Anticipating SYRO the new (2014) album by Aphex Twin

i actually think people writing about electronic music often do a better job describing what's going on, musically, than do people writing about guitar rock etc.

and this stuff in its formalist inclinations lends itself to description better than a lot of stuff, honestly

disagree that talking about past work is necessary or desirable. yes writing about sound design is hard, but you can do it without falling into "it's like a barrel full of ball bearings falling down stairs ... but funky!"

xposts

also the more 'conceptual' aspects of aphex twin make him a little easier to write about, i think

idk what that means but I'm curious

I don't actually know a ton about Aphex Twin, because my interest in dance and electronic stuff came a little after his 90s heyday -- but beyond an intro paragraph or two about his return, or some setting up of his impact on IDM (and perhaps even EDM) in general, curious as to why this record wouldn't be written about in terms of how it relates to new electronic dance music. For example, why not just talk about its merits alongside recent stuff by Actress, Lone, DJ Rashad, new Planet Mu releases, new Hyperdub, etc? Following that, what kind of impact it has just as a stand alone release? I am interested in this record, but am wondering how many reviews will actually contain as much "criticism" as backstory, or pining for old days.

idk what that means but I'm curious

― ugh (lukas), Friday, September 5, 2014 3:57 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sometimes his songs/albums are driven in part by high-concept ideas, which provide a way "in" to them

see video above, no?

...well, clearly he had a massive impact on, erm, Skrillex!

(I kid, I kid.)

ugh, x-post to Dominique

I like the Skrillex tidbit because the Come To Daddy EP totally blew my mind open too and he's 1 month younger than me. There but for the grace of God.

maybe I should have joined some screamo bands in high school

xpost yeah would be very cool if reviewers that weren't steeped in pre-2002 stuff were assigned to review Syro

that makes sense amateurist. I'd also say that Aphex is easier to write about than say, Autechre since his stuff tends to cohere into a single-pointed emotional or artistic impression, I don't think Autechre cares about that as much.

yeah autechre stuff is kind of defiantly low-affect in a way.

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

^^^OK, I was still on a "the design is more clever than beautiful" but this is straight-up beautiful. As well as conceptually "wow". In terms of "information is beautiful" but also in terms of, well, that settles every single "did he use a Korg or a Roland on that?" gearhead idiot question.

(Some of these songs must be quite old, if they were recorded at the Bank. That was knocked down a couple of years ago.)

The thing is, at this point we are just following his music by inertia not because Syro would be a groundbreaking album if he were an upcoming artist.

curious as to why this record wouldn't be written about in terms of how it relates to new electronic dance music. For example, why not just talk about its merits alongside recent stuff by Actress, Lone, DJ Rashad, new Planet Mu releases, new Hyperdub, etc?

The simple answer might well be "it doesn't", because for all we know these tracks have been sitting around for close to a decade and he may have been working in complete isolation. But then the more you think about it the connections are everywhere - given his mate Mike Paradinas has been releasing footwork remixes for years it's likely he'd have heard some of them, although the influence in the other direction may be negligible. Lone is basically doing Artificial Intelligence/Black Dog/pre-Autechre IDM a lot of the time, I tend to avoid Hyperdub releases but around 2009 I was hearing a lot of Aphexy sounds and melodies in post-dubstep etc etc.

This all feeds into what I was saying about it maybe just being the right time for a new Aphex Twin album, in that he'd have been a cringeworthily unfashionable reference to drop in dance music discourse for most of the 00s, but now there are echoes of that sound all over the place. On Syro itself, we might be able to tell how self-consciously connected RDJ by what the bass sounds like.

Also "groundbreaking" is a red herring, he hasn't really been groundbreaking since the mid-90s, but one of the reasons for the excitement is that, on top of the pisstaking and the tanks and the videos and the sonic abrasiveness and the genuinely groundbreaking records he once made, he writes amazing melodies, pretty much better than anyone else in electronic music.

Why does music always have to be "groundbreaking"?

Can't you just like an artist for "that thing they do" and not have to have it at the forefront of something? (Wouldn't it be depressing if Aphex Twin released a new album and it was full of ~modern signifiers~ like footwork rhythms or post-dubstep wobbly basslines. That wouldn't be evidence that he was clued-in, would it? It'd be evidence that he'd given up trying to hoe his own row.)

