Anticipating SYRO the new (2014) album by Aphex Twin

I need to spend more time with this album but I've still not managed to get it onto my laptop. :-/

this is a great record

I don't get tombot's review, because it is obviously not at all a phoned in record, it's artisan & fussed over and all polished considered angles. for me the appeal of his 90's stretch was exactly how slapdash & effortless it seemed, so many of his early tracks seemed like live mixdowns, and even when he got into microediting by Hangable, he was still evolving his soundset faster than everyone else. then a three year pause, during which time many people moved entirely to software and techno really blossomed into weirdness & total abstraction -- when he came back, it was with something micro-edited and sweated over, but kind of acid-retro in sound, and the knives came out from all the quarters who felt like the guy had been sneering at them over his shoulder for a decade

Syro's chords & melodies are more present than on Chosen or Tuss, and his tunings are always his secret weapon, and I'm middle aged now and can totally appreciate a record that consolidates instead of piledrives

the level of curlicued intricacy and precision on syro might just be the sort of watershed that allows him to go to more freeform material

some of those cruder analord tracks are among his best work, he has the sort of talent that can apply itself to simple process tracks or refined heavily edited windowlicker/'xmas evet' types of things with equal success

did he ever have a three year pause?

between rdj album and drukqs?

windowlicker to drukqs was a pause during a very busy three years. if you want major label signposts, the same period as LP5 to Confield, though there was a mountain of abstract techno that paved the way for Confield -- I could name my favorite 5-6 artists but there'd be 40-60 others, taking in shows here in SF felt like riding the edge of a wave.

xp it's funny, I like the dense Syro tracks but the most instantly likable thing for me is still 180db, which sounds like the closest thing to a livemix

that was slightly before my time although ive always felt the compression of formal/technical 'progress' to be particularly acute then

what are you thinking of in terms of confield precursors

drukqs sounds like it took several years to make, don't know if that period of time would qualify as a pause.

syro is packed with great moments, it's difficult to really digest in one sitting. i've got a similar misgiving with the 'title' track, it feels sorta showboat/lacking tunefulness for the first half, then gets melodically interesting with its progression. definitely have warmed to the 2nd to last (squarepusher-y/ceephax-like?) track, which seemed to meander a lot at first. where the melodies once seemed haphazard, they've taken hold in a pleasant way. PAPAT4 never gets old

Windowlicker to Drukqs is only a couple of years, it's the same gap as between Come To Daddy and Windowlicker and it contains a lot of material. Obviously both of these period are a big gap for a dude who was knocking out at least an album's worth of music a year for most of the 90s, and usually completely different from what preceded it at that.

Hmm.... I feel like a terrible terrible person for sating this but I sort of slightly agree with tombot's post. It's not that I don't appreciate the artisanship that went into this record, it's just that I find myself forcing myself to put it on. And even when I do, I get through a side and switch it off. Maybe it's something to do with the Autechre poll happening around the same time as Syro and getting engrossed again in their sound, but I dunno.... This one is a fine listen. There's nothing explicitly wrong with it, I just feel a similar way to this as I do to Campfire Headphase or Scintilli or other latter-period Warp acts who released records that sounded like a good-but-nothing-new crystallisation of their sound. The idea of Aphex-by-number's just doesn't compute in my world, and while many might be very satisfied by this - a polished, familiar sound; a welcome return to form- I just can't pretend that that's what I'd been holding out for, especially in light of all the electronic music that has come out within his sabbatical period. I mean, the prospect of listening to the new Objekt album appeals to me more than Syro - a fact i just can't fathom right now. Maybe in a few months I'll get to hear Syro with less eager ears and appreciate it for what it is, but for now it feels like work as opposed to something I get super excited about listening to.

Some pretty messy writing in that last post. Sorry I'm on my phone.

