I have written before about the Buddha Machine. It is like a mystical modern-day music box. I’m a big fan.

The original was described by some as the anti-iPod. It looks like the sort of iPod knock-off that you might get free in a cereal packet. Instead of loading it with several gigabytes of your favourite music, the Buddha Machine comes pre-packaged with nine low-fi loops, which vaguely emanate from the fuzzy in-built speaker.

And it’s marvellous. The Buddha Machine may look cheap and tacky, and the sound quality certainly is not great, but this all adds to the quaint and charming nature of the device.

It became a cult object. Brian Eno is said to have been so entranced that he bought eight of them on the spot. It was treated by some as a musical instrument in its own right. Artists created remix albums inspired by the Buddha Machine. It even spawned a bizarre game, Buddha Boxing. Any resemblance to World Championship Stare-out is purely coincidental.

The second version of the Buddha Machine brought new loops, and the addition of a pitch-bending function, adding an extra dimension to the curious box of sounds. But it still retained its charm.

Now the idea has been developed further with Gristleism. It is a new variant on the Buddha Machine concept developed by the revered experimental group Throbbing Gristle.

As you can see from the demonstration video, Throbbing Gristle’s take on the Buddha Machine is rather more brutal than FM3’s more relaxing version. And while the originals come in unassuming, antiquated, almost second-hand packaging, Gristleism has a very slick, modern and extravagant style to its packaging.

Gristleism is an altogether different product. But it chimes with the same ideas about what it means to buy music in a physical format in these days of digital downloads. Record companies are increasingly seeking to make the physical editions of albums more appealing by making the package more of the product. The stylish packaging of Gristleism asks questions about music, just as the original Buddha Machines did.

Musically, Gristelism fulfils a completely different role. The originals, with the music composed by FM3, were more ambient in nature. They could sit happily in the corner, quietly emitting unobtrusive drones.

But as you would expect with Throbbing Gristle, things are a bit more madcap here. I have to admit that when I first started playing with this, I couldn’t stop grinning. I had to interact with the music. You can really utilise that pitch altering knob to great effect.

This is the fourth group Warp albums that I am looking at, celebrating 20 years of the seminal record label. To read the other parts of this series, check out the table of contents on the right.

Pulp — Intro

Surprised? Not many people know that Pulp were given a substantial leg-up by the people behind Warp Records. In fairness, Intro technically isn’t a Warp album. It was released by Island, but is a compilation of the EPs and singles that were released on Gift Records, a spin-off of Warp.

Today, Warp would have no qualms about releasing music by a band like Pulp. But this was way back in 1992, before the “sacrilege” of releasing guitar bands was ever considered by Warp. It didn’t fit, but they wanted to help out their fellow Sheffielders.

Jarvis Cocker had already directed a couple of videos for Warp, and Pulp were stuck in a record deal that wouldn’t work for them. So Gift Records was set up to help Pulp on their way to becoming household names. Gift did release music by other indie bands, but none nearly as notable as Pulp. In the words of Steve Beckett, once Pulp signed to Island, “there really wasn’t any reason to keep [Gift] going.”

Intro is of rather variable quality — not as good as their later albums, but clearly much more accomplished than their previous albums. Indeed, the reason the album was called Intro was to obfuscate the existence of the earlier material.

Signing Pulp was a masterstroke on the part of Warp. Given the band’s past record, as a patchy art school-style rock band which had been around for far too long without notable success, other record companies wouldn’t touch Pulp with a bargepole. But Warp / Gift caught them when they were on the upturn, ready to become one of the best bands of the 1990s.

While parts of Intro lack polish, it also contains some of the band’s strongest material including ‘Babies’, arguably their best song.

Autechre — Confield

Electronic music peaked here. Everything since has been a disappointment. I think this album an extraordinary achievement.

In one sense, Confield may look like a natural progression of Autechre’s sound. They had spent the late 1990s gradually moving away from the ambient and more club-friendly sound of their early days, choosing to become increasingly esoteric and experimental. But even against that backdrop, Confield was a massive leap. It also stands out from their subsequent material, which has been slightly more accessible.

