COME ON, YOU SLAGS! vote in the "...i care because you do" poll

have loved this album for a long time, and i've been playing it constantly lately. i can hear the drums in my head just as well as the synths for every track. will prob vote acrid avid.

also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XlTjeNHv-8

this kind of has to be "Ventolin" or "Come On You Slags" doesn't it

could have picked any of the first three tracks. still never heard anything like them. when people talk about aphex creating "shocking brand-new worlds" (Disco Nihilist) they're what i think of.

yea the first three work so well together. i used to find it annoying that icct hedral kinda broke up that vibe, but it's really been working for me recently.

Acrid Avid Jam Shred or Alberto Balsalm

hey i've been playing this a lot lately as well. so many stand out classics, and such a cohesive listen -- i think it has something to do with his trick of sending the drum machine into the filter tracking on his korg ms20 so there's that squawky, crunchy distortion sound over all the songs. i'll have to think about this

i reckon "alberto balsalm" will be most popular

albetro balsam is possibly my favourite track of his overall, so that.

I wd've used to vote for one of the "pretty" ones but no lie nowadays I think "Ventolin" is the prettiest of them all.

this kind of has to be "Ventolin" or "Come On You Slags" doesn't it

Really don't like either of those ones.

such a cohesive listen

I actually love about half this album, but found some of the tracks (like the ones above) a bit jarringly out of place.

ha well I was genuinely upset that my wife wouldn't allow me to instruct the DJ to play "Ventolin" at our wedding reception

Acrid Avid Jam Shred is a good opener, but kind of ends up being a bit less substantial than it seems like it's going to be when it starts. I find it difficult to explain what I mean on this, but I feel the mood of the song becomes a bit too chirpy once the melody has kicked in. Next Heap With is great, kind of simultaneously uplifting but depressing and threatening. Mookid is pleasingly silly. I've voted for Icct Hedral, which was always my favourite.

i choose ventolin over acrid avid jam shred (mookid prob 3rd). love this album, still sounds fresh.

i always found mookid to be rather sad and lonely sounding, rather than silly. i dunno.

(xp) I made CDs to be played at our wedding reception and managed to sneak in between the more obviously multi-generational crowd-pleasing numbers 'Soon' by MBV and 'Voodoo Ray' by A Guy Called Gerald. Also, IIRC, the theme music to 'Roobarb and Custard'.

The noise tracks are definitely cohesive with the gentle ones. This is the first proper Aphex album where he lets rip with the girl songs/boy songs thing I think, although SAW II foreshadows the trick by mixing evil-sounding drones in amongst the delicate dreamland tunes. Stuff like "Alberto Balsam" sounds almost corny to me now, the way you know he can knock out these sweet Satie-esque numbers at will, but "Ventolin" has those elements in it just turned inside out and hitting you in the face instead of beckoning the finger from behind a palm tree.

i always found mookid to be rather sad and lonely sounding, rather than silly. i dunno.

It is totally sad and lonely! Anyway, I voted Alberto Balsalm, but this is probably my favourite album of his overall.

I like r1o's hunch about why this works as a cohesive whole. the distorted sound of the drums contributes to their big, chunky feel which is a big part of what makes this album distinctive for me. not breakbeat, not 4 to the floor. sort of a culmination of this drum style for him, before the drill n bass on the RDJ album.

yea i think this album is totally cohesive sonically, and is able to cover a lot of ground mood-wise because of it. so tho i adore acrid avid as an opener, sometimes i like to start with some other track and let it cycle through from there. i also like to think all of the anagram tracks represent a little piece of richard's psyche. there's definitely some kind of thread running through them to my ears. and i love the way acrid avid just kind of deliberately ambles along! i could listen to those drums forever. it's one of my favorite tracks ever for walking around on a calm morning.

agree with lukas -- interesting what r1o says about the drums going through that particular filter. one thing i love on this is how he coaxes so much crackling energy from the percussion without the super-intricate drill n bass programming of the later stuff (which i also love). especially "start as you mean to go on"! hope someone votes for that.

lastly, incredible use of reverb throughout...

