So this is one that I listened to a whole bunch in 2014 and 2015 and has now been trailing off with less frequency. Wait, what the fuck. I just noticed something. 2017, 3/15 and 9/26, and then 2018, 3/26 and 9/15. That is the most bizarre consistency, like just the days swapped. I swear that was not intentional, but yeah I guess I've fallen into a rhythm with it.
OK, let's get into it. A lot of people say this album isn't innovative or forward-thinking. These people are demonstrably wrong.
The artwork for this album is notable for going into great detail about all of the promotional costs around the album. But it also includes a circular chart that I've cropped a portion of above. The full thing shows all the instruments used on the album and what track they are on, but there's also a list of rooms and which tracks those were used on. This is because every track was played back in a room and re-recorded. That's why you get a good dose of hiss on some of these tracks. This is very significant, but to really get into that we have to go further back.
Aphex Twin's career in the 90s is defined by these huge reinventions in his sound, and you can find some hardcore fan who will say each one is the part where Aphex Twin stopped being good. And they do sort of have a point, because each one means abandoning something, and if you liked that something, I don't think you're going to get it back.
He'd had some weird techno singles but the first entry in the primary Aphex Twin canon is Selected Ambient Works 85-92, in 1992. It gave an immediate sense of the detuned approach to melody that he was into, and the album was full of detailed but unobtrusive beats that maintained relatively simple structures to let the melodies stretch out and shine. Then he signs to Warp, whets the appetite of their audience with the On EP and the Polygon Window album for some fresh IDM sounds (the latter being one of his most underrated albums), but then in 94 he hits everyone with the massive double cd/triple lp Selected Ambient Works Volume II. The album is actually ambient this time, there aren't really any beats and many tracks blur out so much that you completely lose track of time and place, and then get snapped back into your body by one of the catchier parts. It's an incredible experience, one that exceeds SAW 85-92.
Some more stuff is happening on the minor release side, keeping a constant buzz of activity, but then a year later he hits people with I Care Because You Do..., and the first track blows everyone away, because it refines the approach of SAW 85-92 to an incredible level and steps up the complexity of the drums so that they feel more like they are accompanying the melody on it's journey rather than making its macro-structural parts clear. And then the album gets into Ventolin, Come On You Slags, and Start As You Mean To Go On, and people go "wtf these songs are nasty and distorted and harsh", because they are. The album pulls back after that, but I think I always end up underrating it and thinking it's uneven, even though it's really cool that it did that and the softer stuff is better than anything off SAW 85-92 as far as I'm concerned.
He does a bunch of EP's showing a bunch of different styles around here, but the Hangable Auto Bulb series of EPs sticks out as a sign of what's to come. Inspired by his friend Luke Vibert's work as Plug, and drum n bass and jungle generally, he wound up exploring the ideas of Stockhausen's Four Criteria For Electronic Music that I mentioned earlier in the thread. Ironically, in an interview that year Stockhausen would end up critiquing some of his music by saying that Aphex should listen to his electronic stuff, "because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it were varied to some extent and if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations." But he was already on that, using computers to make the beats into melody by having them work into speeds that created the perception of a consistent tone, playing with that tone to give the songs forward drive while looping melodies held down the structure, sort of in an inversion of SAW 85-92, except there are also notable synth leads on this, because this is better than SAW 85-92.
HAB wasn't really in the main Aphex Twin canon though, it was relegated to AFX alias status and was pressed in an incredibly small run. Up until the 2005 re-release, all anyone had were low quality vinyl rips, and it was tough times. Because of that, I can't imagine many people were ready for the Richard D James album, which took this technique, now getting called drill n bass because when you run a drill at different speeds you get different pitches, and made it way bright and colorful, getting softer timbres in the drum tones and throwing in some stock sounding strings and other playful touches. I think the moves work great to soften the overall vibe with the harsher tracks taken into consideration (which are also much clearer and easier to take than the harsher tracks on ICBYD), but I've seen it lead some people to saying it's uneven, or that the soft stuff is too twee. In my opinion though, it's better than SAW 85-92.
