I LOVE DRUKQS+

(it's ixi rather than lxi btw, which is odd because ixi-lang is the name of some music live-coding programme)

First time ever listening to this album all the way through this morning -- I'd only ever sampled random tracks because of the mixed reviews. Might be overreacting but thought it was excellent? The whiplash mix of complex programmed beat tracks and gorgeous, contemplative piano tracks enhances both for me. Maybe the Spotify Playlist Era has retrained my brain.

It's a remarkable record. The reviews at the time seemed mostly based on (I assume) the press release: an album full of "Erik Satie-style piano pieces"... Well, it's obviously not that if you've actually listened to it: maybe 10-15 minutes' worth. That said, I love how he kind of managed to control the narrative on its release IN A BAD WAY; telling the press beforehand that it was a rush released bunch of offcuts because someone had nicked a DAT on a plane or something like that. The thing is a meticulously constructed work of genius that he almost deliberately scuppered. I would love to hear what he actually thinks about it, but I guess he just doesn't do interviews like that! I think it's only bettered by Syro in his catalogue.

I love this album. Full disclosure, though: I didn't at the time

Yeah me neither at release. Took some years.

feel like it's not stated enough how the Analord series birthed an entire subgenre of techno/electro

I didn't like it much at the time, either (as a massive fan up until then) – it hit in v underwhelming fashion, from the first single onward (*except for* the Satie-style piano pieces, which I thought were wonderful)

(I've liked it much more upon revisiting recently)

I on the other hand, a man of culture, loved it straight away

Vordhosbn is the first track that spins in my head when I'm reminded of aphex twin. The one-two punch of the first two tracks are a perfect set up for all the joy that is to follow

The prepared piano sounds on this album are soooooo gorgeous

feel like it's not stated enough how the Analord series birthed an entire subgenre of techno/electro

― clouds, Friday, March 15, 2024 6:34 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

absolutely true. It might have helped if they had remained available, or at least to people who could afford them

You mean stuff like Brainwalzera or stuff on Further Electronix?

Considering how intensely iconic, creative and diverse the sound pallets were for RDJ, Come to Daddy and Windowlicker, Drukqs def felt like a bit of a let down. It's held up quite well, but the uptempo glitchy jungle tracks still sound quite a bit "samey" to me by the end of it. Felt like the beginning of the end at the time, an artist who found his sonic "niche" and would no longer stray from it. And that has largely held true to this day.

I kinda wish he'd actually dropped a full length of just the prepared piano stuff.

xxp CPU Records comes to mind as a label that sprouted from this influence

http://cpurecords.net/

Octobeard so close to otm with that post, you're just forgetting the reason he found that niche and settled into it is because it's so damn good

xp ah yes that label too!! So much cool stuff

Octobeard totally OTM

would no longer stray from it. And that has largely held true to this day.

i don't think that's otm!!! analord and syro are both wildly different projects and soundworlds from drukqs imo

in general i think the drill n' bass stuff is pushed to its limits on this record, its outer regions, and the prior records are a little too pretty and structured to ever get there. which it's fine if people prefer that!!! but this album is insanely creative and never stops

also the dark ambient tracks are more fucked up than the majority of SAW2... idk when i listen to this album i feel like i'm at the edge of the RDJ universe looking at the sharp cliffs and gnarled trash below, and that rules

Couldn't agree more with Ivy.

Syro sounds like a permutation of the Druqks sound. I wookdnt call it worlds away

Bored during lockdown, I wrote some stuff about Aphex Twin for Facebook pals, this is the Drukqs entry, which came in at number 2 in my top 10:

2001’s Drukqs is Aphex Twin’s masterpiece. Why number two then, I hear you say? Well that’s easy, it’s because whatever is at number one is his masterpiece as well.

I say this, despite the fact that an album more deeply misunderstood on its release (and to a lesser degree, to this day) you would be hard pushed to find. Around the time of release, there were a couple of rumours: it was just a load of half-finished demos that were rush-released because he lost a tape on a plane, and that it was an album of “Erik Satie-style piano pieces”. The latter, I suspect came from some reviewers who hadn’t listened beyond the very first track; where the former came from is less clear—I have a half-memory of it actually coming from James himself. It’s a fun story if it did—how to spike the guns of your reviewers to your own detriment.

It’s a thirty track double album coming in at more than an hour and a half of music, so it isn’t easy to digest; in fact, it can seem quite impenetrable. Alex Needham, as one of the few people to properly pay attention at the time, helped me to understand it in his review of the album in the NME at the time. He says: “And after a few listens, a pattern seems to emerge. Abstract piano pieces always seemed to be followed by some strange Japanese-style ritual music. Stompers arrive at regular intervals. And there are even patterns within the patterns”. He also says that it is “beautiful”, which in a simple act of reframing, helped me to recognise it for what it is—it’s quite easy to view it as a mess, but you’re just not looking closely enough.

There’s lots of attention given to the structure of the album and its pacing; however, given its length, it likely does help to listen to a chunk at a time, stopping and starting where your attention wanders. And it does require your attention as I’ve said before—it has so many ideas compressed into its hundred minutes. Little details come and go, for example at the end of lengthy [insert uninvented genre] classic “Ziggomatic 17”, hints of “Alberto Balsam” from 1995’s “I Care Because You Do” shift in and out of view.

