I LOVE DRUKQS+

The stretch between "vordhosbn" and "Afx237 V7" is great, but after that I usually turn it off or skip 7 tracks

You can makea a dinky 60 minute cut by ripping out all the whoops-I-left-the-tape-running moments.

grozart's response intrigues me; I'm going to buy this.

"Avril 14th" is like the best soundtrack piece Jon Brion never wrote.

i love drukqs

i wonder if druckqs will be one of those albums that gradually gets the kudos and props that weren't there initially, until, one day, it is described as a classic (probably around the time of the next release, when people will say "man this, shit is just druckqs redux, now that was a cool lp"???

― gareth, Monday, March 11, 2002 8:00 PM

^^

miss gareth :(

Hmm, I just noticed that my copy of "Druckqs" has a parental advisory sticker on it. What am I missing?

It has a song called "Cock", no other reason really.

Which I guess makes Richard James the only other act besides Frank Zappa (at least that I can think of) to get a parental advisory notice stuck on an instrumental release.

There's a swear on one of the tracks I think?

yeah 'Cock/Ver10' has the word "cunt" on it

Yeah. All I could hear in my head was the Squarepusher track with "I'm the fucking daddy" on it.

Jeez I bought my copy from Warp and I actually have a sticker somewhere that says "Come On You Cunt Let's Have Some Aphex Acid"

I have just bought this album again, and am about to listen to it for only the second time in 10 years.

It's just become such a "thing," my fear of this album. I think I'm such a different person and have such different tastes in music and different expectations that it will be interesting for me to see how my reactions to it have changed.

how can you even remember your reaction to an album (a double disc album no less) that you heard once over 10 years ago?

I always wrote this album off due to hearing a lot of bad reviews (ok, just from allmusic, but in my teen years AMG was biblical to me), I'm kind of curious about it now.

i remember my reaction and that was that it was good, but nothing new - and "something new" was what i'd come to expect of aphex, and therefore druqks was a bit of a failure. i've dug this out recently and it's a real re-assessor. Ziggomatic is a good fun tune peeps.

i was disappointed by this when it came out for the same reason. i've since come to see it as the last word in "drill n bass" shit or whatever, with a pretty brilliant mix of other material thrown in. doesn't always work though, and admittedly i most often listen to a single-disc redux of favorites i made if i put it on these days...

i love this album and i really can't wait to see what he comes up with next

i didn't really get into chosen lords or much of the analord stuff but bwoon dub off analord02 is very nice

I also liked Drukqs a lot more than critics did, but admittedly could've done without the multiple straight-piano songs.

Because it was SOOO hyped before hand (and Aphex phanboys are a whole WORLD of obsessiveness if you've never encountered them) and then the critical reaction was a bit "hrrrmmm" and because it was just such an EVENT that Mr. D.James could put out an album that was viewed as less than stellar. It was also the early days of the Blogosphere and I guess EVENT records that send shockwaves across the Blogosphere are a dime a dozen now and therefore not such an event, but at the time it seemed to take up a lot more space, culturally, than it might otherwise. I guess I just heard so many Aphex phanboys who were outraged that it coloured the experience for me and I approached it on first listen with the expectation that it was going to be both hard going and not very good.

It's odd how the critical reaction of other people can colour your experience of a record, even to make you dislike something you wouldn't normally pay attention to. But also, at the time, I don't think I *liked* Aphex. I was a Spacemen 3 stan who didn't see the point of "modern dance music" - i.e. I liked Selected Ambient Works (but saw it as an outlier that was nothing like the rest of his stuff) and Orbital, but wasn't prepared to go any further out than that at all.

In 2001 I was in a very different place, emotionally and musically, and listening to a lot of glitchy era Radiohead and people were saying to me "you shouldn't be listening to that, you should be listening to Aphex and Squarepusher" and so I tried this album, and my reaction was that it was NOTHING like what I liked about Kid A/Amnesiac - my immediate reaction was "bleurgh, this is a lot of noise and disjointed random rhythms that make no sense."

