Aphex Twin classic or Dud?

Um sorry but I don't think DL was doing any stomping at all, given that all he did was get the demographics of the Bangface crowd wrong.

Meantime, a little flashback to 1993:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgdYh7rgEmQ

jesus what happened up there ^^^^

british humour

woah just looked at two threads in one day featuring poster Ludo. weeeyerd.

Am I allowed to say "I miss the Old Trout, Windsor" again?

Heard "Actium" on a big system yesterday. Sounded fantastic, was suprisingly danceable, and holy hell that's a lot of bass.

Am I allowed to say "I miss the Old Trout, Windsor" again?

you sure can... so many memories for me too

I was at that Aphex Twin gig... i remember a load of the indie/rave kids being REALLY freaked out by all the noise stuff he was playing, and me and one other bloke (who happened to be wearing a Hafler Trio t-shirt) being really into it....

any takers? http://www.discogs.com/buy/Vinyl/Caustic-Window-Caustic-Window-LP/152379087

been taken down already

either that or someone has already bought it

says that the four ppl who own that are RDJ, Grant from Rephlex, Cylob and u-Ziq. it would be rude to speculate which if any of those individuals might need the money the most

seller write-up says it's the 5th copy

reading upthread, drukqs dismissed as "leftovers"... huh. is this still a perception held by people?

I seem to recall that yes, that was a commonly held perception at the time, but I'd agree people have largely given up that fight and given in to the album over the last 13 (!) years.

seller write-up says it's the 5th copy

that's funny, because 29 discogs users claim to own it

Huh, on wikipedia:

In an October 2010 interview with British magazine Another Man, James stated that he had completed 6 albums, one of which was a remake of the unreleased Melodies from Mars, originally produced around the time of Richard D. James Album.[25] In June 2011, he spoke to Spanish magazine EL PAIS. When asked about the 6 albums, he answered 'More than 10 or 11 are already compiled, and many more songs are orphans.' He also revealed that a new album 'will show in a while' and that the reason it has been so long since his last album was that he was waiting for a divorce from his wife.

Ha, I didn't hear this one, either:

In November 1995, The Wire published an article titled "Advice to Clever Children". In the process of producing the interview, a package of tapes containing music from several artists, including Aphex Twin, was sent to Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Stockhausen commented:
I heard the piece Aphex Twin of Richard James (sic) carefully: I think it would be very helpful if he listens to my work "Song of the Youth", which is electronic music, and a young boy's voice singing with himself. Because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it varied to some extent and if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations.[42]

Aphex Twin, a fan of Stockhausen, responded:
"I thought he should listen to a couple of tracks of mine: "Digeridoo", then he'd stop making abstract, random patterns you can't dance to".[42]

the reason it has been so long since his last album was that he was waiting for a divorce from his wife

Think he was determined to wait until there was no chance of her being able to claim a cut of revenue from releases, yeah

lol at the RDJ/Stockhausen exchange.

the nme gave drukqs 9/10 while most of the people who ought to have known better misunderstood it

it would be rude to speculate which if any of those individuals might need the money the most
― From Tha Crouuuch To Da Palacios (DJ Mencap), Tuesday, 8 April 2014 13:18

def cylob

that's funny, because 29 discogs users claim to own it

FLAC rips?

FLAC rips?

sounds like an RDJ title

when in his career has RDJ not claimed to have stacks of unreleased material ready to go?

Stacks of unreleased material generally means loads of crap that needs some quality control (an issue he's had through most of his career when he was actually releasing shit). I bet his 6 albums+ of stuff could probably be reduced down to 1 album and 3 EPs of awesomeness.

last two posts OTM. I never did get to know Analord in the end because the whole exercise felt a bit tl;dl

I would love it if he just released a concise 12-track album soon. It's been 18 years or something since RDJ Album.

Why would you want to edit down his albums though? They all "work" as albums and I take issue with the idea that there is lots of filler.

