Warp's first release, pressed in 1989

Twenty years, huh? Steve Beckett even finds that hard to believe.

“As one of my friends said,” explains the Warp co-founder, “‘Sticking it out with any-fucking-thing for 20 years is amazing, let alone something in the music business.’”

Indeed. Yet here he is, about to usher in a weekend of special events that celebrates the circuit-bending consistency and mind-numbing diversity of a label that’s made stars out of electronic music’s most reclusive producers (Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Autechre) and pressed everything from choir boy folk (Grizzly Bear) and punk funk (!!!) to electro-fied soul (Jamie Lidell) and whatever the hell Battles is.

We tracked Beckett down at a New York City hotel—just before he was about to jet off to a lunch with Lidell—and asked him to run through an A-to-Z style breakdown of the label’s past two decades. In the process, he answered everything from “what’s up with the  purple sleeves?”  to “when’s the next Aphex Twin album dropping?” And since Warp will be celebrating their birthday through the end of ’09, we’ve also recruited a ton of their artists to talk about their favorite Warp records in the next issue of self-titled.