I LOVE DRUKQS+

Ha, I love that Boos track but would never have made the connection. Don't tell Tuomas or he'll start talking litigation! (Actually a pretty good example of how the importance of melody in pop is often overstated, imo.)

I think it's just that both AFX and the Boos had a thing for those kind of jaunty, wistful ("Celtic"?) melodies. Melody is pretty much the least important thing in terms of music, it's much more about arrangement, atmosphere, everything else. Because my brain has for years been making the jump between those two songs whenever I hear one, it goes to the other, but the actual tracks really are nothing alike.

the first dozen or so posts on this thread are something

Haha, I never heard that boos/Aphex connection and they're two of my favourite acts in the history of music!

For what it's worth, I'm always tempted to do a 'Richard's Mum' harmony whenever anyone gets sung
'Happy Birthday'.

this album rules

meltphace 6

http://www.blackmailmag.com/images/MUSICA/drukqs-longvinyl.jpg

Absolute masterpiece. His finest work.

Vordhosbn is great. The beats scurry and dovetail frantically from the melody in a wonderful way.

It seems less like a random assortment of sounds, and more like a carefully crafted collage of a self portrait.

― The Curve Of Blinding Energy (Masonic Boom)

Rushup Edge sounds excellent on a nice system, or in the car. I played that thing on repeat 2-3 times over, while driving aimlessly around coastal North Carolina. I live in the desert and don't have a car, but that album surely bangs. There's an unusual pliancy (or playfulness) to it, for a typically rigid and computerized style of music. Not to mention all of the juicy sounds.

"Wilco. Jeff Tweedy's songwriting is so good that I want him to make it work in every conceivable genre."

hahahaha

definitely a gunner, some might say a "tryhard".. that Tweedy

I guess people get different things out of Aphex Twin. Some are more interested in the gimmicks, and that's fine - and for people who are interested in gimmicks above musical content, then I can see why one would be attracted to Aphex Twin's stuff from 1995-1996. This is not to say that that stuff lacks musical content, but for those that are interested in the important stuff: sound design, production, musical content, the compositions themselves and the way the layered parts interact with each other, then Drukqs is his pinnacle, IMO.

Lowell, always enjoy your posts

the thing is, turrican, i like afx for his melodies and for the sound/texture of his early-mid 90s stuff. i don't care about gimmicks and don't see how gimmicks play into his strongest work.

i love acid

Turrican's post only makes sense in bizarro world

xx-post:

Well, you're definitely correct that gimmicks don't play into his strongest work.

wtf is musical content?

Drukqs is also my favorite Aphex album. Such a good headphone album.

wtf is musical content?

― Lennon, Elvis, Hendrix etc (dog latin), Sunday, April 9, 2017 12:14 PM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You're fucking kidding me, right? It's actually legitimately blown my mind that someone on these forums (of all forums) has felt the need to actually ask this question.

Moka OTM re:Drukqs being a great headphones album, particularly the more frantic beat-driven stuff on the record. I love putting this album on headphones and just paying attention to the way all the parts interact and play off of each other, each part sounding utterly gorgeous in terms of sound design. The acoustic stuff is very well recorded, too.

agree w dog latin, "musical content" is a meaningless term

https://www.zsoltbatori.com/the-ineffability-of-musical-content

RDJ album is really vibrant/immediate-sounding, compared to Drukqs.. don't know it inside/out yet, but tracks like Peek (track 3) have a hot signal quality, percussion elements nearly distorted, that liquid synth is gorgeous.. it's HOT. a lot of it pops off with super vibrancy, blatant, snappy elasticity, no doubt. Carn Marth is another beaut.. obv. can't speak on it well, I just can't acknowledge the argument that Drukqs is retreading territory, cuz it's undoubtedly more developed and refined.

https://mikeparadinas.bandcamp.com/album/aberystwyth-marine -- this was released last year, but written/recorded in the late 90s. it def bears similarities to the RDJ album

RDJ Album is so clean-sounding, it nearly borders on clinical but somehow it works. I remember reading a thing years ago where he said something like 'I don't like music where you can't hear all the sounds', and that's stuck with me a lot. To this day when I'm listening to (and making) music, I tend to favour stuff that has a great level of detail but nevertheless sounds uncluttered and non-muddy. That sounds kind of obvious but it's one of the reasons I got fed up with so much US indie stuff by the late-00's - stuff like Grizzly Bear and Deerhunter. Everything was just smooshed in all this reverb with all the sounds blurring into each other. There's a fair bit of bass-driven dance music from the d'n'b and dubstep camps that bothers me in this way too.