Oh noes. See, much of this album just slides into this big over-distorted drum mess where I have a lot of trouble telling individual songs apart. Probably my least favourite Aphex album. Definitely the one I listen to the least.

Probably going to predictably vote Ventolin but I'll have to give it another listen. Oh the imposition...

(OK, bear in mind, "least favourite Aphex album" is still kinda like "least favourite flavour chocolate truffle")

OK, I just have such a weird thing with this album. Like, I do like bits of it individually, but taken as a whole, it's just such an *unhappy* sounding album that it never clicks with me in the way that the others do. Part of that is maybe the fuzziness (I keep wondering if I have a bad rip of it or something because it just sounds so ... indistinct. And not in a good, warm fuzzy way, but more in a "I can't be bothered to do this properly" way. Which is SO not something I associate with the usually meticulous RDJ. ANd that's what makes me think my rip is wrong.)

And though there are songs on it I like a lot, I keep thinking "But he did this particular trick just so much *better* elsewhere..." All the fuzzy headslamming stuff - he just covered that ground so much more effectively in Caustic Window. Yeah, I like Come On You Slags, but Fantasia did it so much better. I love Next Heap With, but he had better orchestral samples and better programming on the RDJ album.

Tempted to vote for Icct Hedral or Start As You Mean To Go On.

...but... having listened to these tracks on YouTube, I think something is definitely *up* with the recording quality of the version that I have. Wouldn't that be ironic if I'd ended up disliking this album because I have a bad rip? Ha. There's all kinds of sound detail I seem to be completely just missing, which is why it sounds so messy to me.

Last good Aphex LP

Gret album - the most diverse and entertaining (other than maybe Come To Daddy EP) - I voted for Alberto Balsalm of course. I love the sound of whatever he sampled for the on beat (sounds like somebody shoving a fridge across a hardwood floor)/

one theory: http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Alberto_Balsalm_%28deleted_17_Mar_2008_at_22:41%29

That student steel version is great. Kind of funny how the two guys with those sort of dumpster drums are also reading notes for their parts.

http://www.march.es/musica/jovenes/guiaromanticoyabstractos/img/detalles/23-quino.jpg

Wow, just got a clean version of this, and it's like a completely different album.

It's weird how sound quality can completely change your evaluation of an album. (Always think back to the 80s, how I used to tape albums off the radio - Sonic Youth's Sister never quite sounded the same without the phasing and distortion of the local college radio station going in and out of synch.)

Still not made up my mind, though.

This is the first proper Aphex album where he lets rip with the girl songs/boy songs thing I think

which ones are which? these songs don't feel particularly gendered to me, but i'm curious how people hear gender in music like this.

i hope you warm to your new copy masonic!

RDJ is on record for saying that it is he who thinks of his songs as girl or boy songs (hence girl/boy song which is hermaphrodite). I think the poster is saying this was the first Aphex album that displayed the panoply of styles he had on offer, as opposed to concentrating on simply ambient or hard techno or w/e.

well I think he deliberately separates out the aggro tracks from the chocolate box melodies on this album in a way that he hadn't before. There's always leakage tho. "Girl/Boy" is RDJ's descriptor, not mine.

Yeah, new, clean, 320, not-distorted copy has already made me like this album about 10x than before.

I always thought this was the red-headed step-child (fnar) of Aphex albums, but there's depths to it I just never *could* hear before because my copy was so crappy. It's like... crappy C90 tape copy of SAW85-92 still sounds amazing. Crappy C90 sound quality version of ICBYD = not acceptable.

Mr Twin has some really... erm... interesting ideas on gender. (And I don't mean that in a sarcastic or perjorative tone. He actually does, that he's gone into a bit in interviews.) I can kind of hear that this is the first album where he threw together the girlsongs and boysongs.

I suddenly understand why people like Alberto Balsam so much, where before I always thought it was a farty pile of distorted noise with a pretty melody buried deep underneath.

Hey kids, don't do downloads!

Mookid!

and u call urself an aphex twin phan!