So everything has been happening at a pretty rapid pace, we've covered 92-96 and I didn't even talk about really great stuff like when he did a bunch of acid with µ-Ziq and they made Expert Knob Twiddlers, or the Ventolin EP's, which are way different than the song they're supposedly based off of. But in 97, things really slowed down. You get an entry in the AFX Analogue Bubblebath Series, but not much else really, the main Aphex Twin releases for the year are the Come To Daddy EPs. They were pretty quickly compiled into a single release, but right off the bat they were split up, sort of like Autechre's EP7, and when joined they basically make a full album. It's sort of arbitrary, but it seems like a deliberate move towards framing this as a minor release. Because it is a really fantastic refinement of the drill n bass of the RDJ album, but it doesn't really feel like that big leap forward that has been built into the narrative of Aphex Twin releases. 1998 comes and there's nothing, just a cash in on compiling the Caustic Window material for CD. Which is still important to get that material out there, but still. Things have slowed way down.
But in 1999 Windowlicker came out. It was just a single, 3 tracks, but it also had a big music video. I haven't even touched on the music video aspect of Aphex, but yeah, that's been going on. This would basically end up being the last time Aphex Twin "sounded like the future", because he brought in the most futuristic technology yet: Metasynth. It was software that translated visual information into an unreal, extremely digital cluster of sine waves, reading the image from left to write and treating that as the progression of time. He used this to give character to one of his catchiest tracks, the titular one, and then threw in a softie that was some of his most refined drill n bass yet, and then went all out on a blast of metasynth for the last track, setting the title as a complex math equation, to emphasize that this was very technical and very futuristic. It is one of the greatest singles ever. People are so fucking ready for Aphex Twin to drop his most Aphex Twin album that totally pushes sound into the new millennium.
But then the new millennium comes and he doesn't release anything. But I finally come into the picture, having heard Radiohead's Kid A and also finding geocities pages with black backgrounds and green text that say that the album is inspired by Aphex Twin, and also having Napster to "easily" follow up on (I had a dialup connection that was bad even by dialup standards, there was noise on the phone line so it only connected at 36.6 kbps, downloads would go at like 8kbps and take half an hour for a song). I catch up on as much as I can and get on board with being super hyped up for what's next.
The major Aphex releases have felt like they have had a consistency in their attempts to balance wilder, more abrasive or aggressive sounds with softer, more accessible sounds. Even with all the big leaps in sound, that approach has been consistent. In the releases outside of the primary Aphex Twin album canon, I don't think those concerns are present, they're more casual and just do their thing. But these releases seem like they are trying to get at that broad connection that SAW 85-92 had while also showing off a new major development in his sound. I believe that DrukQs carried on in that tradition beautifully, but it was not so well received. There were numerous pans in the music press, and even the dude who ran a messageboard around his music told him it was "quite good". He wasn't going for just quite good though, he was completely shaking up how he presented himself. The "minor work" that had stopped flowing was a part of the major work, in an attempt to balance out the aggressive density of his new direction. He gives you a bit of the drill n bass stuff at the start with Vordhosbn, more refined than ever before. But then the other tracks rely less on constructing pitches and timbres with extremely fast repetitions, and get into a whole new level of intricate, evolving compositions. It's insanely dense, and amazing, but because of this, it sounds so heavy. So it gets broken up with more spacious things, computer controlled piano music and the sort of things that would be highlights from minor releases, like Bbydhyonchord and Orban Eq Trx 4. An ambient track here, a weird electroacoustic track with screaming there, an altogether wildly diverse collection of breathers to give the dense, next level compositions time to shine. This should have been the one to seal it, his masterpiece, but the people rejected it because it didn't sound like the future, like Windowlicker did, except different. He should have won a Grammy but people were mad that he stopped looking to the future of technology. And so he said fuck it, and started New Game+
For you non-gamers out there, New Game+ is a feature on some games where after you beat it, you can do it all over again but different, and sometimes carrying over the advantages you earned through the game. That's the kind of game he started with the Analord series, under his AFX alias. It started with Analord 10 and a binder to hold all 12 of the planned releases (only 11 were released). Analord 10 showed that he could still work with the level of complexity he was operating on with DrukQs, but then 1 came out and it was aggressively simple, like he was retreating to the very beginning. And through the series he worked his way back to that level of density and structural complexity. He followed this up with more deliberately minor releases, using the alias The Tuss. This music is basically the precursor to Syro, at times showcasing the sort of restless energy that that album holds. But now that things have gotten back to the DrukQs level, you still have the problem of the music being too heavy. The Tuss releases were relatively short. How can this be delivered accessibly to a wide audience as a major statement. He would sporadically pop up for a DJ set over the next decade, and slip in a version of a Syro track in progress, and hear it in the room.