For this reason Confield was, and in many ways still is, a controversial album. When people talk about Warp artists being wilfully difficult, they probably have a album precisely like Confield in mind. I won’t pretend that I found this an easy album to get into. Anything but.

However, I am mighty glad I persevered with it. What at first sounds like an overly complex, jumbled mess eventually starts to make perfect sense after a few listens. Moreover, the music is so full of intricacy and detail, ensuring that the album is a fascinating listen. Even today I will spot new little details that I had never heard before.

Autechre’s music is highly unconventional, yet it somehow all makes perfect sense. For this reason, Autechre have probably done more than almost anything else to change the way I think about music.

At first glance, Confield is a very serious-sounding album; quite chin-strokey. The opening track ‘VI Scose Poise’ is particularly detatched-sounding. But this album is not without its fun moments.

Autechre’s heavy hip-hop influence is fully in evidence in ‘Pen Expers’. This track which begins with a very dense rhythmic cacophony, which gradually — almost invisibly, as though it is the audio equivalent of a Magic Eye puzzle — makes way for an intense, triumphant melody.

My highlight, though, is ‘Cfern’. It sounds like a fantasy jazz piece from 200 years in the future. I think I particularly like this track because it almost sounds like it could be performed live. I was delighted to find out recently that the avant-garde ensemble Alarm Will Sound has recently released a live version of the piece. It sounds absolutely remarkable. I have embedded the original version below.

Plaid — Double Figure

For me, Plaid have a tendency to be formulaic. That is not in the sense that their music is similar to other people’s, but that they seem to have a set template which they work around. They sort of get away with it though, because even though their music often sounds strangely similar to older tracks of theirs, it is still good.

But Double Figure doesn’t have that sense around it. I don’t think to myself, “hmm, I’ve heard that before.” In fairness, maybe it’s because this was the first Plaid album I bought.

But I continue to get immense pleasure from listening to it. It starts off with the poignant track ‘Eyen’, which is arguably their best (and was featured in the Warp20 compilation). It sets a high bar for the rest of the album to reach, but it manages it. Plaid’s style — ambient-techno with a rather natural, almost tropical vibe — is unique and engaging, and it has never sounded stronger than on Double Figure.

It was during this period that they began collaborating with visual artist Bob Jaroc, with whom they later made the DVD release Greedy Baby. This is the video for the Double Figure track ‘New Family’:

LFO — Frequencies

I am slightly too young to remember Frequencies and the hit single ‘LFO’ when they were originally released. But it has gone down in history, and is frequently listed among the highlights of Warp’s 20 years, making it impossible for me to ignore.

Electronic music usually dates extraordinarily badly. But even though ‘LFO’ was released in 1990, it is still immensely exciting to listen to today, as is the rest of the album. It’s great to think that, once upon a time, this sort of music could be a massive hit. When it reached number 12 in the UK singles chart, Steve Wright declared it to be “the worst record ever”.

In that case you might say, mission accomplished. But LFO’s Mark Bell, while not being particularly prolific under the LFO moniker (there have only been two LFO albums since Frequencies), has gone on to become a well-regarded producer, regularly working with Björk.

The third part of my five-part series looking at 20 interesting albums from the 20 year history of Warp Records. To read other parts of the series, please check the table of contents to the right.

Battles — Mirrored

Battles are redefining what rock music is. They are pushing the envelope in the same way bands like Tortoise were doing ten or twenty years ago. In fact, I see Battles as the successors to Tortoise at the forefront of mind-bending rock music, filling a gap which was left after Tortoise settled down.

The music on Mirrored is unlike almost anything you’ll hear anywhere else. But the studio output is not even the most impressive thing about Battles. By now all listeners to contemporary music are well used to the technical wizardry that can be found in almost any song.

The amazing thing about Battles, though, is the way they use technology to manipulate their performing in real time when they’re playing live (see, for instance, their performance of ‘Atlas’ on Later with Jools Holland). Their performances are the greatest partnership of man and machine, with a dazzling array of black boxes and gizmos festooned with an army of cables. They have plenty of interesting and unique ways of making sounds.

It is as though they decided to make it all as difficult as possible. But the band is well capable. They are clearly performing on the edge — a small amount away from being a total disaster. But the talent — most notably the experimental maverick Tyondai Braxton, and the intricate and precise drummer John Stainer — is there to keep everything under control.