Yes, and go back and tell my 90s self that Home Taping Is Killing The Music Industry, too.

x-posts

are there any interviews online where richard talks about the girl/boy stuff?

It's archived somewhere on the .nu site I'll look it up tomorrow when I
not trying to post from an iPhone...

ventolin. still the hardest jam

Heh, I have this on tape... an actual legit bought tape. Maybe I should get myself a digital copy and see if I like the "boy" songs any more when not augmented by the sounds of tape hiss and warping.

I think ventolin is the the song that made me an aphex twin fan. I remember randomly downloading the mp3 of this somewhere in the pre-napster days (remember when you basically just searched for mp3s on lycos or whatever and downloaded whatever you found if it seemed remotely like something that would interest you) and it completely blowing my mind. The only other Aphex Twin I'd heard before this were the tracks on nine inch nails's further down the spiral I think.

So I'm voting for Ventolin.

Acrid Avid easily.

I'm heartened by the number of peeps voting "Ventolin".

there's a midpoint separation in this album w/r/t track 1-6 vs. 7-12. the dark-into-light of "COYS" into "SAUMTGO.. both halves evoke different ehhhh... impressions to me. wish i could do a better job explainin'

Side 1, Side 2. That used to happen when things came out on Vinyl.

You're right! Hey... I remember vinyl too..OMG!

what;s vinyl

does it sound better than 128kbps

see now, the d1ck is not that un-noticeable, really. as a manager, i'd be more concerned that a fellow tattle-tale employee would have such reliable "d1ck-vision" as to analyze that photo in in the first place.

Yeah I thought the flashing lights might make passers-by more likely to notice the cock.

Just reading the thread and I think he was almost unique amongst the Warp people in knocking effective Satiesque stuff, he struck that right melodic register with enough muscle, maybe, it has been at least five years since I've heard the thing so maybe it'd be different now.

In a side-note, I honestly am trying to find that interview where he talks about Girl Songs / Boy Songs but honestly wading through Mr. D.James interviews is hard work, he lies so much and spouts such an awful lot of untenable nonsense. Still looking, mind you...

Also, way too many pictures of Chris Cunningham's cock. Very distracting, that.

Christ, for someone who's supposedly a recluse and "never does interiews" there sure are about 40,000 of them scattered about that .nu site.

http://www.aphextwin.nu/learn/98136333384401.shtml

Weidenbaum: You titled one of the new songs "Girl/Boy." Would you say much of your music is about girls and boys.
James: Some of it, not all of it, reckon. Like, the reason I came up with that is 'cause I thought it was some tracks were girl tracks, and some which were boy tracks.

Weidenbaum: So, what's "Yellow Calx"?
James: I reckon that's a boy track.

But when you start to read RDJ interviews em masse, you start to realise why he gave them up. And it's not just stupid American interviewers who actually think Cornwall is a town...

Where (or of what) one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence.

Haha I remember reading an American article talking about how RDJ grew up "in the ghettos of Cornwall".

...Ghettos of Cornwall indeed

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4140/4820326839_c7bb890fc4_b.jpg

"Growing up on the tough streets of Perranporth, James fell into the gang culture that was rife at the time. There was an ongoing turf war between rival groups the Piskies and the Weekenders."

Fie. That's Redruth, not Perranporth.

lol I'd forgotten, just picked the funniest town name that sprang to mind

The Piskie is a general name for a fairy race or tribe in Cornwall. In appearance they look like old men with wrinkled faces, and are small in stature with red hair. They dress in the colours of the earth especially green, using natural materials such as moss, grass and lichen.

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/286045/Aphex+Twin.jpg

^^^^^^^^^you know, you might be on to something here.

A tad drunk at the moment and maybe I'll regret it tomorrow but I dont know... even slightly oddball he looks so dreamy on the photo up here.