The album projects an image of being created using arcane technologies and incomprehensible techniques to make this deeply mysterious music of the future. The piano tracks sound as though they are being automated, which they likely are, in a similar fashion the “Nannou” track discussed as part of the post on the Windowlicker EP. The image on the album cover appears to be the insides of some kind of piano or perhaps synthesiser, again creating an image in the mind of him painstakingly automating the machinery in order to make the music.

To add to the enigma, most of the tracks are named in Cornish, e.g. “Bbydhyondchord”; “Hy A Scullyas Lyf A Dhagrow” etc. The album’s most well-known track is “Avril 14th”, though I do sometimes wonder why this is so much more famous than the album’s opener: “Jynweythek Ylow” other than the fact that no-one (outside of Cornwall and perhaps Wales) knows how to say the name of the latter.

As I alluded to earlier with “Ziggomatic 17”, there’s no real word to describe these tracks—I have heard them referred to as “acid bangers”, but they don’t really sound anything like acid house, other than perhaps using a synthesiser bass line; they aren’t “bangers” either. Each of them sounds almost as if an entire album’s worth of ideas has been compressed on to a single track.

If the “Who Sampled?” website is to be believed, bizarrely it turns out this album is a trip-hop masterpiece—it appears to have quite a large number of 1970s samples on it, e.g. Augustus Pablo; Led Zeppelin; Kool and the Gang; Weather Report etc. I can confidently say I have never noticed a single one of these samples in amongst this record. I have listened again to the tracks in question and I still can’t hear them, but they’re apparently in there somewhere.

Drukqs is Aphex Twin’s most difficult listen. Roy Castle once said that “dedication is what you need”, and if you are prepared to dedicate yourself, Drukqs is very rewarding—it’s highly innovative, packed with ideas and carefully constructed. Keep in mind that it is beautiful; that there is method to the madness and that it will slowly reveal some of its mysteries.

I’ll go with Meltphace 6 for a track, it illustrates the frenetic yet spacious “acid” tracks, with a melody that explores detuned scales, ghostly voices that echo over the percussion track that occasionally starts to sound like Klunk from Dastardly and Muttley.

What was number one?

The lost-on-a-plane thing very much did come from James himself… that was the backstory he was presenting.

Syro was number 1.

Love to hear your take on that one. It's not that I don't like it, I've just always wanted to like it more

Might whack it on this morning actually

I’ll stick it up when I get back home.

yeah great write-up keith. making me check out syro again now (just never gave it any time, dunno why)

Great write-up, Keith

Thank you, I may as well post the whole top ten:

APHEX TWIN TOP TEN: number 10 — Chosen Lords

It’s often written as though the Aphex Twin disappeared for over a decade after 2001’s Drukqs double album; however, it’s not actually true, he actually released a stupid amount of music in this period, just as AFX and The Tuss rather than Aphex Twin. Around 2005, he put out eleven 12” records, the Analord series that contain probably something around four hours’ music (or even more, if you include the fact that a few years ago on his website, he released all his stuff, most of which had a few extra tracks added here and there).

I often think that Kraftwerk pretty much invented what electronic music is “supposed” to sound like, in the same way that Stanley Kubrick invented what space is supposed to look like in 2001: a Space Odyssey. It’s such a strong template that I find you tend to look for this in other electronic artists and home in on the pieces that fit the template. Aphex Twin doesn’t fit the model (hehe), he is very much his own thing, and despite his music made with every piece of technology under the sun, the vibe is far less about technology, space and stuff and much more folk horror: think Welsh witches; The Wicker Man; Straw Dogs etc. There’s an awful lot of his native Cornwall that comes through in his stuff.

Analord on the face of it appears to be his return to using analogue technology, as compared with the digital technology he had been mostly using between 1995’s Hangable Autobulb EP and 2001’s Drukqs. Chosen Lords is a compilation of the best stuff from these twelve inches and indeed for the most part, it is a pretty good summary of the period—it is mostly the best stuff.

Most people’s introduction to Aphex Twin would likely be Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and I do know a lot of people kind of want him to go back and do more of this type of stuff, but in a lot of ways, he is still doing it and has been all along, if you listen closely enough to it—a lot of his stuff has weird melodies going on almost subconsciously. In essence, if ambient music is deliberately designed to live in the background, with his music, lots of the interesting parts live in the background and you need to pay attention to hear them, it’s just that there are lots of interesting things going on in the foreground too.

Much as I’ve said Chosen Lords probably is the best stuff off of these 12” records, I do hesitate in writing that, as his stuff is so multi-layered that I slowly come round to all of it. There are loads of other great things on these, e.g. Laricheard, his tribute to Larry Heard, or Mr. Fingers, and Analord 9, where all the tracks are named after computer viruses.

This one (Bwoon Dub) isn’t even on Chosen Lords—I guess I feel compelled to put one of the great tracks that’s on the Analord 12” records as you can listen easily to Chosen Lords yourself, if you like. Plus it illustrates quite well what I was going on about earlier about ambient melodies existing in the background.

APHEX TWIN TOP TEN: number 9 — Windowlicker EP

Part one of a two part “why isn’t this one at number 1?” series.

I’m not just going to write about albums per se here, since a lot of his EPs come in at the half hour mark; plus bizarrely, they are often disguised to look like singles when they are often so much more—for example, the Come To Daddy EP on the face of it looks like it has a bunch of remixes of existing tracks on it; however, these “remixes” are so little like the originals as to really be entirely original tracks. As such, the Come To Daddy EP, along with many of his EPs are really short albums.

In addition to their length, the EPs often represent “pivot points” in his work, where he changes direction. This EP is not like what he did before this and only one track is really followed up after.