Strangely, the highlight of Mirrored is the one song they don’t seem to play live, ‘Rainbow’:

Aphex Twin — Selected Ambient Works Volume II

Aphex Twin is probably the Warp artist who needs an introduction the least. Indeed, to an extent, he has defined the label. His first Warp album as Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works II, is probably his best.

It certainly stands out from the others in terms of style, with little emphasis on beats and little evidence of the humour that would be present in his later material. Mind you, some people may think he is pulling the listener’s leg with these long-winded and repetitive tracks. I have to confess that I found it a challenging listen at first.

But the fact is that these are beautiful pieces of music, both light and dark. The album is so strong that it probably defines the idea of what ambient music is as much as any Brian Eno album does. It certainly is not mere background music. The emotional intensity ensures that the music is engaging and stands the test of time.

The album is so long that not all of it fits on two CDs, meaning that only those who purchased the vinyl edition have the full version. The US version of the CD also lacks a further track, ‘Hankie’. Whoever owns the rights in the USA seemingly has YouTube under the thumb, so this is the one track that I can actually embed here.

Plone — For Beginner Piano

This is a strange one. At first I didn’t like it much, but after a while I began to appreciate its charm. There is a similarity with fellow Birmingham bands Pram and Broadcast, with its fixation on quaint and old-sounding synths and retro electronic music.

For Beginner Piano has a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde thing about it. In parts, it has a particularly childlike vibe to it. But it is also quite a dark album, aided by the use of slightly creepy-sounding electronic effects. The mixture of childlike and dark is quite a disturbing juxtaposition which is probably what prevented me from taking it too seriously when I first heard it.

However, as time has gone on I have come to really appreciate it as a charming piece of electronic music. It is easy to see why it has become a cult favourite over the years, even providing the inspiration for the open-source Content Management System Plone.

But while For Beginner Piano has become a fan favourite, Plone has also been at the centre of one of the most controversial points of Warp’s history. It is said that Warp refused to release Plone’s second album, with little in the way of explanation. Something purporting to be the lost Plone album has since been leaked. But Plone is no longer a going concern.

Here is one of the more childlike tracks, ‘Plock’:

!!! — Louden Up Now

Never let it be said that Warp is not a label that likes making things difficult. Here is a band with a name that is difficult to pronounce (though ‘chk chk chk’ has become popular) and impossible to find in a record shop (in the A-Z, where does ‘!’ go?). Yet despite this clear act of obfuscation, !!! are in fact one of the most musically accessible bands on the label.

The music is an infectious form of electronic funky rock, forging the sensibilities of punk and dance music. As an eight-piece band, !!! produce a very dense sound which fascinates.

Truth be told, I find much of !!!’s output only a little above average. But I have fallen in love with certain songs of theirs, most notably ‘Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)’, a high-velocity, varied and downright fun piece of music:

Continuing my look at 20 Warp albums from Warp’s 20 years. For other articles in this series, please see the table of contents to the right. Albums are presented in randomised order.

Broadcast — The Noise Made by People

This was the first Warp album I ever bought, and it remains a favourite of mine to this day. Broadcast’s music is heavily steeped in 1960s influence, and comparisons with Stereolab are commonplace (and not inaccurate). But they sound anything but derivative.

The Noise Made by People has a dark and slightly creepy aesthetic. Most of the album creeps along at a rather slow pace. Then there are Trish Keenan’s almost robotic vocals. The music itself — largely based on 1960s-style electronic instruments — could almost be transmitted directly from that decade, complete with unsettling background noise.

Put together, this all gives the music a rather otherworldly vibe. It is as though you are listening to a ghostly music that has been trapped in the airwaves since the 1960s and has only just escaped.

Funnily enough, the real life story of the recording of this album is similar to the picture I have just described. It is said that Broadcast struggled with the recording of the album, and it took three years to make. Perhaps this is another reason why it sounds clinical, though it’s all the more captivating for it.

Since The Noise Made by People, Broadcast have reduced in size to become just the core duo of Trish Keenan and James Cargill. In turn, the music has become less dense and more raw, and has lost the otherworldly qualities of their earlier material. Although Broadcast is still a good band, I feel that they were definitely at their peak with this album.

