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

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.

I love that Flow Coma remix. I use it a lot when I'm DJing between bands. It has an immediately energising effect on people when it's on a good system. It's usually either that or Logan Rock Witch when I'm playing records.

Or that hardcore track off Smojphace...

But that doesn't mean that every single thing he does is somehow a wind-up.

I don't think so either. The photos thing may not be a wind up but the tracks are (on the whole) good or very good and the photos are rubbish. it looks like he spent about 20 minutes on the whole thing.

the pictures also remind me of those Ask the Family "familiar object from an unfamiliar angle" questions where the camera wd slowly pan back until the identity of the object was blindingly obvious

the sound of SAWII is often like lying on the ground in a quiet spot staring at something mundane until you don't recognise it any more

I don't get it, Jed. It's like... Mr D.James makes set of ambient tracks which are fuzzy, indistinct, distorted, blurred and that makes him a genius expressing a deliberate aesthetic. Mr D.James makes set of photographs which are fuzzy, indistinct, distorted and blurred with which to express the ambience of said tracks without the use of words - and that makes them rubbish he spent maybe 20 minutes on?

I've taken some great pics that took me all of 20 mins to take, total!

He may well have spent 20 minutes on them TBF, doesn't make them a wind-up. And yes, some of the things RDJ has got up to could well be considered a wind-up (thinking things like the Jesus Jones remix etc). But it's his prankster reputation that lends him a lot of ears. No one's saying he's not a great musician without a considerable amount of ideas, but he is also a jester who will wilfully take the piss to a degree. The difference is, he's one of the few artists I can think of for whom it never feels like the listener is being duped necessarily. Like, he could if he wanted to, release a single consisting of three particularly fruity fart noises and know that it would sell. But he's never done that. Even at his most irreverant, RDJ's music manages to be worthy in some fashion.

'worthy' is an awful word, but yeah.

SAW Vol. 2 is actually the only Aphex record I actively love, and I'd always wished he'd done more like it. The Biosphere recommendation above is a great call... I also forgot to mention Roedelius as a precursor to this stuff, but the more lo-fi records like Selbstportraits I and II.

See, this is one reason I like not knowing everything about music: There are still worlds undiscovered that I can explore when I get ennui about the stuff I own.

Thing is, I've just bought 'myself' (with some birthday funds from both sets of parents, mine and my wife's), a Technics 1220Mk2 turntable, and have since discovered that those records I thought I'd worn out bass frequencies on, tuen out to be 'not the case', maybe this different stylus is touching new parts of the groove.

So, am rediscovering all sorts of vinyl from within!

Although, our alice asks "can you play some Beatles?" at which pont I went, oh OK.. and stuck on Revolver as I nipped around the shops.

Anyhow, she wants to take the "School's Out" album to school to show her teacher, and the 'cool' way it folds out into a desk...

Anyway, back to the ambient masterwork...

I don't get it, Jed. It's like... Mr D.James makes set of ambient tracks which are fuzzy, indistinct, distorted, blurred and that makes him a genius expressing a deliberate aesthetic. Mr D.James makes set of photographs which are fuzzy, indistinct, distorted and blurred with which to express the ambience of said tracks without the use of words - and that makes them rubbish he spent maybe 20 minutes on?

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Monday, 13 June 2011 14:17 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

eh this isn't what i'm saying. this is what you think i'm saying.

there's clearly a qualitative difference between these photos and these tracks. i don't think they express the tracks well. i like the concept i just think the execution is poor. you're perfectly entitled to think they're great.

i agree that they're not exactly amazing photographs, especially not compare dto the music, no. Certainly not what I think of when I hear these songs. But the concept is good - I like the way each picture is a different size according to length of track.

match sticks

Tredanva-wyns.

wind farm? I could see that — one 500 years from now in a posthuman world

Tredanvayow-wyns a wra gul tros hevelep ilow dhe Afeks Twyn. Pur deg yw!

(I have no idea what "ambient" is yn Kernewek, will have to ask my teacher. I'm guessing "ambyennek" or something like that?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goDd02TTxBA

OMG why am i just finding out now that there is finally a 3LP repress out?!??

"stone in focus" not included though -.-

http://www.discogs.com/Aphex-Twin-Selected-Ambient-Works-Volume-II/release/3577040

shit pressing unfortunately ):

... both of which i found out to my cost this week. smh :(