The title track is a unique moment in his catalogue: it was a hit single, reaching number 16 in the UK singles chart, and it’s quite unlike anything else he has done. The track was likely sent up the charts because of the video, rather than the track itself, and it’s usually the video that’s the subject for discussion. The video is fun, but I do think this is to overlook the most important part, that the track itself is like a lot of the great moments in pop music, as if it’s been beamed in from space. What passes for singing on it is a bizarre, warped, saturated but nonetheless amazing sounding thing that there aren’t words to describe, possibly constructed out of vocal samples from many different people and layered on top of one another. At the time, I thought it would be an exciting new direction to move in, although I was somewhat disappointed that this didn’t appear to be the case. However (and this is a theme that develops), I’ve since realised that he did indeed move in this direction and lots of subsequent (and some previous) tracks do indeed have heavily manipulated voices on them—it turns out I just hadn’t noticed.

The second track on the EP is called ΔMi−1 = −αΣn=1NDi[n] [Σj∈C[i]Fji[n − 1] +Fexti[n−1]]. He has a lot of fun with track names from vaguely latin sounding names, to no names at all (pictures), to anagrams of Aphex Twin, to the aforementioned computer viruses. Lots of tracks are named after the equipment they were recorded on as well as others where it’s completely unclear where the track name came from at all, e.g. one of my favourite tracks is called: 4 bit 9d api+e+6.

ΔMi−1 = −αΣn=1NDi[n] [Σj∈C[i]Fji[n − 1] +Fexti[n−1]] features a Spectrogram, which (in this case) is a sound, such that when visualised with the right software, displays a spiral pattern. This probably sounds like a gimmick, and in a way it is, but you don’t need to dismiss the whole track as a gimmick; indeed, you could view the spectrogram as simply a novel way of producing an unusual sound. In many ways, it’s the track most representative here of what was to come next.

You can’t treat tracks like this, and the rest of the music he produced at the turn of the millennium as background music—you most likely won’t like it—you need to pay close attention to it, and if you do, they tend to reveal all manner of remarkable detail. Indeed, it can often be overwhelming just listening to the amount of detail he crams into not just every track, but every bar of every track. It really is the opposite of the type of stuff you hear if you go and get your hair cut: stuff that sounds like someone has made a single four second passage of music and just looped it for fifteen minutes.

The third and final track on this short EP is called Nannou—you may have heard it before from the soundtrack of the film of Morvern Callar. There is a track on the subsequent LP called “Nanou 2” and I’ve read that they are versions of the same track; however, if they are, they don’t sound at all alike, so I’m not sure I buy that. Nannou sounds like a collection of robotic musical boxes. You can almost imagine it being played by the robot toys that inhabit J.F. Sebastian’s house in Blade Runner. He has talked about rigging up acoustic instruments to computer control them (indeed, he produced an EP a few years ago called “Computer Controller Acoustic Instruments). Whether this is actually the case or not, who knows (you would think it would be relatively straightforward to simulate the sound of), but it is something of a Turing test—you can’t tell, so it doesn’t matter: he might as well have done. What is clear, is that he continually challenges himself to “reset” his equipment and makes music in loads of different ways with different types of equipment, going as far as making an EP (the “Cheetah EP”) almost exclusively using the Cheetah, a synthesiser from the early 1990s, which was apparently notoriously difficult to use.

This experimentation becomes part of the Aphex Twin myth: there’s not just an other-worldly feeling to lots of the music he makes, this feeling is compounded by the apparent arcane nature of the creation process itself and all of this feeds through to what you feel when you’re listening to it.

APHEX TWIN TOP TEN: number 8 — Selected Ambient Works 85-92

Part two of a two part “why isn’t this one at number 1?” series.

I expect most readers will know this one—it seems likely this is his most well-known record, and perhaps the one that most would put at number one (there’s also a group of people who would definitely put volume two at number one). For my part, for all its plaudits, I find it to be quite patchy—it has moments of brilliance, quite a lot of them in fact, but I find its quality quite variable. Perhaps this is because it was recorded over such a long time period: apparently between 1985 and 1992. Don’t let that put you off though, it’s still brilliant, it’s just that in a top ten, all things are relative.

At the time of release, I really didn’t believe the 1985 to 1992 to thing: it seemed to me to be an attempt to present himself as someone who had predated the then fad for ambient music, specifically “ambient house” music as pioneered by the Orb and the KLF, instead of, as was actually the case, arriving towards the end of the fashion for that type of music. However, even although Mr James freely admits to lying about stuff all the time, going on thirty years later, I do now think it to be quite possible it was made over that timeframe, just based on things he’s said over many years, and because the potential motivation for saying that back then had long since gone. If it was made over this time period, then his may go some way to explain what I see as quite variable quality—if you assume that he got better at stuff over that period.

It’s not really all that ambient either; at least, not in a “Music for Airports”-type way, although it is all drenched in a relaxing layer of reverb. The more you turn the reverb up, it has the effect of making something sound like it’s more in the background; further away from you, so perhaps this does indeed create a form of ambience.

What it does sound like, still to this day, is nothing else. Everything on it sounds so organic for a record that’s entirely made out of electronic devices. Who knows how he did this? Perhaps routing parts through a ropey old tape delay unit, like the Echoplex—guitarists often value the quality of sound that can be produced via tape delay, because the “dry” signal is mixed in with a delayed signal that by virtue of its mechanical “failings” can make it wobble and waver from the original pitch, creating a chorus effect. Recording on to tape can also saturate the input signal, which can generate a pleasing distortion, which certainly appears to be part of the sound of this record.

