Initially released on triple 10”³ vinyl as part of the financially crippling 20th anniversary box set from earlier this year, Warp have seen fit to unleash the more accessible CD format for both casual listeners and less well-off fans. Fans that perhaps blew their budget on a Beatles box set”¦So, yes, a great year for Warp: the label that continues to spirit away from the indie competition. Their consistent ability to sign great talent and develop artists has produced some of the finest (though heinously named) intelligent dance music (IDM) on the planet. OK, not just dance music: Maximo Park and Grizzly Bear are two of their breakthrough guitar acts, and let’s not forget those barking Brummies, Broadcast.Unheard, though, features only one song (and it’s Broadcast’s) where strings ”“ tethered to bridges, straddling nuts glued to wood surfaces ”“ vibrate with any resonant depth. Laden with woolly IDM programmed by only a handful of artists from an extensive roster, it’s downbeat Scot duo Boards Of Canada (BOC) who get proceedings underway. With their typical trip-hop drum patterns awash with synth noise, ‘Seven Forty Seven’ sounds less like a commercial airliner and more like standing on cliff inhaling deep gusts of ocean air before absolutely nothing sinister happens whatsoever. It’s stirring stuff from the BOC vault: a potential indicator of Unheard’s manifesto.But with a wide and varied roster, the choice of nine artists to deliver the eleven songs on offer here is puzzling. Both Plaid and Nightmares on Wax double up on their contributions with neither really delivering anything that could be deemed remarkable. The only thing worth remarking on Nightmare on Wax’s ‘Biofeedback Dub’ and ‘Mega Donutz Dub’ is how unremarkable and aged they sound. It’s as though Steve Beckett called George Evelyn for some ‘exclusives’ and George lent back in his armchair, fingered some dusty DATs and said “Yeah, Steve. I got some hot shit for ya.”Plaid snake through the quality gap with expected looping analogue pops; Broadcast’s controlled cacophony ‘Sixty Forty’ most likely benefits from being played on vinyl and FlyLo’s ambient sideshow, ‘Tronix’, is perfectly missable. The real stunners come from Autechre’s ravey ‘Oval Moon’ (IBC Mix), Seefeel’s histrionic ‘As Link’ and Clark’s short-lived, lethal, ‘Rattlesnake’.An album for completests (who probably already own the box set) ”“ Warp, really shouldn’t try to spoil us.

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