New Aphex Twin Record

for those of us with images off...

^ new track taken from official soundcloud and uploaded to youtube

and this is video of the app for the curious, with a sample of the above

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3wPfTXFrvk

(and fpsa's video was 90 minutes of live footage: "Aphex Twin at Best Kept Secret Festival 2023 in Netherlands")

dog latin’s video has already been removed. What’s the official SoundCloud?

it's not 'aphextwinofficial', last post 11 years ago

but that track is here
https://soundcloud.com/richarddjames

sounds nice, too bad all this nonsense with QR codes and apps is so alienating

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=justin+strauss+the+lot

whoops wrong link!

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

was sharing a link to Justin Strauss's appearances on the Lot when I noticed the official posting of this.

into this track

agree about the qr code fatigue

just release a friggin' record for god's sake

yea it's pretty good, on par with the Collapse EP stuff, though a bit more toned down in a way that I think is nice

can't believe Syro was nearly a decade ago

It's very nice but it could easily have been on Druqks, is my feeling

Wow. I was expecting a rave banger!

The programming is, per usual, absurd. The melody is is the most somber since Selected Ambient Works Volume II and the rhythm (and harmony) is nostalgic or even self-referential (it reminded me of ...I Care Because You Do more than Druqks). I do miss some of the mixing tricks he started using in Syro and recent live performances.

(The mixing stuff might be present but lost on Spotify.)

If there’s an album, I pray he does an interview similar to the interview he did with David Burraston for the release of Syro. There’re so many issues from the past decade that I’d love to hear him talk (or write) about: open source, SoundCloud (and Bandcamp), cryptocurrency, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, etc.

I'm not sure I want to know Richard D James's opinion on cryptocurrency, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, etc.

This new track is fine, on first listen seems fairly generic, but that's what I thought about Syro at first too.

LOL, OK?

I wouldn't say generic, and for sure his recent stuff has been quality. But I'll be honest, every time I play a new Aphex track part of me is hoping for more "shocking brand-new worlds" (as Disco_Nihilist put it on this board years ago.)

Yeah I just don't know what I expect from Aphex any more, as opposed to "what to expect", that is.

I guess I really want to be blown away in the same way I was when I first heard Bouncing Bucephalus Ball when I was 17, but that's likely asking far too much.

That said, he seems quite happy making "just pretty good tunes with nice melodies and beats" these days, as opposed to doing something as conceptually daring as, say, Ventolin, Windowlicker or SAWII.

I like the beats being sort of 92 breakbeat ardkore. Wasn't his old favourite Trigger's Stratosphere in his sets a few years ago?

"I like the beats being sort of 92 breakbeat ardkore."

this track is very nostalgic but also weird, I really like it

I think it’s strange that it’s a single rather than an EP or album. It doesn’t say much as a single.

it's lovely but definitely generic aphex. if AI was fed in a ton of AFX i could imagine it spitting this out.

would not be surprised if that's how he made it, though I think it sounds too good to be AI right now

I mean I wouldn't put it past him. But he's also his own AI generator, I wonder if Warp conducts night raids on his vault every few years to wrest a release from him. I'm sure all the QR code stuff is just marketing department bs too.

xp

It's definitely very weird, and a nice return to focusing on synth tones and use of voice. I feel AFX has become increasingly one note since 2001, and this track is one of the more atypical 21st century tracks he's dropped! Hope it's a sign of things to come.

the sound of the opening beat reminds me of "Beat It"

I think it’s strange that it’s a single rather than an EP or album. It doesn’t say much as a single.

it is an EP with four tracks, WAP480

I'm not sure I want to know Richard D James's opinion on cryptocurrency, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, etc.

― silverfish, Wednesday, June 21, 2023 1:31 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Maybe on mixed martial arts though

did folks cop the ambient version, I didn't do all the QR code nonsense so I would have missed it if not for Phil Sherburne's newsletter

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/19fcYuy4BlUXzZqxkeSDP-zd_7F55wdbC

https://aphextwin.bandcamp.com/album/blackbox-life-recorder-21f-in-a-room7-f760

Yeah I just don't know what I expect from Aphex any more, as opposed to "what to expect", that is.

I guess I really want to be blown away in the same way I was when I first heard Bouncing Bucephalus Ball when I was 17.

For me RDJ’s career was interesting in how it was getting progressively more avant-garde, from those rather sedate and melodic early works to the drill-n-bass and atonality of the latter ’90s. But then RDJ retired while Autechre kept producing music that surprised from one album to the next. So now Autechre has basically replaced Aphex Twin for me. Anyone else have the same experience?

*raises hand*

Huh, I feel like it was almost the opposite for me; I dug how he was moving from esoteric early stuff to releases with progressively more "popular" appeal... culminating in "Come to Daddy" on TRL (and winning!), and the elaborate music video for "Windowlicker," etc.

Then he went away and resurfaced with a series of (dull) vinyl-only releases, and it was like... ok, I guess you're done with that trajectory.

Though I like Autechre, even at his most glitchy/experimental/esoteric there is an air of melodic, otherworldly melancholy with RDJ that I just don’t quite get with those guys.

gotta love people accusing RDJ of using AI to create new music and then hyping up autechre as the more exciting alternative. isn't their whole deal using "algorithms" to automate their music-making?

e.g. Their studio set-up or system varies from album to album but is a labyrinth of possibilities relying on self-written mathematical algorithms that induce their sounds and rhythms to behave in specific yet experimental ways after Autechre manipulate a massive range of parameters.

that's AI, baby

I wasn't accusing him of it upthread but rather speculating he might be a guy to generate a ton of it and release the best stuff and then have a good laugh about it, which I think is very different from what Autechre do

Definitely that feeling, Melomane.
It's not dissimilar to Plaid - I like it when a new Plaid album comes out because it's like buying a fresh pair of my favourite brand of underpants. I know what I'm going to get and it feels good nevertheless

I'd argue that even Autechre are starting to sound kinda similar from album to album, or at least you know what an Autechre album sounds like by now, but somehow they manage to keep me on my toes

if argue that that's not AI, baby. generative, perhaps, but not AI.

i'd argue...

just like AI, aphex, autechre and plaid were all better in the 90s

what's better than all of their music combined is reading the same opinions about them for 20+ years

mine is that anyone who didn't like / wasn't impressed by syro has a screw loose.

pfft that’s nothing imagine posting the same opinions about them for 20+ years :-P

just like AI, aphex, autechre and plaid were all better in the 90s

lol cmon Oversteps -> Exai -> elseq -> NTS is like the greatest run of albums in this genre ever. and if not, it's at least the longest.

tl;dl

matttkkkk otm

personally I think it's all been downhill since the first AI comp for all of them and most music in general.

actually I agree with frogbs more, I just couldn't resist the quick grab