The music on Selected Ambient Works 85-92 often has a blissful vibe, in a way that the rest of his catalogue for the most part doesn’t. To these ears, it’s also the most conventional of his records, which Is likely part of why it’s easier to like than a lot of his other stuff.

For all that (relative) conventionality, he was regularly labelled a genius by the UK press at the time. I don’t mind admitting that I found this to be odd at the time, even although I now wholeheartedly agree with that assessment—it seems they could see something that I couldn’t see back then and indeed, still can’t, if I take this record in isolation.

So for a track, I would be very tempted to put Ageispolis on, as it’s one of my favourites and reminds me of being on a beach in Devon in the summer of ’83. Eagle-eyed readers will notice that 1983 is many years before he even perhaps pretended it was written never mind released, but I am always impressed when a piece of much can do this—place you in a time and place. In reality, I suspect it’s because it reminds me a bit of “Waiting for a train” by Flash and the Pan. So, I won’t put that one on—you all probably have this album anyway, so let’s go with “If it really is me” from his Polygon Window side project that came out not long after this album and is one of the highlights of that record.

APHEX TWIN TOP TEN: number 7 — Hangable Auto Bulb EPs

Technically, 1995’s Hangable Auto Bulb EPs were released under the AFX moniker, but there’s no point worrying about that—it’s still Richard D James behind them. Indeed, the audience tend to worry more about what name he’s put a release out under than he does, for example: the Chosen Lords compilation was released as Aphex Twin, where eight out of the ten tracks on it were originally released as AFX. In 2006/07 he released an EP and an album as “The Tuss”, seemingly trying to hide who really made it. You can speculate about why, but it seems possible that he wanted it evaluated on its own merits, rather than something that came from the legendary Aphex Twin.

It’s 1995, jungle is massive and these two EPs are released towards the end of the year. Remarkably, given the highly innovative content of these, they were limited to a thousand copies each, so basically no-one heard them at the time, including me, until they were finally released on CD ten years later. I have no recollection of them being reviewed in the press at the time and as such, the subsequent Richard D James “proper” album from 1996 is viewed as the big innovative step. The most significant shift here is in the percussion. Prior to this release, it seems as though he wasn’t really sure of what to do with percussion—it’s a bit of an afterthought, and on Selected Ambient Works Volume Two it barely exists. There are attempts to make it interesting on I Care Because You Do, which was released six months before these EPs, but it doesn’t quite work for me; often in these early days, the attempts to make it interesting actually end up being more annoying. It’s highly likely what happened here was that he started trying to make jungle-type rhythms and perhaps got it wrong, perhaps altered it deliberately, who knows, but nonetheless ended up with something quite unique.

The percussion in these tracks is nothing short of remarkable. The level of intricacy, the obsessive attention to detail that it must have taken to put these tracks together is striking, more like that of an insane watchmaker than a musician. The temptation when creating music with computers is to do what computers are good at: accurately repeating tasks, which is why you see so much of this in electronic music—stuff that just repeats itself for ten minutes, it’s because it’s easy to do.

This specific pivot point in his work pointed the way for him over the next ten years. What happens over this period is that detail and lack of repetition within the percussion in his music extends out to all other aspects of his music.

It’s at this point that I expect most people start getting off the bus with Aphex Twin, having liked or even loved his earlier stuff. There’s no doubt that the 1995-2001 period is more challenging, but it is precisely the point at which to get on the bus—it’s this period where for me, most of his most remarkable music happens.

I’ve emphasised this before, but it’s worth repeating: this isn’t background music—it’s complex and you do need to concentrate on listening to it to get anything out of it. This is not to say that there cannot be sophistication in simplicity, or in background music—the likes of for example, John Martyn, I can happily float off to and love it, not really needing to pay too much attention, but this isn’t that—this is sophistication in complexity.

It’s also the beginning of him taking samples of the likes of children saying ordinarily quite innocuous things and turning them into some kind of psychedelic lentil nightmare; see for example, “Every Day”. As for a track here, I’ll go with “Arched Maid via RDJ”, which is almost an anagram of Richard D James: it features a malfunctioning hyperactive robot on the drums along with a beautiful, meandering synthesiser lead line, the type of which crops up on other tracks, e.g. “Eggy Toast” from the Mike & Rich side project.

APHEX TWIN TOP TEN: number 6 — Collapse EP

The Collapse EP and its lead single T69 Collapse is James’ most recent release, coming out in late 2018. It’s his most recent “proper” release anyway—what do I mean by that? Well, this is worth a short diversion from the topic of the EP, here because in recent years, he has been sticking new pieces of music out pretty much all the time.

He had been saying for years that he had hours and hours of unreleased music that would probably never see the light of day, which is the type of thing you take with a pinch of salt, since it’s quite clear he is something of a wind-up merchant; however, starting in 2015, he uploaded in excess of 250 tracks to Soundcloud, confirming what he had been saying. These were from all periods, including some that were from an apparent “Selected Ambient Works 1.5” that he discussed potentially mastering properly and releasing (although this has yet to see the light of day).

