Aphex Twin classic or Dud?

Ludo

yes.

the ambient works are cool but, not that cool to become a classic. he should make an album full of super songs like windowlicker to become a classic. or songs like flim.

Ludo

The one problem is that a lot of people just buys his records and don't dig a for more records by other groups like autechre, Susumu Yokota and so on. For me he was definetely the beginning but not the end.

I mostly listen to psytrance/Goa, intelligent techno, jungle & ambient. IDM in general doesn't do it for me, it lacks emotion (at least positive ones).

So, classic, yeah.

You don't need to make a good album to be a classic (I'm not even sure you have to make a good single to be a classic) but Ritchie has certainly made some good albums. And what's this guff about Selected Ambient Works not being a proper album. Glen Campbell's 20 Golden Greats is a proper album, just because its a compilation does not weaken its claim.

Of course that make The Best Of Blur pretty much their best album...

POLYNOMIAL - C

This is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever. Also digiredoo and analogue bubblebath. Classic, groundbreaking music

I'm good too

Despite the rictus grin there's is a genuine warmth and humour to his music, though I'll admit that, like many Warp artists, the emotional communication is indirect, showing us how to feel, as opposed to telling us what to feel. But that's fine, it's not as if they're even trying to tell us a story. Concequently this kind of music has a greater resonance with me. But then what what distinguishes him from his contempories? Well, he's survived every micro-genre he invented, reacted to and re- developed his own back catalogue - he replied to ambient with Ambient Vol 2, Drill n Bass with the classical hybrids of Richard D. James, then stirred the already stagnant electronica scene with Windowlicker, which I'm sure could hold it's own in any ILM pop league. Still a genius, even with his head firmly up his own arse.

Did you know AFX has been corresponding with Beck for months about producing the Beck's album. It fell apart cause neither were prepared to record outside their own studio. I dunno, but that would have been fun.

but i'm glad the aphex/beck thing didn't happen. even aphex couldn't make beck good.

oh, and to answer the question, classic, obviously

The Parr comparison applies for sure, but not as explicitly as it does with BoC's "Concourse" and "M9" (but then how could it?).

Aphex is classic, of course. I actually used to see him as a model for making a virtue of geographical isolation as a means of artistically refining yourself, so it's appropriate that K-reg said that. I think "Richard D. James Album" is his best work, as well, whereas FWIW I think "Bryter Layter" is Drake's weakest.

dada- you should get selected ambient works vol II. I heard the first disc of that last evening. its really wonderful 'ambient' stuff. great to read books with.

I think the general feeling on Aphex Twin is surely that he makes far better videos than records.

Most of his stuff is doodly nonsense..... some unlistenable, some rather good. Much of it sounds like he's making it up as he goes along.

-- Julio Desouza (juli...), May 12th, 2003.

Julio: "Once upon a time there was a little bear named Pooh..."

SAW V.2: "Who lived in the House At Pooh Corner..."

Julio: "One day Pooh's friend Piglet came round for tea, and said to Pooh-"

SAW V.2: "'Come on you cunt let's have some of that Aphex Acid!!!!'"

I like doodly nonsense, I like unlistenable, I like "making it up as he goes along" - someone direct me to the doodly unlistenable shit he makes up as he's going along.

I think SAW II + I think there's enuff to make a wonderful two CD 'best of'.

!

This actually makes perfect sense to me. I used to have to deal with this. (Not just because of the $ factor, but also because it takes me a long time to "absorb" new material, and I get ansy when there's stuff piling up that I'm really itching to soak up, but haven't been able to give my full attention to.)

xp re: Genre baiting, yes, that shit has aged in many ways (especially the Windowlicker video, ech), but what I've missed about Aphex since the Windowlicker EP is his ability to channel interesting concepts as well as making awesome electronic sounds. I don't miss much of the juvenalia, but it's the playfulness of a track like Nannou or Bouncing Bucephalus Ball, or the brazenness of Ventolin, or just the little samples of his parents talking and being interpolated into tracks like 4 which I always liked. That stuff got increasingly backgrounded. While Syro is a technical accomplishment, it's just missing something for me, especially since the world of electronic music is now a lot more crowded with genius producers than it once was.

