Although
Plaid pre-existed the association, the duo's
Ed Handley and
Andy Turner spent most of their early recording years with
Ken Downie as the dancefloor-confounding
Black Dog Productions. Meshing well with
Downie's vision of heavily hybridized post-techno and obscurantist thematics, the pair brought several nascent
Plaid tracks to the
Black Dog table on the group's debut,
Bytes, a collection of tracks recorded by various iterations of the three members. The group recorded several albums and EPs throughout the early and mid-'90s, helping to forge a style of dance music one step removed from the 12" considerations of the average faceless techno act;
Handley and
Turner's mutual love for early hip-hop contributed
BDP's more bawdy, street-level grit.
The pair split from
Downie in 1995, and began rechanneling their efforts full-time with an EP on the neo-electro Clear label before signing to Warp. (The pair also recorded an album with European techno figure
Mark Broom under the pseudonym
Repeat, two tracks of which also made it onto the
South of Market EP, released on
Jonah Sharp's similarly located Reflective imprint.) Both of
Plaid's first two full-lengths, 1998's
Not for Threes and the following year's
Rest Proof Clockwork, were issued in the U.S. through Nothing. Once Warp set up a home on American shores, however,
Plaid made the natural switch with the long-awaited collection
Trainer, a retrospective including much of their early, pre-
BDP work. The proper third album,
Double Figure, followed in spring 2001, and the handy
Plaid remix collection
Parts in the Post was issued in 2003 by Peacefrog. The end of the year brought the duo's fourth proper LP,
Spokes.
Plaid was quiet on the recording front for several years, returning finally in mid-2006 with
Greedy Baby, a mini-album that found the pair co-billed with visual artist
Bob Jaroc. ~ Sean Cooper, All Music Guide