He appears to be continuing to put stuff on to Soundcloud that you can download—last night, I downloaded over an hour’s worth of stuff I’ve not heard before, which amongst it, includes a version of one of his most famous tracks: Avril 14th reversed not audio [tapedel] played & programmed modified Yamaha disklavier pro, recorded to Nagra IVS 5”, which pretty much describes itself in some detail (a Disklavier is an acoustic piano fitted with mechanisms to allow you to drive it via data from a computer; tapedel is likely short for tape delay, and I’ve no idea what Nagra IVS 5” is, but I expect its the type of tape it was recorded to), and this track is Avril 14th but being played in reverse—not the tape reversed, but all the notes in the reverse order. Another is a mix of CIRCLONT12A from Syro, featuring an all-new percussion track sounding quite different to the original. There is a track called “Tha2”, which he uploaded only twenty-two hours ago—you might conclude that this is a sequel of sorts to “Tha” from Selected Ambient Works 85-92. Finally, there is a track called “Lost Track[dat24]icbyd”. ICBYD is “I care because you do”, his 1995 LP, but why you would name something “Lost Track” is beyond me—“Found track” might be more appropriate, unless you named it before it was found, but then it can’t have been lost when you named it etc.

So you get the idea, he makes so much stuff that he makes Prince look like The La’s, and what the real boundary between “proper” releases like the Collapse EP and things he puts out on Soundcloud is somewhat blurred, although I believe technically, it may be something to do with the mastering, whatever that is.

So back to the Collapse EP, which is thirty minutes of music, so only slightly shorter than the Richard D James LP and is another marvel. You could argue that is isn’t a massive step forward, but then he’s just so far forward that it’s not needed. It is a further refinement of the complex and involved arrangements that have characterised a lot of his music. The title track T69 Collapse does indeed appear to collapse in on itself regularly, giving the impression the music is existing in more than four dimensions. It features strange fluid sounds that move in from the distance—around this time, he said he was employing a student of artificial intelligence to help make sounds for him and this might represent some of those efforts.

Of particular note on this and a lot of his work of the 2010s is where everything is placed in the mix. He has perfected putting lots of detail on these tracks, but for them all to live in their own sonic space such that the listener isn’t overwhelmed and the sounds aren’t all competing with each other for attention, drowning each other out. Despite so much going on at once, the music is never abrasive. Ambient melodies float in and out as barely audible voices appear in the background; I am reminded of “News” by Kraftwerk, which sounds like you’re listening to the news on a television, which is in the next room. The fourth track on the EP features a vocal sample of a child saying “Give me your hand my friend, and I will lead you to the land of abundance, joy and happiness”, notable only for the fact that samples such as this appear only infrequently in his work, making them all the more effective when they do.

It is impressive that he continues to make such compelling music after over thirty years, so for this EP we’ll go with a track that’s actually on it, another snappily-titled number: Abundance10edit[2 R8’s, FZ20m & A 909]. It seems likely that his modern track names come simply from whatever the file was called on his computer’s disk.

APHEX TWIN TOP TEN: number 5 — Selected Ambient Works Volume II

On release, this one didn’t really work for me, partly because I suppose I was looking for more of the first one, but mostly because it came out at exactly the wrong time. It was released in early 1994, and by that time personally I was just fed up of ambient stuff; sick of being sat around someone’s flat late at night being forced to listen to a Pete Namlook compilation, at this point, I had decided that all I wanted to do was rock and started listening mainly to the Who. So this album, which was even more ambient than other ambient stuff really wasn’t going to work for me at the time; however, that’s changed over time. My experience it seems, echoes the general critical reaction to this record too.

At this point, the type of melodies he is writing change, they become much stranger, more unsettling; the blissful moments mostly disappear. Actual melodies in music seem not often commented upon; for example, My Bloody Valentine have had praise heaped upon them (rightly so) for having developed such an amazing sound; however, it’s also the melodies: MBV are one of the few bands for whom I cannot see precedent—if they ripped it off of someone, it’s not clear who—they pretty much invented a new type of music. Similarly, at this point, Aphex Twin starts writing strange melodies. Around this time, he said that he liked music where you couldn’t really describe the emotion it was generating, and from this point onwards, these unusual, less conventional melodies take centre stage.

A lot of the best pieces of art rely on limiting disclosure—on not fully explaining things to the listener/observer. It’s a great trick—your mind fills the rest in, usually with half understood, abstract ideas that are almost always better than having everything fully explained to you. When I was young, I found myself thinking that the line “I see a ship in the harbour” from New Order’s “Blue Monday” must be about the nuclear war that was apparently about to kick off at the time. There’s no reason why it would be, in all likelihood it’s about him seeing a ship in a harbour, but the downbeat quality of the music that surrounded it led me to conclude it must be about the “heaviest” issue of the day. The best artists create entire worlds you can inhabit, but it is of course, an illusion. As an example, and not wanting to load the question in any way: what created the best impression of a universe in your mind? Was it Ben Kenobi in Star Wars casually referring to the Clone Wars as something that happened in the past? Or was it the full disclosure computer-graphics, Muppets versus Zoids-fest that is Attack of the Clones? James has referred to this album as the sound of taking acid in a power station. Typically, this type of comparison something of a cliché; however, it does a good job of hinting at the strangeness contained within. Take in particular, “Parallel Stripes” (although, none of the tracks have names, just pictures; the fans added the names on later. For the avoidance of doubt, I mean track two on CD two), it’s made of a beautiful slow ambient melody sitting on top of what really does sound like a sixty-cycle hum coming from a faulty transformer (the device that converts voltages, not the robot/car things). The previous track, Blue Calx, deserves a mention as being perhaps his best ever ambient track, as well as being the only track on the album with an actual name. It’s also part of a series of “Calx” tracks on various different LPs, Green Calx, Yellow Calx and even Red Calx, which was released as part of the Soundcloud dump. There’s no apparent relationship between these tracks, but the hint that there might just adds to the mystery—and the mystery that permeates this album is also something that continues to this day: why does this sound like that? What’s that strange melody? What is that feeling it conveys? Why is it named that?