Yeah, but then again I one-time did a mix of our band's latest works-in-progress, and our rhythm guitarist gave me grief because he couldn't hear his guitaring, specifically. I did say "hey, you would definitely notice it if it wasn't there" but that's the thing. I remember Martin Hannett of all people remarking that a demo has all the instruments separated out in the stereo picture, and a 'production' has the sounds combined.

(he wasn't there in person, I read what he said in an article)

oh yeah, there's definitely an extreme thing where the sounds don't sit in the mix together very well and just kind of glide over each other. And often you get nice artefacts and interactions between two sounds working together. But I still don't like it as much when things get all watery and indistinct for no reason. Certain aesthetics - e.g. shoegaze - rely heavily on this, and i'll often give music like that a free pass because THAT'S THE IDEA; still even with shoegaze I don't like a big mush like a bunch of Play-Doh ball that've been mixed together.

imo, interactions between sounds "working together" tend to work much better when the sounds are recorded together, simultaneously, in the same room. that way you're capturing the actual acoustic phenomena that's taking place. sounds placed together in a mix might compliment one other, but they're not actually interacting on a raw, physical level.

In electronic music, different parts can be deliberately composed to interact with each other, through choice of notes or choice of sound.

same with any type of music

or, if you're talking about something like a MIDI-controlled network, where multiple pieces of hardware interacting with each other (running simultaneously, interconnected) on the same 'clock', it becomes very interesting.. is that what you're getting at?

*are interacting with each other

Ah, no... I'm more talking about the way that electronic music can be programmed up note-by-note means that there's more scope to become more intricate with interacting parts in a composition, and this is what I love about RDJ's music, particularly on the more drill'n'bass tracks on Drukqs ... each composition is so intricately put together and thoughtfully worked out.

I do see what you mean though, if you place a bunch of musicians together in a room and have them play a piece, the end result can have a natural spark to it that would be lacking if everything was tracked separately. Programming up parts and working on sound design leads to pieces with a different kind of interaction to them.

by "programming" electronic music, do you mean programming sound events (notes, beats, musical content etc.) to occur or coincide w/each other, so that they have the appearance of cause and effect, "interplay" etc., or something more complex, where sound events are triggering events and actually affecting the quality/frequency/behavior of the other sounds?

Both, although it all depends on the setup.

Turrican, interesting argument but I don't agree. Electronic music production can have the advantage of allowing one to endlessly track in as many patterns/layers as needed, but that's completely viable in other genres if there's enough musicians, particularly with a huge orchestra for example.

It's possible with any music, the resources just need to be there - just much easier for electronic music.

That doesn't deter for the deft edge Twin has with the tracks on Druqs, it's expert sonic editing.

Well yes, the resources have to be there, which is kinda what I'm getting at, which is that with electronic music, you have an incredible level of control over the end result and create parts and compositions that no "actual" musician could possibly play.

I'd love to see an orchestra play one of the drill'n'bass tracks from Drukqs, really I would. In fact, I'd love to see a transcription of one.

it's not really what equipment you use, it's the way you compose and mix. if you have too many competing sounds or you mix badly then you're going to end with a very claustrophobic track. Twin is great at making complex mixes sound clean and sparse

there's a group, I think they're called Alarm Will Sound.. they've played one or two of the hyper-detailed tracks from Drukqs, it's gotta be on YouTube. (x-post to Turrican)

yeah they did a whole album of live Aphex covers. Don't really care for it much myself but it's an interesting listen

it's kind of annoying.. I don't know

xxxpost:

Yeah, now that I do agree with, and it's a huge part of what makes his music such a pleasure to listen to, I don't think I've ever heard a RDJ track that's sounded cluttered, not even his more sonically extreme stuff. Some of his tracks are so intricate and compositionally rich that a cluttered mix would just fuck it all up.

Like yourself, dog latin, I'm not a huge fan of cluttered mixes, particularly with electronic music. What I dislike is when people mistake "cluttered" for "psychedelic", which really gets on my tits.

Ooh, I've never heard that, I'll have to give that a listen!

Interesting article about the long and strange afterlife of "Avril 14th" from drukqs:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/arts/music/aphex-twin-avril-14th.html

Yeah, drukqs is great! Not enough progress? Baloney. Just one example: the prepared-piano tracks are more of a departure than most artists attempt on a new album.
― o. nate, Monday, March 11, 2002 8:00 PM (nineteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

heh