It's OK to feel this way, Moka. Ginger oddballs need love, too.

richard is totally cute... too bad he only seems to talk about girls in interviews :\

as a young lad:
http://www.scarlet.nl/~teccie/gfx/aphex.jpg

TS: hair down or ponytail?

thanks for hunting around the old interviews masonic boom

I can't deal with beardless Richard. He just looks WAY too much like me at the same age. ;-)

And definitely hair down. I like it best when it's just to his shoulders, that whole early 90s grown out bowlie thing is just well cute. But I pretty much got hounded off WATMM for making a thread about Richard's haircuts over the years so I'll shut up now. Tee hee.

some of my personal favourites, BTW...

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/19635475/Aphex+Twin+9e6a_1_sbl.jpg
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/292963/Aphex+Twin.jpg
http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/7450/85224379.jpg

I think the flat out prettiest I've ever seen him look was that MTV interview from early 2006 where he's lying amidst the rhubear heads, wearing the same outfit as that last pic (green tracky bottoms and a baseball jersey) but his hair is all long and curling over his shoulders and it's just... squeeeeeee.

But perhaps I should just go revive a watercooler rather than gumming up this thread with loads of pics... ::hangs head in shame:: I do apologise. Back to the topic.

IIRC I think I ended up voting for Start As You Mean To Go On. But I could be mistaken. I have a whole new appreciation for this album now.

Icct Hedral.

Has anyone ever talked to the guy who looks and dresses like him who attends most of the gigs that he does? (I'd hazard he's actually invited by RJD just to wander round in the audience during his sets freaking people out.)

I don't think I'm imagining it. I've seen this guy about ten times now I reckon.

If there is such a person, I'm sure he's part of the act.

Actually, TBH, that dude is the *real* Aphex Twin and the thing on the stage is actually the robot he designed in 1996 to make music for him so he could concentrate on shagging.

This explains how I found myself at an Aphex DJ set watching someone I was sure was Aphex dance. It made perfect sense at the time but when I thought about it the next day I decided either I was really drunk or he'd put a long record on and headed for the dancefloor. Or that he'd just got someone else to do the actual DJing bit and was wandering around instead (couldn't see the booth at that point).

(NB I was really drunk too, so there is no point asking me what he played or how possibly-fake-RDJ danced or anything)

Possible explanations:

1) OK, given the general tendency of UK music fans to come to resemble their idols the same way pets and their owners start to look alike, it's entirely *possible* that there is some random ginger dude who goes to all his shows dressed as much as possible like him (c.f. that Guardian photo essay where they picked random people out of crowds of various bands who were dressed just like their idols)

2) However, given that RDJ has a habit of having people in Aphex masks, rhubear costumes, little girls in ballerina dresses wearing gurning RDJ masks all up on stage with him and in the audience, and harrassing the queue, to specifically freak people out, it seems likely that this is his idea of a joke.

3) Maybe it's just Boy 8-Bit.

4) IT IS THE GHOST OF RICHARD JAMES

It works though. I remember watching him DJ in Camber in 2003 at about 3am and when the ginger spectre glided past a couple of saucer-eyed loons fell about gibbering like the world was ending.

In my mind, it's like some creepy Cornish Hardy novel... dead brother not actually dead, comes back from foreign parts to reclaim inheritence... haunts Camber Sands like the ghost of good will departed, trying to unsettle his brother's supporters... ::SLAPS SELF::

Life is not a Hardy novel. Knock it off.

Actually, scrap that. For a proper spooky ghostie story, it'd have to be M.R.(D.) James.

Going to go for Ventolin

will anyone vote for cow cud is a twin? fun things happen in the low end on it.

walking to work this morning i thought maybe cow cud's twin is recury.

I have grown to love Cow Cud Is A Twin, the odd noises abounding on it are wonderful, as is the lolloping drumbeat. But it is not my *favourite*.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Man, you are right about Recury. I haven't listened to that track in quite a long time...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axcPKwPQG8o

Wait, I'm wrong. I wanna change my vote to Cow Cud. For the weird noises in the background.

other aphex/autechre twins:

P.I.O.B. (mix two) / Cliffs (or take your pick off SAW II really)
Bucephalus Bouncing Ball / Krib (more of a half cousin than a twin)

(should be Cliffs / P.I.O.B. (mix two) for consistency)

Aw man, don't make me listen to Autechre, I freaking hate Autechre.