if you just look at the album as several jumbled together projects, sure, you will be like, hey, this banger with overclocked drum production leads into this prepared disklavier track into this slower satie-esque composition into this total fuckin ambient nightmare and that's the album!!! but i find their placement in sequence and the way they talk to each other to be... masterful. "vordhosbn" feels like a mission statement, like he has taken this style just slightly beyond any pop appeal it might've had on ctd or windowlicker and created something both overwhelmingly brutal and beautiful

(if it helps i do not give a shit about anything rdj said about the album)

This is probably sacrilege, but just for my own interest, I've gone through Druqks and separated the drill bangers from the ambient and piano pieces just to see if I can make more sense of it this way, because in nearly 20 years of listening, I don't think I ever really go my head around it:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ottxyuqVttiufuAQvygva?si=LR7I00QwSLa79gl0t39uYw
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5T1VrMYGtIzkbGswl4KZFA?si=TrLROOOZRzCqo0gLrbSRXg

xp, i'm not sure what rdj said about the album, other than the story about him having to release it because he left copies of the tracks on a plane or something?

DRUQKS = TUSK

lol

xp, i'm not sure what rdj said about the album, other than the story about him having to release it because he left copies of the tracks on a plane or something?

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Wednesday, December 2, 2020 7:25 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah he put it out in advance of a potential leak, and also suggested that people not necessarily listen to it in sequence and just take what they wanted from the mass of tracks

it's the pre-soundcloud soundcloud dump

i guess to some degree i just naturally do not completely believe anything rdj says and think there's more to drukqs in its arrangement of tracks than just a grab bag, bc it's there if you listen for it

I’ve never been able to figure out if that’s a mangled vocal sample in “cow cud” or just a synth approximation...

if you mean the quiet laughing voice at the very beginning (before the shout), I'm pretty sure that's derived from a classic Mac OS text-to-speech program

Yeah it sounds like a computer laughing the words 'A-phex Twi-hi-hi-in'

So I just went for a quick run and listened to the 'Druqks Bangers' redux. I have to say, I really enjoyed it and it made sense to listen to the upbeat digital stuff all together without these long contemplative interludes.

Some people might like the tension created by the push-and-pull of the different styles on Druqks.

But I could never think of a situation where I'd want to hear acid-jungle tracks programmed next to fairly lengthy Reich and Cage compositions.

If the quieter tracks had been shorter, I could hear them as interludes or pallette cleansers, but instead Druqks is just this confusing rollercoaster ride which ends up being less than the sum of its parts.

It's something that's always annoyed me about Squarepusher: almost every album he releases has 3 or 4 absolute stormers and one or two achingly pretty tracks, but they're always mixed into this hotchpotch of jazz bass workouts and eerie ambient soundscapes, and it rarely hangs together as a piece.

I love a bit of the old eclecticism, but I'm rarely in a mood or situation to go from head to heart to hips in such quick succession.

Looking forward to listening to the ambient section of Druqks redux now

haha, wow, sequenced like this, it ends on Ziggomatic 17's gorgeous outro melody and signs off with "Thank you for your attention, bye"

I've had a playlist of the piano/non-bangers tracks from drukqs for years now, and play it often.

it's proving to be excellent WFH music. I will never not love the answering machine track

I was always lukewarm on Drukqs (except the piano pieces, which I love) - it felt like a disappointment at the time, for reasons others have expressed above - but I'm revisiting now, and finding it a very consistent & satisfying listen.

Yeah, I def. have a new appreciation for this album... it may be the only one I can hang with all the way through these days. "54 Cymru Beats" is the only track I had to jump out of (a little too harsh).

I'd say that what it loses in distinctiveness (compared to his previous albums, and notwithstanding the acoustic tracks), it makes up for in listen-ability.

i hadn't actually listened to the tuss before. rushup edge slaps

It does! I may have given it more spins than Druqks.

Listening to The Tuss now, it's amusing that there was even a question whether it was RDJ.

i like most of his singles and collections but i just can not get into much of the album material for some reason and i like his caustic window and polygon window material but not much of the afx material!

The Tuss is really really good

I never really got into the Analords or the Soundcloud dump. I'm not sure if it's the music itself or just the sheer amount of it. Maybe I should just admit I prefer his digital stuff and that the later attempts to re-embrace analogue don't move me much.

some parts of analord are better than others but the better parts are transcendent cf. "fenixfunk 5"

I think analord is pretty consistent overall, it’s fun listening to them in order

i love "where's your girlfriend" so much

yeah was pretty stunned that one didn't make the CD

Woot! Now that we’re facing an insurrection, an impeachment and an inauguration (hopefully), it’s time to indulge in some hardcore Drukqs!

