Aphex Twin classic or Dud?

(typical photographer)

https://i.imgur.com/NqK7dqF.jpg

can't believe its taken me so long to notice this

What’s the one on the left?

Magnetic Fields by Jean-Michel Jarre

I doubt RDJ is much of a fan which makes this funnier tbh

Do you think it's intentional or just a random coincidence? Seems pretty coincidental to me, besides having a closeup of the artist's face on a white background (which is hardly uncommon), the covers aren't that similar: Jarre shows 1/2 of a face, Aphex has 3/4; Jarre is shot from a straight angle and shows only the face + a bit of neck, Aphex is shot from slightly above and shows some shoulder as well; Jarre includes the artist name and album title, Aphex doesn't.

sorry, these look nothing alike

^

tough crowd

I don't know if it's intentional or not though I'd imagine he definitely knows who JMJ is

Seems pretty coincidental to me, besides having a closeup of the artist's face on a white background (which is hardly uncommon)

for instrumental electronic music I think it's pretty uncommon! though obviously RDJ is pretty willing to do it

alright listen you little shits

Magnetic Fields

It's Les chants magnétiques, not Les champs magnétiques, except of course 'chants' and 'champs' are homophones in French.

I agree with the others that Afx's pose probably isn't a callback but I like the speculation.

Brilliant as ever. Visuals no slouch either. https://youtu.be/961uG4Ixg_Y

WTF @ 2/3 of Smojphace (which I just listened to for the first time and which will probably be the last thing I ever hear now that my eardrums have been thoroughly scoured)

I don't 'do' memes but if I did this would be a great candidate for the 'Lou Reed: (records Metal Machine Music); RDJ: Hold my beer.' treatment.

since it's my thread, i am gonna vouch for Ovuca - Onclements, which is great and I've been listening to it all week (and it's on Rephlex so semi-on topic)

it's amazing how consistently good these dj(+live?) sets are xxpost

I think those Smojphace tracks are supposed to be fed through a visualiser thingy

(Not new music)

what the fucking fuck is going on here?https://t.co/cPLG868cP0

(h/t @djhausUTTU)

— Posthuman (@posthuman) March 4, 2020

Probably forgot to renew the domain registration? The incest pron link on the contact page seems like a giveaway tbf

looks like a "prank" to me !!!

I vote prank

it's a very well observed one if so

The domain's WhoIs details are weird (the registrant/tech contact is purported to be someone named Elizabeth Hanks in Clinton, NJ) -- but it's hosted out of the UK and doesn't appear to have changed hands recently.

New tracks?

download the mp3s and check the comments ;_;

huh?

Oh, yeah, I saw that. (Apparently his father recently passed, and he dedicated at least one track to him.)

brimstead: https://soundcloud.com/user18081971

better: https://soundcloud.com/user18081971/tracks

no I got it, I just thought lukas’ initial post implied it was fake or something

o i c

'qu 1' is beautiful and sad.

I won’t attempt to parse the exact p.o.v. behind the cluster of URLs in the profile’s “Bio,” but there’s definitely a p.o.v. being expressed.

oh he's a covid truther cool

That stuff seems to have now been removed from the bio. Good, I guess.

Pretty fun thread.

It’s almost hard to believe now because mental drum programming is so synonymous with Aphex but the RDJ Album was really seen by many at the time as him embracing the drum n bass movement. To that point, drum programming had been a feature of his releases, but with RDJ—and esp. Come to Daddy—it became a focus and a signature of sorts. TBH, I’m not sure I’ve ever totally warmed to it but in some cases I dialed that’s intentional.

Those albums are the most dated he’s released

still love his digital drill n bass stuff. a lot of the humour has aged badly, but I still get a lot of pleasure from the tracks

I can’t hang with some of the cloying melodies on RDJ these days, still love 4 and yellow calx...if anything Druqks has grown in my estimation

never a big come to daddy fan apart from IZ-US

and “arched maid via rdj” def a timeless aphex drill n bass tune

CTD EPs are very much my favourites in a career of highlights. Maybe not so much the title track, but everything else is lovely.

Cloying Afx and creepy clown Afx (not mutually exclusive) are the facets of his music I like the least.

once you take those out, there isn't much left though, is there? not sure about 'cloying' melodies though - any examples?

'Milkman' bridges the gap between the two and is thus doubly insufferable.

forget I said anything

I’d just like to take this opportunity to point out once again that Syro absolutely rules.

