Aphex Twin's _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_ is ten years old

Digging this out -- I'm finding that I'm a bigger fan of the pretty, Eno-esque/"An Ending (Ascent)"-style stuff more than the "I WAS LUCID DREAMING IN FRONT OF A POWER STATION, YO" stuff, which I do feel has maybe lost a bit of its luster in the intervening 17 years.

hey, power station translates to 'kraftwerk' in german -- and i lucid dream to kraftwerk all the time

Fair enough.

Blue Calx!

That's one of 'em...

More electronic/synthesizer power station connections:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtbqFNxIHyI

the "I WAS LUCID DREAMING IN FRONT OF A POWER STATION, YO" stuff, which I do feel has maybe lost a bit of its luster in the intervening 17 years.

no way man. the sounds on this album are still fucking incredible to me.

more references to power stations in electronic music--

louis and bebe barron's 'krell shuttle and power station' from the forbidden planet soundtrack, circa 1956

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djpJd5RmQxk

also the legendary techno club berghain, in berlin, is inside of an abandoned power station

"Power Station" in Cornish is "tredanva". Surprisingly, there isn't an Aphex Twin tune of that name. That we know about, at least.

Karen D. Tredanvaskin

'tredanva' is a nice name--i approve

oh! i just remembered another reference to power stations in electronic music! the power plant, the legendary club in chicago in the 1980s, one of the early birthplaces of chicago house

and i just pulled out a classic strictly rhythm 12" from '91, photon inc - 'generate power'--i have not listened to this in forever

XP: There's a windfarm at Goonhilly Downs, which I'm guessing has nothing to do with Goon Gumpas.

Actually OMD did a track called Sealand which is a much better fit.

Wow, it just hit me that I haven't listened to this record in at least three years, despite considering it one of my favorite records ever... I need to change that right away. Each track is its own strange little room, and I find it an almost frighteningly transportive experience to listen through them all.

Wow, it just hit me that I haven't listened to this record in at least three years, despite considering it one of my favorite records ever... I need to change that right away. Each track is its own strange little room, and I find it an almost frighteningly transportive experience to listen through them all.

I listen to this album every morning at work. I like it a lot.

I love it, but I'd be a mess if I listened to it every day.

How long have you been doing this for Mr Snrub?

about a year now. i've tried getting into other "classic" ambient albums, like "74:16" by global communication and "the orb's adventures beyond the ultraworld" and "another green world" and "music for films," but none of them even come close to the same effect

The only problem I have with this album is finding a three-hour block in which I'm guaranteed to not be interrupted. Consequently I've not played it all the way through in at least 10 years.

XP: That's pretty impressive.

been listening to it a lot again lately but all mixed up with other ambient stuff. the tricksy little sonic details in the corners really make it stand up - the obvious classic tunes don't get tired for me but the less obvious tracks bear repeat visits

Mr. Snrub: Do you have Eno's Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks? Or Ambient 4: On Land? Both are gorgeous, texturally amazing records with direct links to Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2... Start with those if you don't know them. You should also check out William Basinski's Shortwave Music at some point. Another Green World I wouldn't call ambient, and Music for Films is more about brief little motifs and less about immersion in sonic "environments" (which SAW Vol. 2 to me is all about). And the other two records you list I feel truly aren't anywhere near as good (or as beautifully alien sounding) as the Aphex and Eno records (few records are, to be honest!).

will do, thanks! i do like that "deep blue day" song from trainspotting. another green world: definitely not ambient. that album was such a disappointment. there are like two ambient songs on the album. "becalmed" is great, though.

Another Green World took a while to grow on me, but it's now one of my very favorite Eno albums, and maybe the one I listen to the most frequently. I came at it from the opposite side as you, expecting it to be an upbeat thing more in line with his first few solo records and being somewhat frustrated by its relative quietude. It's hard to find records with that same mix of deep-space utter coldness, suggestions of machinery/technology, and drifty bliss as SAW Vol. 2. If you're not familiar with Main, some of his stuff strikes that balance: Hz in particular is pretty immersive. I also love Permafrost and Teimo by Thomas Koner. Dettinger's first record on Kompakt is incredible as well, though less visually suggestive/cinematic and more miniature-ish.

You should check out Biosphere - Substrata (and then work your way through his catalog)

Coincidentally I listened to this yesterday afternoon.