As for a track to play, given CD sales were massively in the ascendancy in 1994, most people I knew bought this one on CD and hence, missed out on “Stone in Focus”, which was only on the cassette and vinyl versions of the album, so we’ll go with that one for this album. I’ve no idea if this video is official or not, but either way, it features a meditating monkey.

APHEX TWIN TOP TEN: number 4 —Richard D James

The Richard D James album is a great starting point for those looking to get a little deeper into the Aphex Twin’s work. It’s a refinement of the direction taken on the Hangable Auto Bulb EPs I talked about a few days ago—a refinement that pulls multiple threads together. Whilst the EPs are marvellous, most of the tracks do concentrate on his new found angle, hyper-intensive percussion. The Richard D James LP does that as well as pull in idiosyncratic, weird electronic folk melodies. It’s also only thirty-three minutes long, so unlike some of his other works, the modern attention span can cope, with each of the tracks coming in at around the three minute mark.

This LP didn’t likely start out the way it was released, it appeared to start life as the shelved “Melodies from Mars” LP, which remains unreleased to this day, although you can easily find it if you know where to look (the internet). Two of the tracks (Fingerbib and Logan Rock Witch) come from this; however, Melodies from Mars has more of a computer game feeling than Richard D James—it feels as though he found a way forward, by integrating various pieces: what he had done with Melodies from Mars, the Hangable Auto Bulb EPs for the percussion, and the thematic focus on his native Cornwall, which he had explored a little before on the Polygon Window side project with tracks like Portreath Harbour and Redruth School. There are numerous references to Cornwall on this album, e.g. Cornish Acid, as well as Carn Marth, Goon Gumpas and Logan Rock Witch, which all refer to places in Cornwall.

For those of you outside of the UK, Cornwall is at the south-western tip of mainland Britain and is one of its poorest counties. It is one of the Celtic nations (which include Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany). It has its own language, which is related to Welsh and is regularly used in Aphex Twin’s work. On this album and subsequent pieces, he combines the use of the Cornish language and places along with the local folk history to amplify the enigmatic, pagan melodies of the music, melodies that sound both sinister and childlike at the same time. Most music that inhabits this space is in the form of folk music, although there are some exceptions, for example: Can’s “Bring me coffee or tea” from Tago Mago, or some classical, such as Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain—it’s not typically something associated with electronic music.

Perhaps the most obvious example is the final track on this album: “Logan Rock Witch”, which refers to the folk tale of witches, led by Madgy Figgy, who gathered near the Logan rock, Porthcurno cove in order to cast spells to drive ships aground and drown those on board.

“Cornish Acid” is a key track here, where the macabre, ritualistic dance of the bass line sits in the foreground, while eerie synthesiser notes float in the background pushing the music off to an uncomfortable angle.

It has always seemed to me to be quite easy to create music that lives a million miles away from the mainstream: just detune your instruments, play with no discernible rhythm, bang a few pots and pans and you have an avant-garde masterpiece, or perhaps you don’t. You might have, but most likely you don’t. It might even be impossible to tell. For me, the best stuff lives on the edge fo the mainstream: taking some aspects of an existing form and bending it in and out of shape. James excels at this and this LP in particular is a concise example—it’s not acid house; it’s not folk music; it’s not jungle, even if it has elements of all of these included within—it becomes its own thing that after a short period of acclimatisation, feels completely natural.

I’ll go with “Cornish Acid” for a track from this one, because it’s a great, two minute summation of this change in direction; however, I’ll also add in another track for fun: “Korg Funk 5” appears to be something he put out on YouTube as an advert for a Korg Monologue synthesiser and it’s great—he sometimes appears to reserve some of his best work for the crassest of causes. In 2003, he released a selection of his remixes as “26 Mixes For Cash”, the best of which are often borne of the worst source material, e.g. the Mike Flowers Pops. In the early ‘90s, plenty of inappropriate indie artists, or their record labels, were asking him to do a remix of their tracks and there was a story of a guy showing up at his house asking for his remix of a track by the Lemonheads. He’d clearly forgotten about agreeing to do this, but proceeded to head in the house, pick up a tape and handed it to the guy saying “there you go”.

APHEX TWIN TOP TEN: number 3 — Come to Daddy EP

If the thought of the “Come to Daddy” track, which you may well know given it actually made it into the UK charts, puts you off, hang on in there—it puts me off too. At the risk of starting off with the negative, there is a downside to some of James’ work, which is the student humour it sometimes exhibits. Over the years, I have come to like the track “Come to Daddy”, despite it being a little “heavy metal” for my liking—perhaps in part because even although there’s very little space in this track, this is in stark contrast to the rest of the EP, but mainly because the vocals are an experiment in sound, so heavily processed and combined with unusual synthesiser noises as to twist in on themselves—it reminds me of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist.

The rest of this thirty-two minute EP (which was originally two records, but quickly after release was combined into one) comes in at only seconds less than the Richard D James LP, and released a year after it in 1997, couldn’t be more different from the title track. Even if some of the tracks claim to be remixes of that track, I’ve never been able to detect any similarity—the titles are likely just another example of James messing with the listeners. The other seven tracks are a further refinement on the direction he’d taken on the Hangable Auto Bulb EPs and the Richard D James album, although this EP does take a brief detour away from the Cornish theme.

