Bleep

A long-standing gem in the Warp catalogue, rightly considered to be one of the very best electronic albums of all time. Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café is the last work released by Drexciyan legend James Stinson before his early passing in 2002, just a year after this albums release.

It's hard to sum up in words just how important Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café truly is. Originally released as part of the Drexciyan off-shoot Storm Series, Lifestyles was one of the various projects of one-half of deep sea electro pioneers Drexciya, James Stinson. Shrouded in mystery, the two members of Drexciya took the blueprint laid out by the pioneers of the hypnotic electronic groove, Kraftwerk and gave it a truly futuristic feel - cold and austere yet volatile and intoxicating. Where Drexciya's sound was focused on their mythology of the Afrofurist civilisation they invented and named themselves after, a population born from pregnant African women thrown off of slave ships which inhabited the deepest corners of the ocean, James's work as The Other People Place was a solo project that turned its gaze elsewhere, most notably this very real present where humans cohabit with modern technology to survive.

Playing out like the first meeting through the early days of a relationship, the themes of closeness and affection carry a strong theme throughout with tracks like 'Eye Contact' describing those very first seconds of connection, before the story unfolds with the twilight romance of 'Moonlight Rendezvous', and the almost doubt creeps in on the bittersweet 'You Said You Want Me' and the anthemic 'Let Me Be Me'. A track of legendary status amongst the wide-ranging spectrum of electronic music lovers, producers and DJs the world over.

Like all of the very best Detroit techno and electro, The Other People Place yields some of the most beautiful sounds to emerge from the D with a limited sound palette, stripping everything back to the essentials to compose an incredibly influential album that still to this day continues to fascinate and seduce with its strikingly subtle flow and elegant mystery.