>confield precursors

there are so many records that skewed weird that there's no one list, but from my own listening, Phthalocyanine & everything on the Phthalo label, O.S.T., Lesser, the stranger Kit Clayton 12"s (and eps like this: http://www.discogs.com/4mod3-A-Translation-Of-Simplicity/release/316202), things like Vladislav Delay's Multila, everything on Mego, RIOU's 'to-to' EP -- from my bay-area-centric stance Blectum/Matmos/Sutekh (oh even 606) and a constant stream of weirdos from Berlin and France were playing out fairly improvised live sets, stranger than their records to fairly large crowds. Too many boundry-pushing records to count from 2000 forward. 'Confield' wasn't just trailblazing, it was validation of the wider weirder threads. Not everyone liked it (when they played Oakland with a set that made the album sound conservative the crowd went from 800 to about 100 by show end) but regardless, against that crowded background, Drukqs read as retro

so many of those people were so far below their level thats its difficult to credit them as precursors in anything other than an accidental sense

phthalocyanine especially were a shorthand for 'idm' landfill

oh I wouldn't say that. 'Navy Warship' made an impression on me when I came out. It's just so broken. The main reason I mention those records as opposed to others are the use off-grid rhythms that still feel musically on, and Dimitri always had some great broken beats. No need to argue 'precursors' or influence or any of that nonsense but there was definitely a fairly large ecology writhing around there from 98-01 and a lot of mutual listening.

doesnt that just reflect the same new technology that everyone was using at the same time

'paving the way' only in an inadvertent sense

if you like -- it's an interesting argument that one should only get the credit for something if they consciously knew what they were doing, or qualify a work as only being accidentally interesting. especially when so many of these records were obviously pursuing an intentionally broken aesthetic, trying to make a precise genre sound totally mutant (Blectum being a good, divisive example of car crash music made by very clever people -- Kevin had some of the most advanced Max patches around circa 98/99: http://www.kevyb.com/kevin/msp.html)

you can say you prefer what Autechre did with the same software later (compare 'Cap.IV' to 'The Inside Story') -- and I'd agree Autechre's quality control was markedly high in an era when everyone started putting out way too much, and that 'Confield' mattered because it was confident and considered. but I remember O.S.T. opening for them in Oakland in '98 and being reassured that they were connected to previous few years' worth of odd musork.

/O.S.T. opened for them in 2001, not '98!

as an SF local I am probably hopelessly biased towards a lot of this music, it was what was playing. even then it wasn't for everyone! just the same, it was all fantastic.

navy warship is a ridiculous and singular record that has next to nothing to do with autechre

listening now somehow it is on streaming services and shit is all hand sequenced unquantized aggro sloppy carnival music, seemingly owing more to free jazz and noise and probably mr bungle or whatever than any form of programmed dance music basically it is the exact opposite of the pristine beat and filter science x lush fluttering melodies formula that would come to define idm and make it suck in the 21st century

so i downloaded RIOU's 'to-to' EP which unlike most of that stuff is new to me and it's excellent

there are probably two sometimes contrary sometimes related purposes here, the ecological view of how all sorts of disparate people were learning to deploy the same technology and similar musical material during the same era, and the more distant observer sifting through that ecosystem

i still have a lot of love for mego of that time such as the fennesz rehberg o'rourke live recordings, and for anything vladislav delay was doing, lee gamble was quoted in an interview saying that seeing hecker live in 1999 was important for him which makes a lot of sense

in terms of the more 'broken' and cluttered maximal 'idm' sound that predominated in the english speaking world, i will still happily play hrvatski's irrevocably overdriven break freakout megamix but afx and autechre seem to have inhabited a more rarified level that nobody else got close to

ummm maybe

>hrvatski's irrevocably overdriven break freakout megamix

That was a great concert. The bartender at RX gallery was a local noise musician named Gustavo with a real mean streak who worked a day shift in a metal shop and came in to work the bar with a headache. The house PA was over behind the bar and he kept turning the master level down throughout the night, even though the bar was packed filled with people who kept yelling 'turn it up' because it really was far too quiet. Keith kept trying, but by the time he was redlining the hapless promoter walked over to intervene in it being turned down again and there was nearly a fistfight. Anyway, the DAT was completely sawed off but in the best possible way and I'm not surprised it came out.

as an SF local I am probably hopelessly biased towards a lot of this music

be honest, these are your bff's and drinking buddies! If I can be honest about that when I post about Weasel Walter, you can do the same when posting about Bevin, Kevin B., Sutekh, Josh "I'm not really anti-semitic, I just hate Israel" Clayton, etc.

Me, I only listen to Cornish artists who make Cornish music for Cornish people!

mazel tov!

Meur ras...

Early 00's North Herts 'tronica mega shout outs to Dot.Hardcore, Sully, Freudstein, Teflon Child...

