Plaid should need no introduction, really. But as we have to do one for the roster, here it is. One of the most reknowned electronic producers from Warp Records since the early 90’s, they are usually mentioned in the same breath as Aphex Twin and Autechre.
Andy Turner and Ed Handley spent most of their early production years with Ken Downie as Black Dog Productions. Although Plaid pre-existed the association, the duo’s Meshing well with Downie’s vision of heavily hybridized post-techno and obscurantist thematics, the pair brought several nascent Plaid tracks to the Black Dog table on the group’s debut, Bytes, a collection of tracks recorded by various iterations of the three members. The group recorded several albums and EPs throughout the early and mid-‘90s, helping to forge a style of dance music one step removed from the 12″ considerations of the average faceless techno act; Handley and Turner’s mutual love for early hip-hop contributed BDP’s more bawdy, street-level grit.
The pair split from Downie in 1995, and began rechanneling their efforts full-time with an EP on the neo-electro Clear label before signing to Warp. (The pair also recorded an album with European techno figure Mark Broom under the pseudonym Repeat, two tracks of which also made it onto the South of Market EP, released on Jonah Sharp’s similarly located Reflective imprint.) Both of Plaid’s first two full-lengths, 1998’s Not for Threes and the following year’s Rest Proof Clockwork, were issued in the U.S. through Nothing. Once Warp set up a home on American shores, however, Plaid made the natural switch with the long-awaited collection Trainer, a retrospective including much of their early, pre-BDP work. The proper third album, Double Figure, followed in spring 2001, and the handy Plaid remix collection Parts in the Post was issued in 2003 by Peacefrog. The end of the year brought the duo’s fourth proper LP, Spokes. Plaid was quiet on the recording front for several years, returning finally in mid-2006 with Greedy Baby, a mini-album that found the pair co-billed with visual artist Bob Jaroc.
They did a brilliant scoring for the Japanese animation “Tekkon Kinkreet”, before emerging in 2011 with the album Scintilli.
(biography largely written by Sean Cooper, All Music Guide)
Appears on:
Anodyne – Empire of Glass (Plaid acid remix)
