Seventeen years since its original release, The Other People Place's Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café is finally made available again on vinyl. A long-standing favourite among the many legions of Warp fans and rightly considered to be one of the very best electronic albums of all time.
It's hard to sum up in words just how important Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café truly is. Originally released back in 2001 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 groove, Kraftwerk and gave it a truly electro feel - cold, yet funky. Where Drexciya's sound was focused in 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 in the direction of love.
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.
With the original vinyl being incredibly hard to find (for a second-hand copy, you are looking upwards of one hundred and fifty quid easily!) this freshly repressed edition is something many of us have been dreaming of, and for those looking to take their first trip to the Place, you are in for a life-affirming experience.
Like all of the very best techno and electro, The Other People Place yields some of the most beautiful sounds to emerge from the D with a limited sound pallette, stripping everything back to the essentials to compose an incredibly important yet delicate album that still to this day continues to fascinate and seduce with its strikingly subtle flow and elegant mystery.