And so then we get to Syro. And what's huge about this is that we get to hear it in the room, like the chart on the artwork I posted forever ago shows. By taking his music out of the box, and allowing it to be softened by reflecting off the walls of the space and competing with whatever hiss comes in from the recording process, he has eliminated the heavy weight of hearing the dense Aphex compositions. The balancing that was previously happening in these albums via some tracks being soft and some tracks being aggressive is now happening within the individual track itself, which allows the album to fully commit to all-out prog nerdiness, with insane amounts of music coming at you every moment. You get some milder tracks at the start but then the back half goes all in on letting you have it, and it's able to do this because the music has air to breathe in. This may seem very simple, but it solves an issue that has been going on since ICBYD; it's a huge deal. And yeah, there's some people who are like "wahhh these old analog instruments make me think of the past why aren't you forward-thinking anymore", but that's just a surface level reaction to thinking that the Metasynth sounds are cool and futuristic (which to be fair, they are). But Syro was mostly very well regarded. Aphex Twin did it, he made additional progress past his first game, and he finally won that Grammy. It was awarded in an untelevised ceremony by someone who had been reading all sorts of obscure names for a while and was just about to switch out with someone else, and he did not show up to recieve the award, although he apparently did send music to be played, a bunch of strange moans that have absolutely nothing to do with the album.
I love the music on this album more than any Aphex Twin release, but that is what this was all for, all of those promotional costs were about making this happen. So that he could receive validation in a mainstream space and make everyone there listen to 10 seconds of weird sounds. This is the most successful Aphex Twin album, and it is my favorite. Recently, he released the Collapse EP, seemingly his first release since Syro to use the room recording technique (although with better equipment and less hiss). It brings in a more aggressive sound, while also drawing from footwork. And he's playing Coachella this year. The next thing could be happening this year.
And there's a good chance it could even surpass Syro. I think that's what being forward-thinking is. Not having the next flashy sound for people to imitate and make mediocre copies of. But to have an exciting future for developments in their own sound. Aphex basically had to start over after DrukQs to bring that back, and it took some time, but I think he got back there with Syro.
Sorry to go extremely lengthy here, the others will be shorter. But this one really needs the full picture.
We may be emphasizing the wrong part of that post. Because I don't think the point was to argue for the universal validity of these biases, but rather that they were honestly present for him but that the album was still able to connect, even if it's not ending up on the regular rotation..
Think you for perfectly understanding my intent in saying those things. Really, that was my whole point, that this is not my type of music, but I was able to appreciate it nonetheless.
To all the others who felt the need to get bent, realize that those things were tongue in cheek, not meant to be definitive statements of reality or absolutes in any way. That's why I asked you to read the whole thing before coming back with your very predictable responses. Hopefully you would recognize someone getting one of the best possible benefits from BEA, deliberately seeking things outside his comfort zone and, as a result, expanding his musical horizons. But no, true to form, you chose to misinterpret the intro in the worst possible light and cling to that throughout, thus allowing you to ignore the more relevant and important conclusion and cue up your snarky responses (which weren't nearly as clever as I suspect you think they are).
Think you for perfectly understanding my intent in saying those things. Really, that was my whole point, that this is not my type of music, but I was able to appreciate it nonetheless.
To all the others who felt the need to get bent, realize that those things were tongue in cheek, not meant to be definitive statements of reality or absolutes in any way. That's why I asked you to read the whole thing before coming back with your very predictable responses. Hopefully you would recognize someone getting one of the best possible benefits from BEA, deliberately seeking things outside his comfort zone and, as a result, expanding his musical horizons. But no, true to form, you chose to misinterpret the intro in the worst possible light and cling to that throughout, thus allowing you to ignore the more relevant and important conclusion and cue up your snarky responses (which weren't nearly as clever as I suspect you think they are).