This video for ‘Come On Let’s Go’ captures the aesthetic of the album really well:

Tortoise — Standards

Many feel that Tortoise were at their strongest in the 1990s. I did not discover them until 2001, so maybe I am biased in that sense. But I think that the band was at the height of its creative powers with Standards.

Quite simply, it was one of the most unique-sounding albums I had ever heard and remains one of my favourite listens to this day. The effortless fusion of punchy rock, cutting-edge electronic music, multi-layered drumming and jazz makes this an extraordinarily bold album that captivates you from start to finish.

If ever there was an album that was definitively not just ‘going through the motions’, it is surely Standards — despite its title. This record documents Tortoise standing on the very edge of what is possible with rock music. I find it impossible to become bored of this album. There is so much going on in so many layers.

Each instrument would be fascinating to listen to on its own (this was proved when the rhythm section of Tortoise released an album of drums and little else called Bumps). Each band member is doing his own thing. And yet, everything here makes a perfect fit.

Nothing Tortoise have produced since then has come close to reaching the standard of Standards. But then again, few albums by any bad do.

This is the video for the attention-grabbing album opener, ‘Seneca’:

Seefeel – Succour

I only discovered this album a few years ago — probably over a decade after it was originally released. But I am glad I opted to buy it. The music is from the place where ambient, shoegaze, indie and techno all converge. The allure of Seefeel comes from its mixture of ambient-style drones and textures, techno-influenced minimalist drums and guitars, and the dreamy, processed vocals of singer Sarah Peacock.

Although superficially it feels like a pure techno / IDM album, the use of guitars and live drums was unusual for a Warp release at that time. This is what led Steve Beckett to recently single it out as “the first sacreligious move”.

Musically, Succour is a fabulous success. But if you thought this was the evidence that guitars could happily sit in a techno environment, think again. Apparently due to Mark Clifford’s efforts to push the band in a more electronic direction, the old artistic differences emerged and the band only lasted a few years after the release of Succour.

In a way, I feel as though I have missed out by not experiencing this music when it was first released. It must have been so incredibly exciting, at the cutting edge, when it was released. It would be interesting to hear what this band would come up with today.

Incredibly, Seefeel have recently re-formed. Initially this was for a one-off gig as part of the Warp20 celebrations. But there are now hints that Seefeel have also been in the studio. I can’t wait to hear any results that might come out of this.

Chris Morris — Blue Jam

Chris Morris, as one of Britain’s most influential satirists, probably needs little introduction. But few may immediately associate him with Warp Records. But Warp has been the outlet for a lot of his material, including the CD releases of the radio series On the Hour and his Bafta-winning short film My Wrongs #8245-8249 & 117 among other bits and pieces. Warp Films is also backing his current project, Four Lions.

But his first CD on Warp was a compilation of sketches from his experimental radio programme, Blue Jam (which was later turned into the television series Jam). This was a dark comedy, equal parts disturbing and funny. Unusually, the sketches were surrounded by a constant backdrop of ambient music (much of which was originally released on Warp) from the likes of Aphex Twin. Perhaps even more unusually, the show was originally broadcast on Radio 1. It inhabited a late-night slot which fitted with the programme’s surreal, woozy and nightmarish style.

The series contained a mixture of music and comedy; of the surreal and the disturbing; of sketches and monologues. Most of it was a world away from his previous material, though from time to time Morris would drop in one of his infamous interviews. Here, he flummoxes posthumous Diana biographer Andrew Morton.

A few years ago I wrote about the Buddha Machine, a charming little plastic box that emits ethereal music. It is an interesting object, mostly because the nine loops that it can play are so other-worldly and, despite their brevity, infinitely fascinating. Which is just as well, because they will repeat endlessly. Well, until you switch it off or the batteries run out.

It was dubbed the anti-iPod, because despite the fact that it bears a similarity in design and concept to the famous Apple gadget, it in fact rejects the entire ethos of the slick iPod. The Buddha Machine reminds many of medium wave radios for the poor, crackly sound quality that comes out of its large circular speaker. And instead of boasting several gigabytes of storage space to put on whatever music you want, you are stuck with the nine loops. Essentially, it is what the iPod would be like if it was cheap and made in China. Instead of, er, expensive and made in China.