I don't *listen* to Aphex Twin because he's "groundbreaking" (though I know lots of people buy into this way of thinking.) I listen to him because I like the things that he, specifically does, that no one else quite captures in the same way. I like the sad, floaty kinda melodies that drift in and out of texture pad gauziness. I like those frenetic, stabby, bass to low-midrange patterns that sound almost random, but reveal rhythmic and harmonic complexity on repeated listens.

I like the thing he does. I don't really care where he fits in the ~grand narrative of music~ though I know some people are very heavily invested in creating a narrative. If that kind of way of thinking about music makes you happy, by all means, do what you love. But please, just stop pretending that it meeeaaaaaannns something. This kind of spin is tedious myth-making.

ugh x-post now

'groundbreaking' is like 'surprising' - there is no such thing a surprising, there is only surprised

Yeah, but, some records surprise a lot more people than others.

of course, some records are heard by more people than others!

Okay, some records surprise a higher proportion of listeners, then.

But yeah the basic point I agree with. I can already envisage those begrudging 7/10 reviews where the writer admits they like every track on the album but they're still disappointed because their mind isn't blown the way it was when they were 16 and hearing 'I Care Because You Do' for the first time.

Yes. And this will happen.

It's not that every album or song should be groundbreaking or should defy unreal expectations. I was just stating that we are still following Aphex because he used to make groundbreaking music (back in the mid 90s) sure. And that Syro wouldn't warrant too much discussion if it was an album by someone new and Aphex Twin never existed.

Branwell OTM

Yep

the gear circle reminds me of the similarly massive gear list on the back cover of Yellow Magic Orchestra's BGM album

we are still following Aphex because he used to make groundbreaking music (back in the mid 90s) music that fans of his music really like, sure. And that Syro wouldn't warrant too receive as much discussion if it was an album by someone new and Aphex Twin never existed who hadn't got a 20 year plus catalogue of highly-regarded music.

I'm sort of feeling like I should agree with the above but at the same time I have to admit I'm torn. I'm a fan of new and exciting sounds, weird ideas - musical gimmicks even. On a personal level, discovering Aphex and getting into his stuff was very much about that. I was always amazed at how he rarely repeated the same idea twice and I was always blown away by how he could change drastically from album to album, or even track to track on albums like ICBYD.

That has always been a large part of the appeal for me - the fact you never really know what to expect or what you're going to get next. Enjoying the RDJ sound and how he has a great knack for melodies etc is one thing, but it's not like we're talking the Ramones or AC/DC here. More than the cult of personality, the beauty of his ambient work, his scatological humour, the insane rhythm patterns, I always felt it was the sense of discovery and the maverick attitude which went with his work that was the real draw.

It's something I cherish in nearly all my favourite artists and bands - a sense of diversity, not being tied down, trying out new paths etc... Is this the same as 'breaking ground'? Whatever this means is down to semantics and could be discussed at length, but it could also be a useful shorthand for what I'm saying above. I believe this was one of the key reasons some people were slightly disappointed when Druqks came out - it had all the right ingredients but it was largely an improvement on ideas he'd already sketched out on the Come To Daddy and Windowlicker EPs before it.

Obv people enjoy music for different reasons and this is just my perspective. I certainly don't expect to have my mind caved in by Syro the same way Bouncing Bucephalus Ball did when I was 16 and trying pot for the first time round at an older friend's house. To do so would be disappointing and highly foolish. Syro's gonna be great. It's going to have a lot of brilliant ideas, thrills, spills, humour, wonderful melodies and who knows it might well do something utterly perplexing, but I'm not setting myself up to have my worldview changed. Instead I'm looking forward to the day it turns up at my desk, I'm gonna go home and listen to it lying on my bed with a cup of tea and just let the music do the talking.

http://aphex-twin.wikia.com/wiki/Unreleased_Live_Tracks

warning: SPOILERS

wasn't the metz track on confederate trough or whatever?