"I am cleverer than you all, stupid dumdums. You misinterpret everything I say because you are too simple to grasp my meaning. Despite the fact that my initial statements were offensively dismissive (which is my default setting, though I refuse to admit it), I will just say that they were oversimplifications and that you all fell into my trap, thus absolving myself of any responsibility whilst once again claiming superiority over you."
Anyway, lovely Syro write-up, Tap. I wasn't aware that the songs had been played back in ambient spaces and re-recorded, but it certainly explains the record's warmth. (I have the album on vinyl, somewhere, but clearly never paid enough attention to the sleeve, which is a lovely foldout number.) I haven't spun Syro in a while, though I listened to it a lot when it first came out, and I remember thinking of it as being prog-funk, almost; super dense, but also really accessible and squelchy, like Hancock's Headhunters filtered through DeepDream. I know that's an oversimplification of an album that goes in many directions, but it's my overriding memory. I probably only prefer SAWII and Surfing On Sine Waves from his catalogue, but the fact that all three are so very different is a testament to the man, whose career you summarised nicely. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
But no, true to form, you chose to misinterpret the intro in the worst possible light and cling to that throughout, thus allowing you to ignore the more relevant and important conclusion and cue up your snarky responses.
I thought they were pretty lighthearted.
I mean, bass guitar, amirite?? _________________ Some New Ordeal (Spotify/iTunes/Deezer)
Think you for perfectly understanding my intent in saying those things. Really, that was my whole point, that this is not my type of music, but I was able to appreciate it nonetheless.
To all the others who felt the need to get bent, realize that those things were tongue in cheek, not meant to be definitive statements of reality or absolutes in any way. That's why I asked you to read the whole thing before coming back with your very predictable responses. Hopefully you would recognize someone getting one of the best possible benefits from BEA, deliberately seeking things outside his comfort zone and, as a result, expanding his musical horizons. But no, true to form, you chose to misinterpret the intro in the worst possible light and cling to that throughout, thus allowing you to ignore the more relevant and important conclusion and cue up your snarky responses (which weren't nearly as clever as I suspect you think they are).
"I am cleverer than you all, stupid dumdums. You misinterpret everything I say because you are too simple to grasp my meaning. Despite the fact that my initial statements were offensively dismissive (which is my default setting, though I refuse to admit it), I will just say that they were oversimplifications and that you all fell into my trap, thus absolving myself of any responsibility whilst once again claiming superiority over you."
Anyway, lovely Syro write-up, Tap. I wasn't aware that the songs had been played back in ambient spaces and re-recorded, but it certainly explains the record's warmth. (I have the album on vinyl, somewhere, but clearly never paid enough attention to the sleeve, which is a lovely foldout number.) I haven't spun Syro in a while, though I listened to it a lot when it first came out, and I remember thinking of it as being prog-funk, almost; super dense, but also really accessible and squelchy, like Hancock's Headhunters filtered through DeepDream. I know that's an oversimplification of an album that goes in many directions, but it's my overriding memory. I probably only prefer SAWII and Surfing On Sine Waves from his catalogue, but the fact that all three are so very different is a testament to the man, whose career you summarised nicely.
And truer to form than any, you're ignorance and whatever else prompts you to be a jackass brings you in right on cue.
There was no "trap" here. The bulk of the post was dedicated to how I came to appreciate the album despite my biases going in. That's pretty explicit, not a trap and not designed to provoke a certain response. Context and conclusion were clear. But of course, your pathetic day isn't complete unless you can attack me for something so ya' gotta' manufacture some perceived slight to justify your rant. Gawd, man, get over yourself.
Another album I shouldn't have liked going in, given my underlying preferences... or biases if you prefer.
But again, I took to it. It did require a second listening, however.
The one remaining drawback is, on some songs, an inherently nasty, unmusical (to my ears) sound. Like mechanical space crickets massing to mob a poor traveler in some sci fi movie. Just wrong for music... at least as more than a quick point of emphasis.
