Aphex Twin classic or Dud?

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.

paul woodford posted a peel session from 92: https://soundcloud.com/paulwoolford/sc-aphex-twin-peel-session-1992-live-from-sheffield-hallam-university-1993

https://twitter.com/RussellHaswell/status/716983519189327873

http://gcasfm.com/blog/hospital-radio-dj-food - DJ Food - Selected Aphex Works part 2

(this was part 1 by the way : https://soundcloud.com/ninja-tune/solid-steel-radio-show-1322015-part-1-2-dj-food )

19 Bradley echoes. So great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R74JBqM0lw8

PURE BUZZ

It's amazing that something this great was archived for years, unreleased and then dumped as part of an en masse.

i love this v SAW 85-92-sounding track -- it was my morning alarm for a few months

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8Rc0vPmSA

Yeah that's great.

Aphex Yay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg_frWfGNmQ&list=RDJI8Rc0vPmSA&index=3

oops meant to post this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg_frWfGNmQ&list=RDJI8Rc0vPmSA&index=3

fuck

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13346617_10153445376705566_8240176362879208248_n.jpg?oh=4c240948d4caefc00336b2ccfbd5ee98&oe=57C1AFD1

LOVE the cover

I used to work for a business to business advertising company and pretty much every ad they designed looked exactly like that, but a good 15 years after that's was the style du jour.

http://www.cheetah-ep.com/

Aphex Twin
Cheetah EP
WAP391

Released: 08/07/2016
Formats: Vinyl, CD, Ltd Edition Cassette, Digital

01. CHEETAHT2 [Ld spectrum]
02. CHEETAHT7b
03. CHEETA1b ms800
04. CHEETA2 ms800
05. CIRKLON3 [ Колхозная mix ]
06. CIRKLON 1
07. 2X202-ST5*

*CD, Cassette and Digital track only, included on download available with vinyl

http://www.gforcesoftware.com/extras/syntharchive/cheetah-ms800

"The preproduction unit didn’t have a single factory sound, well, not that I could bloody well find” Chris recalls.

"During the course of the next few weeks I translated the manual into a series of diagrams and charts that visually allowed me to understand the ‘flow’ of the parameters, after which I set about creating ‘Tones’ and 'Patches' for this 15 note polyphonic, multi-timbral, filterless (what?), stereo bell box. The most bizarre thing is that you couldn't hear your parameter changes in real-time. You have to enter ‘edit mode’ adjust your parameters and then exit ‘edit mode’ to hear your changes."

Beyond daft? We think so because given its almost totally incomprehensible editing system could it have been a contributing factor to Cheetah vanishing soon after the MS800's release?

Nonetheless the MS800 had an almost unique tone and parameter structure which made it sonically interesting and reasonably useful back in the day. Nowadays though, we think it's a more interesting box of tricks than it was back then and the tones that you can coax from it provides a great counterbalance to analogue. The best description of the MS800's sound we've heard is "a PPG meets a Wavestation via a Sid Station."

Nonetheless it remains the most difficult instrument to program on the planet - If you don’t believe us trawl the net and find a manual. Once you've read it, if you're still interested in giving it a go, let us know, we’ve still got ours.

sounds like programming the DX7

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P6vjIE8T3Ws/V1i-iWsKGmI/AAAAAAAKZ5M/qVe0ZxSzQJI0SgIMzBDCab1OlaogmWFXgCLcB/s640/13339478_1203121433031596_8653733728797572480_n.jpg

nice