Aphex Twin classic or Dud?

I know you’re just doing major albums, but you should really take a detour for Windowlicker – it’s a key piece of the puzzle.

I agree - Come To Daddy EP does everything I like about him. Fuses prettiness, ribald mischief and bonkers complexity all in the mix and just keeps throwing ideas at you

a lot of kind of aimless atonal noodles here—“Curtains,”

"curtains" is in my top 3 for saw ii. sounds like sci-fi noir.

Goon Gumpas and Logon Rock Witch are two of my favorite tracks on RDJ, and I love how he branches out into crazy instrument combos and unique atmospherics with them (and most of the rest of the record too... it has the widest palette of any RDJ release). While Come to Daddy sounds more polished and cohesive thematically, I felt it lost the playful adventurousness of its predecessor somewhat, and he hasn't recaptured that since.

I shouldn't say "lost" maybe diminished. By Drukqs he'd firmly baked his style into place and lost his adventurousness by then.

Flow Coma remix was the last thing that sounded really fresh to me. there's a lot of good stuff since then, but yeah it lacks the sense of discovery.

Really enjoying this revive.

The SC dump was a lot of fun, maybe the best thing of his I've encountered.

yeah I should wallow in that on shuffle right now, thanks

lol 2.8 GB of MP3s, wow

Is it all still up on SC somewhere?

(I downloaded it years ago but that DL is on a dead laptop.)

idk, I grabbed it all when it was up, message me if you want a Dropbox link or something!

I may take you up on that at some point. For now, though, I've got this YouTube playlist to never quite finish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgYZ4levvfk&list=PLEsZgo3N97Mh92JGSKpkYaEuO03cKBr8b

lots of pure gold in that dump

(suzanne, 2tone, martin's car, sam's car, the donkey rhubarb remix, with my family, no cares, high hats tune....)

― brimstead, Tuesday, June 9, 2015 11:13 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― brimstead, Saturday, 25 July 2015 01:18 (five years ago) link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgYZ4levvfk&list=PLEsZgo3N97Mh92JGSKpkYaEuO03cKBr8b

Damn it I can't embed this

i'm a little suspicious of people who underrate saw 1 bc i can't actually think of a record that sounds like it. sure there is adjacent stuff that approaches it but it lacks the nigh-weightless grace

i've been going through the catalog and i am really stuck on how fucking amazing polygon window's "if it really is me" is

Polygon Window is great; SAW I is as well. The early stuff is generally underrated, IMO

I think this was my Aphex Twin introduction, no tunefind and no lyrics = begging online for hints about 'this song with pizzicato strings' in a Scottish movie no one had seen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPKlKwiFrs8

Love Morvern (Ramsay didn't do any better than this and Ratcatcher for me). The Warp-released soundtrack was incredible - my way into Can and Ween.

Bytes by Black Dog Productions sounds like it

I know it’s probably suspect to only be into a single artist in a genre... but back in my days as a RDJ megafan (late ’90s), I checked out plenty of similar stuff — including Rephlex & Warp releases, related artists, other big “IDM” names of the day, etc. — and none of it caught my ear enough to stick. I guess it’s like someone who loves Miles but no other jazz, or whatever.

bytes doesn’t really sound like it.

Reference by CiM sounds like SAW I

I don't believe you! I'll give it a listen though.

I’m checking it out now — it doesn’t.

it especially does compared to all the unlistenable trash RDJ released after SAW II

hearing a lot of new-to-me stuff during the discography run, or at least stuff i must've forgotten about. cuckoo! what a jam

I love that CiM album. Not sure it sounds exactly like SAW but it's worth a listen

Cuckoo has long been one of my favorites. Nothing revolutionary or anything just another great sounding tune.

brad have you checked out the SoundCloud dump at all? A lot of cool saw 1 “outtakes” and stuff (mainly the stuff he uploaded first). “Suzanne” is really cool, kind of like the landscape in “green calx” after the laser battle.

i actually had a download of it but had to delete it to make space on my computer. i did make and often listen to to a small playlist of tracks that sounded a lot like saw 1 and 2

Reference by CiM sounds like SAW I

Before I listened I was pretty sure this wouldn't sound like SAW I, which would be bad. Then I got to Cloud Cover and it did sound like SAW I, and I decided that was bad for different reasons. (It is a good album though.)

Skim Two off that one gets stuck in my head all the time

Cuckoo has interesting almost Chinese-sounding harmonics on that little melody

“foid” by cylob has a kind of “hexagon” vibe. love love love this track but don’t really like anything else he’s done

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PJjgl2UJXc

RDJ’s stuff (back in the day) just had this presence that nothing else seemed to match; even music that used similar elements and was aligned in approach and sensibility.

“foid” by cylob has a kind of “hexagon” vibe. love love love this track but don’t really like anything else he’s done

Check out Kinesthesia - Empathy Box. Some very very pretty stuff on that.

saw ii remains some black lodge-ass music

1. rdj album is really the best, lovely, cinematic, goofy, weird, impressionistic, noisy, all at once, really his 30-minute pop record

2. drukqs is somehow also the best

3. however for some reason i am in a funk where i can't appreciate ... i care because you do as much as i used to. for one thing while i appreciate what "ventolin" is doing it just gives me a headache, and a lot of it feels more like rdj the composer than aphex twin the producer. maybe the philip glass orchestration of "icct hedral" got in my head, but it kind of feels like a thread through the whole album! as a result it feels the least engaged with dance music, which makes me feel unfavorably toward it, which is unfair, this is totally my hang-up

the least engaged with dance music

I feel that way about Drukqs, whereas to my ears I Care Because You Do remains more beat-oriented and the callback to NYC minimalism is in keeping with that imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubwsMJdj6Tw

Donkey Rhubarb
Vaz Deferenz
Icct Hedral (Phillip Glass Orchestration)
Pancake Lizard

imagine glass remaking your track and then sandwiching it between vaz deferenz and pancake lizard!

some of the sounds on I Care are so harsh, at least on my current setup and headphones. the drums on Start As You Mean To Go On -- ouch!

xp Donkey Rhubarb is a great EP. “Pancake Lizard” almost moved me to tears the first time I heard it (not ashamed to admit this!)

Once in college I was smoking pot with a friend/roommate—he was a bass player, into jazz, Indian music, classical, the Dead, etc. (but not really anything in the same universe as Aphex Twin). I put on the opening track of ...I Care, and he was mesmerized, a big grin on his face as it unfolded... he was like, “I think about music the same way as this.”

haha, that's great!

and you should never be ashamed to admit you were moved to tears. you should take special note of every single time you are moved to tears. i wish i would have started earlier.

I’m listening to the album now... it’s so warm and playful and organic; mysterious, but welcoming... all these little melodies and rhythms, nestled into each other. there’s truly nothing else like it (and yeah, I can only take a little bit of “Ventolin” on headphones!)

I feel that way about Drukqs

drukqs may have a bunch of actual prepared piano pieces on it, but despite the overwhelming drum patterns the dance stuff is so funky