I'm not looking forward this album being in any way "groundbreaking," but I am hoping it sounds like more than just a compilation of tracks he's had lying around for years. Which, yeah, it probably is, but still, I hope it works as a cohesive whole and not something he just randomly tossed together. Though again, that's sort of his infamous MO, so ...

wasn't the metz track on confederate trough or whatever?

hell no. Fredugolon 6 is though

ye gads am i so old that it all begins to sound the same?
whatever - i like it !

exclusive leaked pic from syro listening party http://i.imgur.com/R7ZuO3S.jpg

cant tell if serious.

Anyway bumping because apparently the artwork packaging includes the complete list of all the software/hardware he used for each track which music makers might find interesting. Here's a transcript:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S3FoD2h2fa7UDU5Q-yVmdTnaLmAA2nNaE1kl6S9GnEU/pubhtml

46 instruments on XMAS_EVET10 (thanaton3 mix) !?

yeah Branwell linked to this infographic upthread http://i.imgur.com/NwlH3Ge.jpg but it's good to see the xls too.

doing a bit of a dog latin classic here, but this idea reminds me ever so slightly of Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense concept in which David Byrne, influenced by Noh theatre among other things, was keen to expose the 'strings' behind the live performance and therefore started the show by stripping the stage down to the backing rigs and treating the stage-hands as performers in themselves. I like this idea of making the creative process the product in itself. Have many other bands/artists done this? Radiohead maybe?

Loads of electronic albums list all the synths/drum machines/computer programs/other instruments used in creating them in the liner notes, this is hardly a new idea. Listing them track-by-track is rarer, but that's been done too by people like Atom Heart (on this album, for example). I'd say it's all part of the deconstruction of the "artistic genius" myth many electronic musicians have been doing since the early 90s; techno artists calling them "producers" (i.e. technical manufacturers) rather than musicians is another example of this.

It's interesting to see this on an Aphex album though, since he hasn't really been in the deconstruction camp, his image has been exactly of that "unanalyzable genius" that stuff like gear lists have tried to debunk. Has he included such lists on any earlier records?

i don't believe he has. being cagey about his methods has always been a part of his mystique, but it's interesting to hear how atom heart et al have done similar things (albeit, this sort of Brechtian exposition has rarely been so blatant as to make gear-lists and expenses summaries a part of the actual cover/marketing campaign)

i'm kinda digging the de-romanticisation rug-pull, even if it was the only route left

A band like Scritti Politti were listing breakdowns of costs, contact numbers of pressing plants, studios and their own address for further information on the sleeves of their records as part of the punk diy spirit in the early 80s.

That said, there's some other much more contemporary and darker aspect to the design and context of Syro that infects the whole Brechtian or Benjaminian Artist as Producer gesture - it seems more about the reduction of culture to analytics and metrics in this case, it's about calculation.

interested to hear this now, though the first 'single' isnt exactly the most exciting thing ive heard from him. sounds like a decent album track (or damp squib if im being less charitable) but its not his 'get lucky' (as far as 90s dance megastar comebacks, and the vocoder on there seems to want that comparison). the previews do make it sound like this could have come out in 2003 or something though. all those references to breakbeats and joke-jungle dont have me that hopeful that this will be anything more than RDJ doing what he usually does, whereas i for some reason was hoping that he might have come back with something to blow the minds of rustie and fly lo, etc. in one of the interviews he talked about wanting someone to go through his tracks and pick the best ones as he cant do it - not sure if he was serious, but maybe thats what he needs. make mike paradinas should do it.

i can't quite work it out myself, but yeah there's something typically sinister about it. is it the stark dot matrix typeface? is it the feeling we're being shown something maybe we'd rather not see (preposterous, as it's not like we're being shown the Come To Daddy demon's genital area like in that video)? all the same it still feels like there's a mischief or playful maliciousness at work here, like I'm half expecting him to pop out from behind all the data and start screaming at me or something...

Just remembered during my driving lesson the other day, a white car pulled up next to me at a stop light playing the intro bars to Windowlicker and I very nearly started freaking out. It was only my second lesson.

that was xpost to MikoMcha

That presentation is very http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/ - the metrics and analytics presented in that circular format.

i love that book.

"Collapse EP is awesome too. man why'd he have to go away again"

seems to have cracked totally after his father passed, plus all his statements re covid/quarantine made me worry for his mental health