Aphex Twin classic or Dud?

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

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!

― Karl Malone, Saturday, November 28, 2020 11:20 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i was listening to the album while i was taking a walk and the opening of “cow cud” scared the shit out of me

the two finger keyboard riffs & radiophonic nonsense that comprise the ventolin b-sides is some of my favourite aphex ever
there was some rumour about rdj buying a tune off vibert for "we care..."

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

this

One more takeaway from last night's ...ICBYD listening sesh: "Mookid" is like the prettiest track ever.

always used to say I liked 'I Care Because You Do' the most because it seemed to best represent Aphex's gleeful, anarchic side that was still very much entrenched in rave music but happy to go in all sorts of directions. RDJ Album is flat-plan and clean in much he same way as Autechre's LP5: there's something very 2D about it, which isn't a bad thing. Druqks has never been a fave, I dunno, it's all over the place but not in the same way as ICBYD - it sounds like three or four completely different albums being shuffled around on a playlist and I just find the whole thing inconsistent despite there being a few all-time bangers on there.

Not sure how I feel about ICBYD now though. The sheer shock of hearing music like that at the time has subsided and yeah, a lot of the sounds which were thrillingly harsh are now just plain harsh

sorry about the terrible writing in that last post. i clearly do not give a fuck

i care because you don’t

“Start as you mean to go on” was the first aphex song that “clicked” for me... I agree with karl re intensity of the drums, I would like a more mellow 2020 breakbeat remix by somebody on Lobster Theramin or something lol

Yeah that was my favorite on the album, was fascinated by how he would more or less ruin such a beautiful track by putting such a harsh beat on it. Idk if that stuff really appeals to me now

Agreed with dog latins comment about RDJ album being 2D. It’s always been sort of a piece with LP5 in my eyes too. It’s one of the few albums that really blew my mind when I first heard it so it’ll always be special to me.

Last time I went through his catalogue I thought drukqs was the best one somehow. Maybe because I’ve always thought of it as being underwhelming. But so much of the music is great once you just sit down and listen. Wish he’d repress it.

i was listening to the album while i was taking a walk and the opening of “cow cud” scared the shit out of me

This has happened to me about 75% of the times I've listened to ICBYD on headphones.

I do like the album a lot but it's not one I play start to finish a lot, it works better in smaller bites. I feel the same way about Drukqs, thinking about it.

the clash/tension between the drums and the melody in “start as you mean to go on” was one of the biggest influences for me musically and remains one of my favourite RDJ moments. especially after SAW / On EP, where a lot of tracks can be described as “pretty” - it was a revelation to hear that side abandoned with such a joyful glee - but at the same time elevating it from “pretty” to beautiful. and it’s banging as hell, so there is that.

... and i just realized that the drums on On sound like a precursor to drums on Start as you mean to go on.

I’ve never been able to figure out if that’s a mangled vocal sample in “cow cud” or just a synth approximation... that’s the thing, his synths sound so rough and “natural” to me in the “olden” days, it’s the difference between sleek Star Trek enterprise techno slickness and rough duct taped Star Wars rebel spacecraft

“on” is a frickin masterpiece

_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

god drukqs is just the best fucking album ever made isn't it

also i was obsessed with the analord stuff in college and going through it again has been really fun!

It’s weird how divisive Drukqs was when it came out because it has some of the best AT compositions both for fans of his mellower stuff and fans of his more manic stuff.

yeah I read about it a lot before I heard it and I still associate it with the "disappointment" label even though I really like it now. to be fair RDJ himself did a pretty awful job of selling it.

Analord is the stuff I keep coming back to these days. it's more tilted towards the live sounding electro sound that I love (Drexciya are my gods) than the overly programmed/edited stuff that he usually does.