Drukqs — The id to the ego of The Richard D James Album. Equal parts exhilarating and exhausting, Drukqs is Richard’s White Album, McCartney and Lovesexy wrapped into one — a sprawling creative whirlwind that rejects the fruits of mass celebrity for the indulgence of complete artistic freedom. Far from an hour and forty minutes of alternating drum and bass and MIDI-enabled John Cage homages its first several tracks suggests, this is almost certainly the most diverse release in his catalogue outside of the Soundcloud dump (of which this is certainly a forbear), with plaintive proper piano compositions, trip hop entrails, traces of music concrete, a gentle harmonium ditty, and a doting 28th birthday voicemail from his mum and dad for good measure. Continuing to delight in giving his audience aural whiplash, he sandwiches arguably his most epic drill n’ bass composition (the 8.5’ Mt. Saint Michael + Saint Michaels Mount), between his most conventionally “pretty” track (Avril 14th) and would-be “serious composition,” Gwarek2 which sounds like the quieter moments of Morton Subotnick’s The Wild Bull. Throughout there’s smatterings of exceptional, sly writing, with Bbydhyonchord his most “beautiful piece” since Flim and Ziggomatic 17 concluding with one of his most winsome digital melodies. Meltphace 6 features some of his best FM textures and the kind of zig-zag structures he would return to a dozen years later with Syro while Taking Control is one of his last great digital sample-fiestas. He didn’t care because we did? I don’t care but you still do? Yeah.

Lovely post NTI

Still enjoying/rediscovering this album now that I've sorted the Bangers and the chillers out from each other

Apparently Aphex Twin sent a tape to Jeff Mills and Mike Banks. On the tape was the first Analogue Bubblebath. They passed on signing him to UR. Jeff sounds a little regretful about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K0tVVnXfn4

think it lost the timecode, it's twenty minutes in

The way I've ripped Drukqs to my server means it plays disc 2 track 1, disc 1 track 1, disc 2 track 2, disc 1 track 2, etc etc etc, mashing the two discs together.

I don't know whether I should solve this or not. Probably not. It's not like it flowed at all.

There's stuff on here that's absolutely as good as the best he ever did, it's just dumped together in a way that's difficult for most people to parse, seemingly.

Richard D James album is the one I go back to most often, the one I'd take with me to a desert island. It's got concision and gestalt.

https://www.stereogum.com/2156356/aphex-twins-sister-is-wales-new-climate-change-minister/news/?fbclid=IwAR2JYZ5JGDTsQ_DFoskK6593AF46_ygXT6BeK_2I8wlhCByWcAOXEPNG2hI

we're sure it's not just james with fx?

When asked whether she’s a fan of his music, Julie said:

Very much. Not all of it.

same here

lols from the comment section:

"Her best work is Selected Environmental Writings 87-93"

Something is happening on August 18

https://190823.co.uk/

19th

Field Day returns to Victoria Park on that day.

I only had to type 1 number and still managed a typo

I don’t know who Ludo is but what is up with people who sign their comments.

- Moka

Field Day indeed

So is Alberto Balsalm his most famous track at this point, what with all the memes?

*farts* wow I had no idea that’s actually kinda funny!

Better than some “we made old person listen to ventolin, you won’t believe their reactions!!”

‘Digeridoo’ (Expanded Edition) is the first time the EP has been re-issued with extra material. Whilst digging in his DAT archive (allegedly stored in an airtight military ammo box), Richard James revisited the recordings, encoding them through a Nakamichi CR7e cassette deck, using the customised deck with vari-speed to encode at speeds “felt right at the time”. Alongside these CR7e versions, the original mixes have been remastered by Beau Thomas at Ten Eight Seven Mastering, offering a dilated insight into one of electronic music’s most endearing releases.

It bangs

Good looking out

Digeridoo doesn't really do it for me; however, I am well interested to hear about his AIRTIGHT MILITARY AMMO BOX.

It keeps the munitions fresh.

loving this today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoL2kG-Y0u4