My post about the Buddha Machine became a bit of a landmark for this blog, as I ended up speaking about it on Radio Scotland. On the radio with me was a local Buddhist, who was understandably rather bemused about being asked about what she (politely) saw as a cheap piece of tat.

Ostensibly it is a piece of pure tat. It looks like the sort of thing that might plop through your letterbox a few weeks after you collect your twelfth Weetabix token. But there is something oddly engaging about the Buddha Machine.

It is an interesting statement about the position the entertainment industry finds itself in. This is an age when physical music formats seem more and more redundant. But contrary to this trend, the Buddha Machine — the ultimate physical format — has become a cult fetish object for music and gadget geeks.

Plus, you cannot help but be captivated by the music, which you can imagine being transmitted from outer space, or a hitherto undiscovered dimension. Or perhaps an anonymous exotic location on the other side of the world. Mind you, that last one is kind of true. The music, like the box, is made in China. You see, the Buddha Machine is the brainchild of the Beijing-based electronic music duo FM3.

Since then, FM3 have set to work on that difficult second Buddha Machine. I never suspected they would try to repeat the feat. Could it possibly recreate the magic of the original?

It is true that, unless you are new to the Buddha Machine, there is not much so mystery about the second iteration. To an extent, once you’ve seen one Buddha Machine, you’ve seen them all.

But there is enough that is new about the Buddha Machine II to justify the purchase. Of course, there are nine new loops. The music is as fascinating as ever, even if these new selections don’t quite seem to match the other-worldly qualities of the original loops. While the first Buddha Machine was based more on electronic sounds, a lot of the new music is more guitar-based — though it is still firmly of the ambient persuasion.

My personal favourite loop of Buddha Machine II is #3, ‘Piano’. It is a decisive but quizzical riff that, in a fairer world, could be the Windows startup sound.

Overall, Buddha Machine II feels like a more mature version of the original. Although the designs of the two machines are very similar, there are some subtle changes. The first Buddha Machine came in a variety of bright, almost childlike colours. The new version comes in deeper, more adult hues: burgundy, brown or — my choice — grey. Even the “summer edition” comes in a curious teal-like colour.

Buddha Machine II also comes with a new feature — a knob that allows you to control the pitch at which the loops play. At first, this new addition feels like a failure. Controlling it while the Buddha Machine is switched on produces a rather unpleasant, disorientating effect. It sounds like a malfunctioning tape player — a noise that made me feel sick when I was a child.

But a more careful use of the new control brings more pleasure. It unlocks infinite worlds hidden inside this tiny box. Instead of just the nine loops, for each one you now have a choice of a slow and low-pitched version, or a fast and high-pitched version — and everything in between. Each loop is now massively variable. Exploring different speeds of each loop reveals new elements, elicits new emotions and brings new experiences.

This will bring a new dimension to the past time of Buddha boxing. This is where two or more people experiment with a number of Buddha Machines, allowing the drones to weave themselves among one another. On first listen to such an experiment, the loops may seem to match up poorly. But it ends up being a fascinating ambient creation, like some massive imagined Brian Eno installation.

You can try it for yourself with the Buddha Machine Wall, a web page that lets you experiment using the original nine loops. FM3 themselves invite you to play with three loops from Buddha Machine II.

The Buddha Machine has come on a long way since its original release four years ago, having spawned a number of other projects. Robert Henke remixed the Buddha Machine to create the album Layering Buddha. FM3 themselves encourage such remixing by offering MP3s of the loops to download for free, available under a Creative Commons license.

And despite originally being the anti-iPod, you can now buy an iPhone app that apes the original Buddha Machine. Of course, it doesn’t quite have the same charm as the real thing, but there is nonetheless something novel about these wonderful sounds coming out of your phone.

All-in-all, this unassuming little box packs a lot of punch. It is roughly the price of a CD album. But as an object, you will get far more pleasure out of a Buddha Machine.

• Official Buddha Machine website
• FM3 website
• A great blog post about the Buddha Machine by The New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones