Aphex Twin classic or Dud?

In that Rolling Stone piece he says he 'came up to London to do press,' but then he says he lives in Scotland. Kinda makes you wonder.

it does?

He also stated he came by train. In UK usage, railway lines almost always go "up" to London. It's not a geographical direction, it's a "towards city centre" terminology when people say they are going "up" London.

Ah! I've learned a lot here.

This is apparently the last track on the album. Ridiculously gorgeous performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJHsT8kEyzs

It's quite a challop to suggest that Dog Latin of all posters benefits from an automatically bestowed aura of respect.

Indeed, he's often the ilx whipping boy... (re-posted from the worst music writing thread..)

http://i491.photobucket.com/albums/rr277/kadield/KickDog.gif

I live in Glasgow and travel to London by train and always say 'I'm Going Down South' or 'Down to London', I've never heard anyone traveling from Glasgow to London by train say they are "going up" to London

i wd always travel down to London as it is closer to hell than the North is

xp I guess old Cornish habits die hard

at about the same latitude as London, I have not come to any conclusion about whether London is up or down, except that I might get the train down to London and the bus up to London, because those are more euphonious pairings

actually I think it's the other way round

don't mind me

as a desperate attempt to be on topic, I quite liked that first track, but if it is the best track on the album then I'm not 100% sold yet (who am I kidding, I'll probably preorder)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_directions

In British practice, railway directions are usually described as up and down, with up being towards a major location. This convention is applied not only to the trains and the tracks, but also to items of lineside equipment and to areas near a track. Since British trains run on the left, the up side of a line is on the left when proceeding in the up direction. The names originate from the early railways, where trains would run up the hills to the mines, and down to the ports.

On most of the network, up is the direction towards London. In most of Scotland, with the exception of the West and East Coast Main Lines, up is towards Edinburgh. The Valley Lines network around Cardiff has its own peculiar usage, relating to the original meaning of travelling up and down the valley. On the former Midland Railway up was towards Derby. Mileposts normally increase in the down direction

Individual tracks will have their own names, such as Up Main or Down Loop. Trains running towards London are normally referred to as Up trains, and those away from London as Down. Hence the Down Night Riviera runs to Penzance and the Up Flying Scotsman to Kings Cross.

I mean, it's entirely possible that Richard's reference is more that Cornish habit of calling everything on the other side of the Tamar "Up Country", but technically and officially, "up" is towards London. (And after discussion on twitter, it emerges that in Ireland, all trains going towards Dublin are "up", regardless of geographical direction.)

Derail

A bit like RAM, the track-by-track reviews from the listening parties have got me super excited. Fingers crossed.

love this gear list pic

http://i.imgur.com/NwlH3Ge.jpg

drukqs pwns

drukqs more like DrUDkqs amirite

NO

drukqs might be his second-best album after saw2!!!

incomparable albums, but drukqs destroys saw 2.

Listened to "Selected Ambient Works 85-92" last night while I did photoshop work. Incredible stuff.

I know this might seem like a useless revival/joke, but I'm actually being serious about the following:

I have to watch my nine-year-old nephew a lot, and, as a matter course, I just often tend to have music on in the background. I don't really think about it, and we sort of listen to everything together.
Anyway, ever since he was about two or three, he would waddle his way up the stairs to my bedroom and ask for music, specifically asking if we could "dance! dance!".
Of course, I would always oblige him. So our favorites were (my favs at the time), were "Lush 3-1" and "Lush 3-2" by Orbital, '76:14' by Global Communication (there's a couple danceable tracks on there), and random Richard D. James Material. I would take my little man and swing him from his arms and we'd spin in a circle and we'd just dance around like crazy. I miss those days.

Anyway, I've listened to SAW I in front of him a few times, lately. He's nine, now.
Recently, I caught him listening to "Xtal" alone with himself, on his iPad on Youtube, in the living room, when I wasn't paying attention to him.
He actually searched Aphex/the song up himself! I was really kind of proud of him! Techno and my other tastes have seemed to actually rub off on him (not that I had any plan to inculcate him with any of that, whatever).

It actually occurred to me, however. Now that he's searching Aphex Twin by himself on his iPad (keep in mind, he's nine), I'm worried he'll come across things like "Come to Dadddy" or "Windowlicker", etc.
There are probably other inappropriate things that I might also worry about him searching for, as well.

So, what to do? If I tell him something like, "No more Aphex Twin without my permission", I know he'll just look more of it up on his own (I don't want him coming across the disturbing videos). I could say nothing, and maybe he'll forget about Aphex Twin. Um, but it's not like I'm to stop listening to music in front of him, either.

Silly question, I know. I wish his parents had never given him a phone or iPad. What do parents say, here!?

It was seriously funny when I caught him listening to "Xtal" alone, though. He was just laying on the couch and staring at his iPad, and just bobbing his head up and down with his big old afro!

It's a lovely story, and re: what to do, maybe talk to his parents, I'm sure they're facing similar issues already?

i was... 8 or 9 years old when i fist saw the come to daddy video on mtv, and loved it. still do.
my advice would be to just let the little guy live his life.

in fact!
i remember showing my little niece a bunch of chris cunningham videos when she was a toddler. maybe 3 or 4 years old. she was a huge fan of the horrors' "sheena is a parasite"... good times. now she won't shut up about one direction.

i'm also worried that if i keep listening to afx and autechre with him, that he'll rebel as a teenager by listening to eric clapton!

This looks new? And good.

https://soundcloud.com/user18081971/ngaimodu-bradley-stryder

man, i got the RDJ album a couple weeks ago and was totally floored, brilliant & beautiful album from beginning to end. i just got ...I Care Because You Do and it's just not doing it for me, the first 3 sides are actively irritating. the last side is nice

Two very different albums, for sure. I wouldn't call myself the biggest Aphex Twin fan but sometime last year I had a period where I played through this whole discography chronologically and found I Care Because You Do to hold up really well. Perhaps there's something to hearing it come directly out of his ambient phase that made it more appealing to me. He hadn't yet reached the RDJ phase of rapid beats and more pop-leaning melodies. (I hesitate to say "pop" but I'm thinking of the light-hearted earworms of "4" or "Finger Bib").

But if you prefer the RDJ style, I don't really feel like he ever did anything that's as tight and purely enjoyable as that (the Come to Daddy EP was of the same era and is maybe the closest thing). Others in this thread who take the time to dive deeper beyond his proper albums may disagree.

I adore the Come to Daddy EP. The Little Lord Faulteroy version is one of my favorite songs ever.

you should listen to it more than once.. or something. it's much much better than come to daddy.

i feel like nobody's ever been able (let alone tried) to duplicate the stuff this album does. zillions of mid-period autechre tributes but the closest i can think of for ICBYD is the first disjecta album..

just a few extraordinary sounds on ICBYD:
- the drums on "acrid avid jam". and the code melody that sounds like andreas vollenweider
- the impossible deep and sad synth whine that permeates "mookid"
- is that a vocal/chorale sample in "cow cud" (the one with the door slam)? or some synthetic approximation? no idea. it's magic.
- the reverbed synth on "start as you mean". i just love that sound.
- and obviously the splat/bleep sound he uses for/overlays on top of snares etc is marvelous.

i used to skip the harder stuff (tracks 3-5 basically) but i love it all now.

code melody = coda melody

the chords of the "mookid" chorus/hook whatever... just magnificent. flappy bird, you can't deny that one!

ah i think i meant the second disjecta album. this one: https://www.discogs.com/Disjecta-Clean-Pit-And-Lid-Promo/master/2452

i'll give it another dozen or so chances, but for now it's in the sell bin

"mookid" kind of seems like a warmup for "fingerbib", now that i think about it.

ICBYD was my favourite Aphex at the height of my fandom. It's just the quintessential record for me, straddling his hard-techno and ambient past while looking towards more conceptual territory which he would explore on things like Come To Daddy. Every track is different from the last. It's dated a fair bit now. It's kind of trebly and harsh for today's ears. But still, Alberto Balsalm will never not be a classic.

^^^

there's a great disco nihilist post where he talks about how Aphex records used to be like shocking brand new worlds, ICBYD epitomizes that for me.

I got into electronic music in high school after I bought a used Warp sampler that was 1/2 ICBYD 1/2 Spanners (I remember biking across the Mississippi to Dinkytown to the store where I found it.) Sitting on the floor of my bedroom with the light flooding in listening to the first three tracks especially, I felt like I'd escaped from grunge to some incredible world of Apollonian beauty, I wanted everyone in the world to hear what I was listening to. Changed my life yadda yadda.

ICBYD is the first aphex I heard and still my favorite album. it's just so ... different!

It's probably my least favourite of all the albums he released under this moniker.

ok, side 3 & 4 are really clicking with me now... mookid and alberto balsalm are really beautiful... don't dig em as much as RDJ LP or Come to Daddy but I'll hold off on selling this one...

i don't think i ever properly appreciated the RDJ album (listened to Come to Daddy a ton though).

i have a playlist of all the piano/percussion pieces from Drukqs for weekend morning listening, i think it's time to make one for all of his electronic tracks with pretty pretty melodies.

Aphex was such a big part of my life in the late 90s and early thousands that I have difficulty imagining what it would be like to listen to ICBYD or even RDJ Album for the first time in 2016. I identify very much with lukas's post, in that hearing these records at the time, I didn't have to make any mental allowances at the time: it felt very much like the sound of daringness and future-music. Ironically I can't help feeling that ICBYD sounds really of its time. Still very much a unique piece of work, it's nevertheless harder to appreciate what made it so outstandingly different and new on release.

cow cud is a twin

imo Little Lord Faulteroy towers over everything else he's done. Ridiculously brilliant song from beginning to end

94-95 best afx period

xp Come to Daddy as a suite is his (no pun intended) apex. Bouncing Bucephalus Ball and Flim were life-changing moments for me when I first heard them.

if/when it's starting to get warm where you live, go for a stroll and listen to acrid avid and cow cud.

icbyd has the best drums. they're made by special construction equipment that can dig out chunks of your brain and burrow inside.

think this was the last time he fully went for a super saturated mix with huge reverbs everywhere. i love that sound. no idea how he found so much space around all the gnashing cymbals.