So I’ve been digging thru the entire Aphex discography over the last several weeks … I wasn’t exactly a noob to him—I’ve had I Care Because You Do and Mike and Rich since they were released and RDJA and the SAWs on my iTunes forever—but I’ve never done a proper deep dive until now. It’s actually really interesting to hear his complete output with 2020 ears and sensibilities and absent the nostalgia I think that colors a lot of recent-ish writing about him, particularly since his 2014 comeback.

A few thoughts on his “proper releases” — some of which is gonna make me seem like a hater, but trust me when I say I’ve been really into and excited about this stuff on the whole and appreciate most of what he's released.

SAW 85-92 — This is probably the record that has the biggest gap between reputation and reality. Don’t get me wrong — I like it. Heliosphan is a killer tune (tho I like the live SC dump one better) and some of his signatures (melancholy keyboard melodies aching in the distance) get a trial run here. But it remains the least boundary-pushing record he’s done. While the tunes are nice, the conceit and execution are sort of strikingly basic, from its use of samples (like the Gene Wilder nick) to the beats. The whole thing sounds like it uses a grand total of three or four pieces of gear — one drum machine, one or two keyboards that use a couple of presets fed thru a cavernous Quadraverb. Is that part of its allure? For sure — and the cassette mastering here adds to the charm. But for a record that won Pitchfork’s ranking of 50 best IDM albums (some good writing in there BTW), a lot of this feels slight ... and slightly faceless in some ways. I’m not going to say they were doing it better necessarily but there’s not a lot here that many of his contemporaries weren’t doing at the same time.

SAW Vol. II — Let’s get this out of the way: most of the best loved stuff here sounds like Eno pastiche. Rhubarb nails the hyper-melodic Apollo/“An Ending” vibe. Stone in Focus is pretty much the last track on On Land. And Lichen is straight up Discreet Music. There’s a lot of kind of aimless atonal noodles here—“Curtains,” “Radiator”—that don’t feel much more significant than his SC dump. Of course, there’s also some really excellent sound design — “Trees” has a cool rumbling — and several tracks seem to have been slowed down, adding to kind of a spooky feel. “Blue Calx” is also gorgeous — where the authentic Aphex compositional style kind of emerges. A part of me feels like this is the record where IDM’s “anything goes” ideology really took hold — where form, melody and beats even aren’t really necessary anymore. Which I can appreciate if not always love. And which may have something to do with why this record is seen more as a masterpiece today than when it was released.

I Care Because You Do — Ok, now we’re talking. "Acrid Avid Jam Shred" is one of my favorites — it’s a simple pleasure in a lot of ways but what makes it special is how you start to hear Aphex’s mutating structures. What starts as a bouncy drum piece with a modest chord refrain completely changes when he introduces a longing pad figure at about three minutes in. When he takes the beat back up and adds a little whistle counter-melody, the whole track becomes glorious: beautiful, head-bobby, funny and emotional all at once. The pacing is extraordinary. If the rest of the record doesn’t *really* live up to the promise of its opener, that’s ok because it’s still pretty terrific. The introduction of “proper” orchestral textures (reinforced by the later Philip Glass arrangement of Icct Hedral) is an obvious but welcome reference point — and on tracks like “Wax the Nip” gel nicely with the frantic drums. “Mookid” and “Alberto Balsalm” get a lot of the love because they’re respites from a lot of what comes before—and they’re nice—but that’s probably all. Even still, this feels like the record where the whole Aphex aesthetic really kicks in — from the evil grin artwork, to the you-will-try-but-never-dance-to-these beats, to the melodies that don’t seem like much but are oddly affecting.

More when I come back up for air from work ...

Co sign every bit of that

Awesome! Squarepusher when you're done plz?

The whole thing sounds like it uses a grand total of three or four pieces of gear

I know you acknowledge this in the following sentence, but yes, this is part of the allure and why it deserves a place on Pitchfork's or anyone's top 50 IDM albums (it'd be in my top 5). It's easy to forget now how alien this felt and sounded at the time.

I mostly agree with your SAW2 take though!

Nice write ups!

In new aphex news, he seems to have again been collaborating on some gear with novation

AFX is back, but what are @WeAreNovation up to? https://t.co/MCmgGa00ik

— DJ Mag (@DJmag) October 8, 2020