Despite the fact that all of Warp’s early artists namecheck hip-hop, none of them really went on to make hip-hop for the label. (You might want to check the label’s fourth release ever, DJ Mink’s “Hey! Hey! Can U Relate,” a lesser-known bit of Sheffield rap that the label never pursued beyond the one single.) George Evelyn, and for this album, also Kevin Harper, are Nightmares On Wax, and are the label’s very notable exception. Or, more specifically, NOW took the same samples being used in hip-hop songs and looped them up into a kind of ambient music, sometimes punctuating them with house rhythms. This is a sort of sketch album, the various parts of NOW and the scene popping up. “Mega Donutz” is their approximation of a Jungle Brothers track, hip-house edition. Evelyn and Harper are kind of scrolling through the sounds around them, occasionally sampling Bristol, and then trying on a bit of Aphex. “Aftermath,” the second single on Warp, is like a rework of A Guy Called Gerald’s “Voodoo Ray.” It’s a trip hearing these two look around their moment and pick out the bits they like and need. “Back Into Time” is a stoned breakbeat, and “Dextrous” is straight acid house. “E.A.S.E.” sounds like the kind of sun-damaged beat photo that Boards of Canada would be taking a few years later. What this really sounds like is a sampler of the entire Warp catalog, years before it existed.

– Sasha Frere-Jones