>be honest, these are your bff's and drinking buddies

Ha yes ok lets be honest sarah, I am big upping California pals on an aphex thread on a message board from my desk job, using the same user name for years. See you tonight at the zeek sheck show maybe.

That was a great concert. The bartender at RX gallery was a local noise musician named Gustavo with a real mean streak who worked a day shift in a metal shop and came in to work the bar with a headache. The house PA was over behind the bar and he kept turning the master level down throughout the night, even though the bar was packed filled with people who kept yelling 'turn it up' because it really was far too quiet. Keith kept trying, but by the time he was redlining the hapless promoter walked over to intervene in it being turned down again and there was nearly a fistfight. Anyway, the DAT was completely sawed off but in the best possible way and I'm not surprised it came out.

― Milton Parker, Friday, 17 October 2014 05:52 (14 hours ago)

i enjoyed this post greatly
back in the day i used to appreciate its full spectrum redlining for making the most noise possible from laptop speakers
see also: the arte povera minor great that is 'hello dirty' by massimo (mego, 2002) an album which surely deserves its own thread at some point

xp - I will be there, because I am letting some bffs and drinking buddies borrow some of my drum kit!

Wait was RX gallery the place that was partially an actual metal shop? Saw a great breakcore show there years ago. Bookshelves filled with books in the performance space, twamps of weed for sale at the bar, good times.

nah nevermind the place i'm thinking of is south of market, near caesar chavez blvd

RX was in the tenderloin. You might be thinking of Cellspace or maybe flowershop?

Flowershop was it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-QV4n-z-9k

you made it a hot line / i made it a hot song

great move d track

https://soundcloud.com/richarddjames

dnw

Oh, I thought this revive was for this:

http://noyzelab.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/syrobonkers-part1.html

(he is lying about everything, including lying about when he's lying.)

that was my orig name b4 aphex

pbod, phonic boy on dope :)))

lol

The 911 truther BS he spouts is depressing as all fuck. But I guess, like, here is a guy who is totally disconnected from any reality except that which filters in through his weird hacker-friends filter, and it's just... Of all the conclusions you could have drawn about the state of the world, and the problems in it, and this is the one you go for. But I guess that's what happens when you take that much acid for that long, like, all of the paranoia in your head circles back on itself, and in the course of being so sceptical that you believe nothing, you end up believing anything.

Was that what he was saying? I thought he was decrying those people that thought it was an inside job etc. I hoped he was, anyway..

this interview is AMAZING

Recently when some journo's were saying 'so you actually believe 9/11 was an inside job' , attempting to paint picture of me bein a crackpot , {yawn} I was totally shocked, they were intelligent people but still they didnt get it, just popularist, pandering to what they think will be popular, instead of thinking for themselves and expressing their own opinions.
Im really, really sorry to all folks who might be reading this but if you believe the ridiculous story that is being pedaled about 9/11 from the mainstream media then you are absolutely gullible, some very clever people are also very naive and very gullible, they are not nasty people but very trusting and theyre good nature is being taken advantage of. Not believing the mainstream media is very hard for some folk who have put their trust and faith in the state and press, breaking that faith will not be an easy process for many.
Some people just see through bullshit very effortlessly and can easily tell when people are lying, others it seems can't , that in itself is an area im interested in.
When I first watched footage of 9/11, I was around this geezers house in London , he is a real geezer n all , I was buying old jungle records , he had this massive widescreen tv in his flat which was too big for the room, classic and as soon as we watched the twin towers being struck ,he said really matter of factly , they just did it to themselves and I was like thank fuk for that, people are not THAT gullible.

It really seems like he's agreeing here with people who state that, contrary to the 'mainstream media' that 'the US did it to themselves'.

Is there another reading I could be getting out of this? It doesn't even seem like a 'The US did it to themselves (with 60 years of shitty post-WW2 foreign policy)" it seems like he's a sodding truther. If there's an another explanation of this, please tell me how to read it because I'd like not to believe it. But a guy who a few bits earlier was quoting They Live like it's a documentary not sci-fi doesn't have me hopeful. :-/

The receipt for his dx100 signed by his Mum! <3

Yeah, how you said it with that "60 years" bit was how I read it, but yeah, sigh, chalk another one..

i like how the interview person keeps being all like "｢nervously｣ uh yeah david icke, interesting guy. but anyway how about that casio fz10? awesome bit of kit"

Sad you didn't add your $0.02 cents tbh :(