The point is, in the last decade+ he's had a habit of not releasing anything for ages and then spoodging out a huge glut of material in one go. It's not always gold either and even dedicated fans have trouble negotiating it. I still don't think Druqks works as an album, more like five different albums on shuffle. Analord has a few ace moments but I never could get up the patience to listen to all 10 releases to find them. I have to say I preferred it when he stuck to a singular style over the course of one LP (SAW/RDJ Album) or did a chocolate-box thing (Windowlicker/ICBYD) over the course of a shorter work. But these sprawling things like Druqks and Analord, I just find them a bit of a slog.

but octobeard was saying that ALL his records could do with that kind of editing, which is wrong IMO. Maybe Drukqs could do with this, though I think that's debatable. I admit to have never taken on Analords, perhaps for the reasons you alude to.

I wouldn't say ALL his records need trimming, if anything it's a shame that some iterations of SAWII had to have tracks cut from them. But yeah, RDJ started suffering from the same disease as Squarepusher after a while and seemed to be releasing stuff with little adherence to quality control. I liked his approach on the RDJ Album where he was going for extremely tight compositions with a strict 'no fannydangle' rule, meaning he could release an album of 10 3-4 minute tracks and get all his ideas in at once.

the analords are fantastic. i like hearing him do more process-based acid traxx about as much as his more thoroughly edited conventional album-oriented music.

Think I'd have preferred Analord if it had been a single-EP release or something in the vein of Analogue Bubblebath 3 under the AFX name (it's Aphex Twin, right?). I'm aware of the Chosen Lords comp, but from what I heard the track choices were somewhat arbitrary and skipped out a lot of good stuff.

I thought the Analord releases were great! I didn't find them a slog at all. The aesthetic is also totally unified and consistent, as opposed to Drukqs, where there are indeed at least three distinct styles lobbying for attention.

i like the grab bag tho

is "cohesiveness" necessarily a sign of "artistic integrity"?

Probably not, but it is conspicuous from an artist who seriously or not has claimed that he's just handed random DATs and whatnot to labels when pressed for material or remixes.

ICBYD is a grab bag and I love that. Feel like Druqks could have been released as maybe two shortish albums and an experimental EP.

I have a theory that 'cohesiveness' is a quality which has come to be more synonymous with artistic integrity since the end of the nineties.

think he shd release what he likes how he likes but i'm a feckless libertarian so

bbbut what about this notional idea of "cohesion"?????

Cohesiveness is almost by definition a good quality unless lack of cohesion is what you're after. And even then, I'm not sure how much I rate lack of cohesion as an attribute worth regularly pursuing. But something that's all over the place can still be "cohesive:" White Album, etc. So who knows. I just in the case of RDJ lack of cohesion can mostly be read as "jarring juxtapositions." But that can be cool too.

http://www.factmag.com/2014/04/01/material-from-aphex-twins-lost-selected-ambient-works-vol-3-surfaces-online-listen-here/

one of the few things i miss about Ye Olde Napstere 1.0 was d/ling loads of alleged Aphex tracks and pondering whether they were genuine and whether i cared

if u need architectonic integrity then the plaintive second analord ep of phonatacid / laricheared / pissed up in se1 / bwoon dub is as perfect a 25mins or so of music as anyone released in the last decade

one of the few things i miss about Ye Olde Napstere 1.0 was d/ling loads of alleged Aphex tracks and pondering whether they were genuine and whether i cared

― twistent consistent (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, April 9, 2014 4:54 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I had a lot of success with one of my homemade rare Boards of Canada tracks back in 2000.

fact article : april 1st.

hmmm ??

Oh dear, didn't actually look at the date on that, was wondering why it hadn't been bigger news.

Ha.

Totally disappointed tho, would have been a great twist in the story.

the variety and sequence of tracks on Drukqs is one of its best attributes, imo. the disklavier songs, and the more ambient/incidental/noodly bits provide a necessary relief from the denser, hyper-detailed drum and bass stuff. the 'inconsistency' makes it more engaging than something like Exai, which gets tedious.

think the name of the track, 'avril 1st' kinda gives it away as well.

does sound plausible though ..

xpost : have now added the usa edition of afx analogue bubblebath (tvt records!) to the archive as i had forgotten i have it, and going to try and listen to drukqs all way through now.
never managed it before.