digital mixing hardware used for the album did not use dithering, and thus the overall sound, while being "accurate", was not ear friendly. Tony was always a groundbreaker, and perhaps he was not merely on the leading edge, but right on the bleeding edge in the case of Warp.

Perhaps that's why the album leaves some people cold.

Besides the fact that it's rather mad.

I love "Green and Red (respectively)". I always feel like I do at the end of The Beatles's "She's So Heavy". I know it's going to end abruptly, it's coming up, soon, here it comes.

"Red".

(John R)