Though that beat really really reminds me of something and it isn't Aphex. It's got a vocal on it, and it goes "...leave me alone" (but obviously not the New Order song.)

Might be Ellen Allien/Apparat come to think of it. And franky I'd rather listen to them.

Kate - I'm interested to know why you love Aphex so much yet hate Autechre. I know they are quite different, but they're also quite similar. Have you listened to LP5 or EP7, or some of the earlier stuff? I know a lot of ilxors enjoy their Confield material, but I've had that album for nigh-on ten years and it's still not done much for me. LP5 on the other hand is really great.

Because Aphex is deeply melodic and maintains a sort of pop sensibility, no matter how far out his explorations go, in a way that Autechre, to my ears, never do. There's this sense that Aphex always fulfills my expectations, even while he's confounding them. Autechre never seem to do anything but confound.

And I've had so much *rubbish* Autechre pushed on me, that I have come to just seriously dislike, that I think the rare moments they don't frustrate or annoy me are abberations.

And yeah, I know that the two fandoms are supposed to go hand in hand. It just makes me think that people are appreciating different things in Aphex than I am.

I mean, you do remember I'm the person who, up until about a year and a half ago or so, really didn't like much of Aphex beyond the SAWs and a bit of the RDJ album.

In terms of boysongs and girlsongs, I used to only respond to the girl songs. And Autechre are very much the kind of band that do boysong after boysong. (Using those terms in the way that Aphex does, not trying to put any gender significance onto the type of music.)

Early - mid ae are no less 'girlsong' than aphex imo, it's only post LP5 that their boyish tendencies really gained the upper hand. Of course boy/girl is a simplistic metric and there could be other reasons why you never got into them - personally, although I love a lot of aphex I never really dug him like ae, who for whatever reason just plugged directly into my pleasure centre.

Eutow is the ultimate Autechre girlsong and it's ace. Actually I think I only like girl songs - Amber and Anvil Vapre are my favourite Autechre releases.

But I don't mind a track which doesn't go anywhere, is just a pretty view onto static starscapes, which I don't think is the case for MB, at least not electronic-wise? So I find Incunabula pleasant where most people find it deathly dull.

Also, Aphex is almost superhumanly beautiful, while Autechre are ugly as dogs.

Kidding! Kidding! (about this being the reason, not about the asessment)

It's weird, I normally don't mind that kind of "pretty view onto static starscapes" kind of music, in fact, that describes a good portion of what I have listened to over the years. But I don't *get* that from Autechre. When they go ambient, it's not so much static starscapes as, well, watching colourfield paintings that just do not move at all. That Autechre is more like Mark Rothko (who I hate!) while when Aphex goes ambient, it's much more like a Max Ernst landscape all melty and odd patterns of confluence.

Also, it probably has a lot to do with the "kind of people" I've known who have tried to force Autechre on me - they have tended to be wankers. True, I shouldn't let this affect my view of the music, but it does mean that it's associated with unhappy portions of my life.

dude in autechre w/ the buzz cut is like totally WS imo

I like Autechre but it's not because they're "complex" or anything. Incunabula and Amber are my favorites, and Oversteps was very nice too. I think Incunabula is pretty melodic but I doubt you would enjoy them unless you like oldschool early 80s-influenced techno. In any case I'm sure you'd find something wrong with it no matter what any of us say.

What, the one with the eyebrows? Ew, no way. He has nice eyes, but no, never with that haircut. Ugh.

Heh. I was in the midst of writing this whole long post about the possibility of implied racism in the way "Curry" was marketed in the UK, but then realised I would actually rather talk about the smashability or not of Autechre vs Aphex Twin.

(posts frighteningly in character, yo.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

pretty good results except no love for wax the nip!!

Yeah bizarre

dude in autechre w/ the buzz cut is like totally WS imo

― Pissed off our Weingarten (Stevie D), Monday, 2 August 2010 15:41 (Yesterday) Bookmark

qft

Now I feel really, really bad about not voting for Cow Cud Is A Twin. ;_;