I LOVE DRUKQS+

I guess I'm pretty uninformed, I didn't realize he used samples like that at all.

I can't help but wonder whether he's taking a bit of a piss by challenging people like me to strain to hear things in his music that literally aren't there.

Haha, yeah I can imagine that, but then I can imagine that I'm imagining that. It's pretty painful. I've forgotten the name of it, but there's a paradox that came up when I did AI back when no one cared about AI, including the people doing AI, where you cannot tell if someone is lying if they say they are a liar—I like to imagine him having a chuckle at that.

Re: the Cheetah stuff, I know what you mean frog, though there is a slower version of the CIRCLONT stuff from Syro available (interview tracks—goes on for ten minutes) and it does sound similar, but not sure it's quite the same.

Re: b-boy breaks, yeah I found that surprising too, partly because it doesn't really sound like it at all, like all these late 80s records that did that did—I mean I can't hear Led Zep even although I'm told it's there, but also partly because I don't think he did much of it before or even since, but I may be missing it—does he use canonical breaks on all his other records?

Ha, Aphex Twin definitely uses breakbeats. In the case of that Levee Breaks one, he's just using them as one-shots and using the texture, not the groove. I don't know that I would have ID'd it pitched up like that. But the Marva Whitney one is clear, ghost notes and everything.

Sometimes he doesn't use breakbeats! Often the drum sounds are pretty clearly synthetic. But, say, Come to Daddy has real drum sounds mixed in there, so he clearly took them off some record or other. Pretty sure the new stuff (Blackbox Life Recorder) has some as well.

I agree that it's surprising to hear a breakbeat longer than one hit in his music, usually the drums are so meticulously chopped up out of tiny samples (whether they originally came from breakbeats or drum machines).

i think the drums on most of his 90s stuff were programmed, even when he was channelling the jittery spirit of dnb on hangable auto bulb or whatever he was usually doing it with sequenced single hits, he got heavier into using classic canonical ultimate breaks and beats type loops on the later stuff - druqks, syro and the tuss - though yeah he chops and layers the hell out of them usually to the point of inscrutability

that led zep id might be absolute bullshit though i don't really hear it either

he chops and layers the hell out of them usually to the point of inscrutability

Yes, SHIP OF THESEUS. It would be quite in character for that to be the case.

I'll need to listen again for the Marva Whitney one—can't say I had noticed, but then it's also so massively out of context.

One thing I did hear/learn recently was the bit in I think Taking Control, where his mum is saying "Would you like a blackcurrant drink?", and now I learn that many years later, as a clear fan of blackcurrant drinks, he has married a Ms. Rybena.

poking around further on whosampled i realized he actually flipped two different breaks from the same marva lp on drukqs

https://www.whosampled.com/sample/261703/Aphex-Twin-Taking-Control-Marva-Whitney-Unwind-Yourself/
https://www.whosampled.com/sample/350772/Aphex-Twin-CockVer10-Marva-Whitney-Things-Got-to-Get-Better-(Get-Together)/

it is probably instructive to think of drukqs as his most direct engagement with dnb/jungle production modes (vs dnb aesthetics on rdj/hab/c2d) - bringing in more breaks, doing everything in a tracker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAZo7x83it4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WeKUEL6GNE

also i think the collapse 'britfunk' sample you mentioned is actually from a us freestyle dub
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhgmX903oh0

so much pre idm dna is buried in random '80s dance dubs

No it wasn't that. It wasn't from whosampled though, it was some YouTube video I watched about Aphex samples, I think. It had some film of the original, which I think I remembered from the time, and was quite obviously just the same thing but maybe doubled in speed. When I'm in a better place to do so, I'll see if I can find the video.

Man I loved composing with trackers back in the day. It really did feel perfect for making drum and bass and hyperactive percussion editing.

This isn't a Britfunk track and I certainly don't remember it from when it came out, but I think this might the sample I was referring to on the Collapse EP (video should be set to the right time)—I would have to have got most of the facts wrong though, although that is entirely possible. If I come across something more fitting, I will post it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWqRlAXGn-4

i think ilm strips the time parameters

Collapse is about 7 minutes in

Haha, you mean I stripped the time parameters! To be fair to me, I dunno if YouTube has time parameters when I wrote it.

Very polite of you though, A.