You would think it easy to create electronic music with electronic instruments that actually sounds electronic—James does it with ease, although it isn’t as common as you might at first assume, perhaps because in some cases, synthesisers are aiming to sound like acoustic instruments. Aphex Twin’s work sounds distinctly electronic, but perhaps no more inorganic and modern than on this release. Outside of the voices, none of the sounds derive from the natural world (except perhaps woodpeckers). For example, on the mix of “To Cure a Weakling Child” (which actually does bear some resemblance to the original track), the beginning has hints of dub, but it’s more like Lee Perry working in an operating theatre in a hospital than anything that resembles 1970s dub reggae. The percussion manages to be both frenetic and gentle at the same time—it’s not in your face, something that music like this is often accused of—it’s more like an artificial version of the best jazz drummer you’ve ever heard.

The “Little Lord Faulteroy” (sic) mix of Come to Daddy sounds like a warped children’s song—pay special attention to the psychedelic final minute, where the vocals in the background shift and swerve around the main vocal.

Bucephalus was a famous horse, like Red Rum, Shergar, Dapple and Trigger; quite how it relates to the track “Bucephalus bouncing ball” is unclear, but it definitely does feature a bouncing ball—one that appears to be a really heavy metal ball on a high gravity planet.

These tracks are surrounded by a couple of beautifully and (superficially, at least) simple melodies, “Flim” and “IZ-US”—Flim is often viewed as one of his best ever tracks and rightly so, although personally I prefer IZ-US. IZ-US’ melody reminds me of early “IDM”-style melodies, in particular, the Black Dog track: “In the light of grey”; however, IZ-US is more fully realised to my ears. The synthesiser sounds pull gently in and out of tune, a device he uses quite frequently—it sounds magical. As such, and given its position at the end of the EP (I wonder if some make it this far), I think I’ll go with IZ-US as a track choice for this one.

APHEX TWIN TOP TEN: number 2 — Drukqs

2001’s Drukqs is Aphex Twin’s masterpiece. Why number two then, I hear you say? Well that’s easy, it’s because whatever is at number one is his masterpiece as well.

I say this, despite the fact that an album more deeply misunderstood on its release (and to a lesser degree, to this day) you would be hard pushed to find. Around the time of release, there were a couple of rumours: it was just a load of half-finished demos that were rush-released because he lost a tape on a plane, and that it was an album of “Erik Satie-style piano pieces”. The latter, I suspect came from some reviewers who hadn’t listened beyond the very first track; where the former came from is less clear—I have a half-memory of it actually coming from James himself. It’s a fun story if it did—how to spike the guns of your reviewers to your own detriment.

It’s a thirty track double album coming in at more than an hour and a half of music, so it isn’t easy to digest; in fact, it can seem quite impenetrable. Alex Needham, as one of the few people to properly pay attention at the time, helped me to understand it in his review of the album in the NME at the time. He says: “And after a few listens, a pattern seems to emerge. Abstract piano pieces always seemed to be followed by some strange Japanese-style ritual music. Stompers arrive at regular intervals. And there are even patterns within the patterns”. He also says that it is “beautiful”, which in a simple act of reframing, helped me to recognise it for what it is—it’s quite easy to view it as a mess, but you’re just not looking closely enough.

There’s lots of attention given to the structure of the album and its pacing; however, given its length, it likely does help to listen to a chunk at a time, stopping and starting where your attention wanders. And it does require your attention as I’ve said before—it has so many ideas compressed into its hundred minutes. Little details come and go, for example at the end of lengthy [insert uninvented genre] classic “Ziggomatic 17”, hints of “Alberto Balsam” from 1995’s “I Care Because You Do” shift in and out of view.

The album projects an image of being created using arcane technologies and incomprehensible techniques to make this deeply mysterious music of the future. The piano tracks sound as though they are being automated, which they likely are, in a similar fashion the “Nannou” track discussed as part of the post on the Windowlicker EP. The image on the album cover appears to be the insides of some kind of piano or perhaps synthesiser, again creating an image in the mind of him painstakingly automating the machinery in order to make the music.

To add to the enigma, most of the tracks are named in Cornish, e.g. “Bbydhyondchord”; “Hy A Scullyas Lyf A Dhagrow” etc. The album’s most well-known track is “Avril 14th”, though I do sometimes wonder why this is so much more famous than the album’s opener: “Jynweythek Ylow” other than the fact that no-one (outside of Cornwall and perhaps Wales) knows how to say the name of the latter.

As I alluded to earlier with “Ziggomatic 17”, there’s no real word to describe these tracks—I have heard them referred to as “acid bangers”, but they don’t really sound anything like acid house, other than perhaps using a synthesiser bass line; they aren’t “bangers” either. Each of them sounds almost as if an entire album’s worth of ideas has been compressed on to a single track.

If the “Who Sampled?” website is to be believed, bizarrely it turns out this album is a trip-hop masterpiece—it appears to have quite a large number of 1970s samples on it, e.g. Augustus Pablo; Led Zeppelin; Kool and the Gang; Weather Report etc. I can confidently say I have never noticed a single one of these samples in amongst this record. I have listened again to the tracks in question and I still can’t hear them, but they’re apparently in there somewhere.

Drukqs is Aphex Twin’s most difficult listen. Roy Castle once said that “dedication is what you need”, and if you are prepared to dedicate yourself, Drukqs is very rewarding—it’s highly innovative, packed with ideas and carefully constructed. Keep in mind that it is beautiful; that there is method to the madness and that it will slowly reveal some of its mysteries.