It's funny, though, *now* having learned a lot more, and broadened my tastes, my reaction to it is very different. I mean, the other record I just bought at the same time was the new FlyLo and if I can pick out order and pattern from that burst of randomness, Drukqs is almost easy listening by comparison. A lot of the stuff that just irritated me at the time (WTF? Why does he have his parents singing happy birthday on one track? And some random chick shouting at him in French on another? What's with the awkward piano solos?) makes a lot more sense in the context of knowing more about him as an artist and as a human being. It seems less like a random assortment of sounds, and more like a carefully crafted collage of a self portrait.

So it's partly about taking a record on its own terms, rather than as a Cultural Event. And partly about how my tastes have completely changed. (It's funny, I thought people's tastes were supposed to get narrower in their 30s. My tastes got narrower in my 20s, then just completely exploded in my late 30s)

There's something very creepy in Richard's mum's Cornish-accented voice isn't there? What about that whooping laughter on one of the Ventolin EPs?

Erm, no. I thought his mum sounds like a right laugh. Especially the impromptu harmony on the "tooo yooouuu" bit. More Welsh than Cornish accent, though.

"Richie" made me laugh, though. The idea of anyone calling him Richie seems inconceivable but clearly his mum does. Adorable.

COME ON YOU C*NTS LETS HAVE SOME APHEX ACID!

Ha, I never could figure out what dude said before acid.

this album always reminds me of living in a dorm, staying up late working on paintings

BASS
BIT

The long Kate post up thread is awesome, ILM all-time.

Alan N - I always heard that as "decent bit"

definitely could be wrong on that one. but cool track.

so, I listened last night and was a little taken back by how abrasive some of this album is. and after all these years, I'm still not sure how I feel about this one.

and admittedly i most often listen to a single-disc redux of favorites i made if i put it on these days...

same here.

a playlist of the ambient/interlude/piano tracks off this makes a pretty good bootleg SAWIII

The *intricacy* of the drum programming on the "drill and bass" bits just blows me away every time.

After living with it for a few weeks, I cannot believe I ever disliked this album. It's just a digital orgasm, from end to end.

I haven't listened to this album in like 5 years. I will revisit it today.

i'd forgotten about this little gem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1ZGIrNf71Q

Can someone please tell me what shoegaze choon it is that Jynweythek Ylow so reminds me? It's driving me nuts. Kept thinking it was a Pale Saints song but it wasn't that.

im listening to some record called "canaxis 5" by Technical Space Composer's Crew from 1969 and theres a bonus track titled "Cruise"

the intro appears to be what Aphex Twin sampled for the intro of "Afx237 v7" AKA the sound used for when Rubber Johnny opens his mouth and makes a weird noise... although it might just sound like it and not be a sample at all...

Can someone please tell me what shoegaze choon it is that Jynweythek Ylow so reminds me? It's driving me nuts. Kept thinking it was a Pale Saints song but it wasn't that.

― Using an Aural Exciter in an Orgone Accumulator (Masonic Boom), Sunday, May 30, 2010 4:41 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have FINALLY worked it out. Not Pale Saints but Boo Radleys.

The melody on Jynnweythek Ilow is a lot like the melody on the verse of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctN2-aHz12A

Ha, I love that Boos track but would never have made the connection. Don't tell Tuomas or he'll start talking litigation! (Actually a pretty good example of how the importance of melody in pop is often overstated, imo.)

I think it's just that both AFX and the Boos had a thing for those kind of jaunty, wistful ("Celtic"?) melodies. Melody is pretty much the least important thing in terms of music, it's much more about arrangement, atmosphere, everything else. Because my brain has for years been making the jump between those two songs whenever I hear one, it goes to the other, but the actual tracks really are nothing alike.

the first dozen or so posts on this thread are something

Haha, I never heard that boos/Aphex connection and they're two of my favourite acts in the history of music!

For what it's worth, I'm always tempted to do a 'Richard's Mum' harmony whenever anyone gets sung
'Happy Birthday'.

this album rules

meltphace 6

http://www.blackmailmag.com/images/MUSICA/drukqs-longvinyl.jpg

Absolute masterpiece. His finest work.

Vordhosbn is great. The beats scurry and dovetail frantically from the melody in a wonderful way.

It seems less like a random assortment of sounds, and more like a carefully crafted collage of a self portrait.

― The Curve Of Blinding Energy (Masonic Boom)