Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), best known as Aphex Twin, is a British musician. James Album, James' fourth studio album as Aphex Twin, was released on Warp Records in 1996.
So I've been inspired and obessed with Aphex Twin ( Richard D. James) music for years. I've been listening to his side project The Tuss non stop for a year or so. I've been searching the blogs, forums and what ever other venue I could to find info on anything new.
Today the 'twitter' alerted me to a new interview with him. You can read it from these links below. I'm totally pumped to hear his '6 completed albums'. Hopefully in one big box set. Some nice thoughts from him. Check here for more discussion here is one of his 'new' untitled tracks and here is a remix I made of one of his Tuss tracks by Update: Thought this was interesting to include. Update (march2111): Aphex played a unreleased track known by fans as the 'Manchester Track' out at an event in Singapore this weekend.
It's been around for a few years, but I hadn't heard it before.
So remember Aphex Twin? He was a big deal at one point, that particular point being the late 90s.
It was right around then that this shockingly prolific artist went from being a sensation in modest underground dance circles to being something much bigger than that - the weirdly-grinning face of the new post-rock world that the turn of the milennium was supposed to bring. More than any of the other shining lights of 1990s electronic music, it was Richard D. James (the only one of this man's many names that was given to him by his parents) who seemed to embody the spirit of the times, name-dropped as a formative influence and reviewed in all the right places. And it's odd.
Aphex Twin never made that big breakthrough into the mainstream, but it's tough to imagine any other person whose music is so extreme coming that close to the 'big time'. I mean, Aphex Twin's music is messed up. It's dance music you can't dance to, headphone music at times you can barely listen to.
DrukQs was Aphex Twin's first album under that name of the 21st century. And amazingly, a full decade later it remains his most recent. It's tough to know what Aphex Twin wanted to accomplish with this baffling album, but the critical drubbing and subsequent semi-retirement suggest either that he failed at it, or that he succeeded spectacularly at engineering a Dylanesque exit-stage-right act of self-sabotage. Could DrukQs be Aphex Twin's Self Portrait?
Only James himself could possibly know for sure, and there's every chance that he doesn't either. Interesting, though, that it was the preceding album, I Care Because You Do, that had a very similar-looking self-portrait on the cover, and that this was the first release in a while not to prominently feature his grinning face. What does this album feature? Well, it's thirty tracks over two CDs, but they're not stuffed full: they average only fifty minutes each, and the high track number is due to the number of shorter, fragmentary pieces that outnumber the longer beat-freak workouts. Almost half of these pieces aren't exactly electronic music at all but are two-minute pieces for piano, standard or prepared. A good number are brief random snippets or half-songs too, mixed in alongside the percussive blasts of what, for old time's sake, we might as well call 'Aphex acid': incredibly hyperactive abrasive sonic attacks that somehow still manage to compel. Reviewers weren't kind.
The disparate nature of the album - masterpieces mixed rather randomly alongside throwaways, flow constantly interrupted by regular mood shifts - reminded reviewers of contract-finishing vault-clearances. 'He's raided his hard disc for unfinished bits and pieces', they surmised. I don't quite agree - I see too much accomplishment on these two discs to believe that it was thrown-together. James very clearly is, however, working the shuffle-mode mood-juxtaposition concept for all it's worth, to the degree that an uncertainty what will happen at any given time is a part of the listener's experience of this record.
If it's not Self-Portrait, then, call it James's White Album. And like that album, it's especially rife for a fan-made single-disc compilation.
I found this music confounding, but I ultimately found it rewarding. You do have to be in the mood for it, and at times I found myself frustrated with the indulgences on display even on the twelve songs I selected. But one thing this album does do is reward repeated play. The ludicrous song titles, repeated left-turns into strange territory and lack of commercial consideration inspire the listener to disregard the project at first - something I think contemporary reviewers did - but given time the listener grows attached to any number of songs, which suddenly feel remarkably distinct from each other, despite their names. Had the reviewers played DrukQs a few more times than they likely did, I'm sure they'd have been kinder to it. After all, perhaps it did meet the purpose James had set out for it.
A good number of these ditties have ended up accompanying all sorts of televisual projects or sampled on other artists' work. So it has had a cultural effect, refreshingly devoid of the breathless 'future visionary' doggerel that had started to follow its creator, everywhere he went. Bungle Jerry. My name is Bungle Jerry and I keep a large number of blogs. collects random bloggy stuff. gives a 100% guaranteed always true astrology forecast. talks about things whose names are either dreadful or wonderful.
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