I’ll go with Meltphace 6 for a track, it illustrates the frenetic yet spacious “acid” tracks, with a melody that explores detuned scales, ghostly voices that echo over the percussion track that occasionally starts to sound like Klunk from Dastardly and Muttley.

APHEX TWIN TOP TEN: number 1 — Syro

James did release huge amounts of new music between 2001’s Drukqs and Syro, so I could complain about the press making out as though he had done nothing in this period; however, it’s also true that James appears to have considered the release of Syro as something more important than the other stuff he did—there was a build up to this release and an advertising campaign. I happened to be in NYC for work at this time and was in the Museum of Modern Art when I read that there were Aphex symbols popping up in different locations around the world, one of which was at Radio City in NYC—that’s just around the corner from the MoMA, so I popped round. I had to walk around it twice to eventually find it, but there it was, so I took a photo, although in a classic modern world, Ballard moment, I then lost the photo, but it didn’t matter anyway, because you can just download a better one off of the internet.

I was never one to take a pure punk rock view on things too seriously, e.g. short songs—good; instrumental passages—bad; complexity—bad; sophistication—bad; being able to play—bad etc. Of course, sticking to these rules is also bad and not very punk rock. Music can do so much more than just the sugar rush of a three minute single and for all the good the punk ethos did at the time, I actually think that in the long term it did more harm than good by stifling exploration of certain directions.

For me, the last twenty years hasn’t been a period of great innovation; for the most part, it’s been recycling themes from the past, so it’s nice to hear such a considered piece from an artist who constantly tries to reinvent himself—Syro is a mind-bending journey into the unknown—it’s not the sound of a tired artist just churning out more of the same. Comparing it to contemporary releases, e.g. Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories”, which whilst enjoyable, is pretty much a homage to the disco era, makes me think it’s almost as if James has studiously avoided ever listening to the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s, where the peaks of post-war invention happened. With perhaps the sole exception of Eno’s ambient LPs, that era appears to have had no influence on him whatsoever.

It’s worth considering some of the ways he’s tried to push boundaries—things he’s messed around with over the past twenty years of his music and on this LP. He talks about this in depth in an interview with a Korg synth engineer, which a friend reminded me of the other day and I’ll post a link to in the comments—it’s far more enlightening (and geeky) than his usually baffling and evasive interviews with the music press:

• Musical scales: he experiments with non-standard scales, e.g. having some of the notes in a scale out-of-tune (you can listen to examples of this in the aforementioned article)
• Structure: there’s little verse-chorus-verse, but it’s far from lacking in structure; tracks seem to have their own unique structure. There’s certainly a heritage of acid house here; however, late ‘80s acid house, exciting (and funny) as it was, is so trivially simple compared to what’s going on in these tracks
• Tuning: ISO 16 defines the A above middle C on a keyboard is to be tuned to 440hz—he sometimes adjusts this. Does this make a difference to your listening experience? I have no idea, although thinking about it, it certainly would if you adjusted middle C to be three octaves lower or higher, so it’s possible your brain registers smaller shifts in some way
• Unusual tempos: if you assume the numbers on Syro are beats per minute, then the track below is at 126.26 beats per minute—not something that’s likely to make a difference to your ears compared with 126 bpm, I expect, but this and adjusting the standard pitch does give you an insight into what’s going on in his mind—constantly trying to bend the technology into different shapes and do something unexpected with it

James refers to Syro as his most “pop” release—perhaps this is true, in relative terms, but it’s not really anything you would recognise as pop music. It’s more accessible than Drukqs and every bit as rewarding. Drukqs is darker and dare I say it, more organic sounding, if that’s ever really possible for his music; whereas, Syro is kaleidoscopic—a collection of glimmering fluorescent colours on a white background.

The structural beauty of the album itself is stunning in its simplicity: the final track is called Aisatsana, which is the name of his girlfriend, backwards—a coda to an album of entirely abstract themes—five minutes of delicate piano music about love.

I know that eight out of ten cats prefer “Selected Ambient Works 85-92”, but as I said right back at the beginning, despite this being quite different, it’s also true to say that some things do carry through. Consider the ambient melodies in PAPAT4[155][pineal mix] coming in at 00:38; it works at a stark contrast to the main synthesiser line—there is a lot of this to listen for in this LP. It’s so complex that one some level I think of it like Miles Davis records—it’s hard to get bored of it through familiarity.

For a track, I’ll go with another great title: 4 bit 9d api+e+6 [126.26], but I’ll also post MARCHROMT30a Edit 2b 96, which was released as a single after the album came out and isn’t on the album—it features heavily warped vocals, like it’s a hit single being sung by aliens.

4 bit (track 4) is great. "s950tx16wasr10" (earth portal mix) -track 11 - is one of the deepest and most satisfying tracks on Syro, imo

Wow thanks for posting that, Keith. I’m going to do a relisten with a read along this week ahead :)

i loved syro and played it a ton at the time. kinda melancholy domestic music, gorgeous and weird iirc. perfect for winter. i need to go back to it but now that it's spring it'll be a while lol.

I stuck on Syro this morning and I think I enjoyed it more than I had before

Keith, thanks for posting these. I'll read

that was a great read Keith, thank you!

ps I love Syro

Thanks guys... The main reason for writing it a few years ago was to try and give people a route into some stuff that most I guess would view as pretty inpenetrable, or at least quite hard work, and it was inspired by the fact that Alex Needham did that for me with the Drukqs LP.