A pivotal album for me. When I first discovered it I made up my own track titles.

Goon is actually a quite common placename in Cornwall because in Cornish, goon means "meadow".

It would be great if he wrote a song called Goon Tredanva, which would be a meadow pun on power plant.

This is such a nice album to paint to, it's really good for doing lots of detailed textural work. Especially late at night, when you actually have the time to get a block of a few hours to listen to it all in sequence.

Apparently he played some of the tracks from it at the gig in Dublin last weekend. But I've no idea how that would work at a festival, quite hard to yell for songs which don't have names.

I wonder if people sang along...

"PLAY THAT ALIEN ONE THAT GOES DING-DANG-DONGGGGG"

"Radiator pipes! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! RA-DI-A-TOR PIIIIIIIIIIIIPES!!!!!!!"

"Bit of rock with some lichen on it!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

"TWIG!!!!"

Actually I've got so used to the fan fiction names that sometimes I forget what the pictures actually look like.

yeah plus my copy is on the computer so i haven't looked at the disc insert in an eternity

the pictures were pretty bad at capturing the track iirc. it was just a wind up wasn't it?

everything's just a wind up isn't it?

i dunno, i like the puzzle of the pictures' relationship to the tracks, even if the secret answer is "there isn't one". the pictures are there, and we can make of them what we will, and they add to the whole subterranean blur for me

Hate the way that every time Mr D.James does something opaque, it's automatically assumed to be "a wind up." His sense of humour is pretty distinctive but I sometimes suspect that because he's often so oblique, people often assume that if they don't immediately get it, it must be a "wind up" rather than him creating something they don't understand. He seems to be about links and puzzles and interrelationships rather than direct correlations, so that's how I understand the picture-song interlink.

(or perhaps I'm just defensive on his behalf.)

I think as long as you don't see something that's a joke and something that has artistic merit as being two mutually exclusive things then there's less of a problem.

how are the pictures-to-songs a wind-up anyway? The whole thing makes sense if you look at it. Wasn't it Designers Republic who made the inlay anyway?

this album

They're not mututally exclusive at all. And with Mr D.James I think the line is often very close - in fact, he's expressed being mystified at how people take things that he intends entirely as a joke, completely seriously. (Come To Daddy being the prime example.)

It's more that kind of kneejerk anti-abstraction, anti-intellectual (you see the same thing with abstract or conceptual art "what, 1 million quid for a pile of bricks?" type thinking) that if something is not immediately apparent, it must be a wind-up (and, to me, that concept of wind-up has a slightly malicious overtone) that he's always somehow fucking with his fanbase rather than just doing something he thinks is cool or interesting or just needs to be done.

Don't see this attitude so much on ILX but on tWATMM it's completely rampant. Every time RDJ or Rephlex or whoever do something a bit sideways, they howl "he's taking the piss, they're winding us up!" rather than realising they're doing something amusing for their own benefit.

But I guess if I judged artists by their fanbases I'd never listen to Aphex Twin. :-/

DL - the photographs are his, he's actually done quite a lot of his own photography for his albums.

I had no idea they were his photographs :-)

i haven't actually sat down and listened to anything aphex-related in a very long time...i do like a lot of his stuff, but it's so tied to a particular time and place in my life, for me.

i was at a party in new york a few months ago and the DJ put on the afx remix of 808 state's 'flow coma', and i kept wishing that they'd play the original 808 state version instead. the original bangs so much harder than his distorted-to-hell remix

Twin mixes tend to be a bit hit and miss. Can't say I ever really got into his 23 Mixes For Cash album, but by that point my obsession was admittedly starting to wane a little.

I do like this though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J55uy2b_x_Q

KDT if you think my response was anti-abstraction or anti-intellectual you obv don't know much about me (why would you? etc) it's just that in this case i think he probably was on one, nothing wrong with that, he's a wind up merchant a lot of the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SP_OE3qrbk

rah

He's not a wind-up merchant. Sometimes he jokes, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he does both at the same time. But that doesn't mean that every single thing he does is somehow a wind-up.

I dunno. Older Aphex (everything pre-Drukqs, which was where I originally got off the bus, but particularly the SAWs) is also so much a time and place for me, but it was a time and place where I was particularly happy so I get the pleasant twinge of being reminded of happier times as well as the enjoyment of listening to the music.