That said, upon my second listen, I did come to appreciate the compositional structure and skill. This album does seem to overcome my distaste for repetition, which generally fuels my distaste for electronic music. Not that electronic music is inherently repetitious, but it seems many of its practitioners are, so it's just become an expectation of mine.
But these songs actually seem to go somewhere. Once I adapted to the sound, I was able to enjoy the journey.
Thanks, Tap, for what was for me, a surprisingly expansive selection.
Think you for perfectly understanding my intent in saying those things. Really, that was my whole point, that this is not my type of music, but I was able to appreciate it nonetheless.
To all the others who felt the need to get bent, realize that those things were tongue in cheek, not meant to be definitive statements of reality or absolutes in any way. That's why I asked you to read the whole thing before coming back with your very predictable responses. Hopefully you would recognize someone getting one of the best possible benefits from BEA, deliberately seeking things outside his comfort zone and, as a result, expanding his musical horizons. But no, true to form, you chose to misinterpret the intro in the worst possible light and cling to that throughout, thus allowing you to ignore the more relevant and important conclusion and cue up your snarky responses (which weren't nearly as clever as I suspect you think they are).
"I am cleverer than you all, stupid dumdums. You misinterpret everything I say because you are too simple to grasp my meaning. Despite the fact that my initial statements were offensively dismissive (which is my default setting, though I refuse to admit it), I will just say that they were oversimplifications and that you all fell into my trap, thus absolving myself of any responsibility whilst once again claiming superiority over you."
Anyway, lovely Syro write-up, Tap. I wasn't aware that the songs had been played back in ambient spaces and re-recorded, but it certainly explains the record's warmth. (I have the album on vinyl, somewhere, but clearly never paid enough attention to the sleeve, which is a lovely foldout number.) I haven't spun Syro in a while, though I listened to it a lot when it first came out, and I remember thinking of it as being prog-funk, almost; super dense, but also really accessible and squelchy, like Hancock's Headhunters filtered through DeepDream. I know that's an oversimplification of an album that goes in many directions, but it's my overriding memory. I probably only prefer SAWII and Surfing On Sine Waves from his catalogue, but the fact that all three are so very different is a testament to the man, whose career you summarised nicely.
And truer to form than any, you're ignorance and whatever else prompts you to be a jackass brings you in right on cue.
There was no "trap" here. The bulk of the post was dedicated to how I came to appreciate the album despite my biases going in. That's pretty explicit, not a trap and not designed to provoke a certain response. Context and conclusion were clear. But of course, your pathetic day isn't complete unless you can attack me for something so ya' gotta' manufacture some perceived slight to justify your rant. Gawd, man, get over yourself.
The reason you rub people up the wrong way - one of them, anyway - is that you are unwilling (or incapable) of presenting a negative opinion on something without belittling it and, by extension, those that enjoy it. You might be a lovely person in real life, but your internet discourse is dismissive to the point of (seemingly deliberate) provocation. You could have just said that you weren't particularly au fait with/fond of hip-hop or sampling, but you felt the need to wilfully insult those art forms - reducing rapping to talking, equating sampling with theft, and implying the use of electronic instruments is somehow worth less than that of "real" instruments, whatever that means - before becoming defensive when others became understandably provoked. You then claimed that said responses were "predictable", which means that they were clearly avoidable, and yet you chose not to avoid them. You want to provoke people, and then play the victim when people become provoked, all the while claiming to have been uniformly misinterpreted whilst implying that you are the smartest person in the room. It's an exhausting form of discourse.
Anyway, apologies to Tap for in any way derailing your thread. Again, top Syro writeup. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
Anyway, lovely Syro write-up, Tap. I wasn't aware that the songs had been played back in ambient spaces and re-recorded, but it certainly explains the record's warmth. (I have the album on vinyl, somewhere, but clearly never paid enough attention to the sleeve, which is a lovely foldout number.) I haven't spun Syro in a while, though I listened to it a lot when it first came out, and I remember thinking of it as being prog-funk, almost; super dense, but also really accessible and squelchy, like Hancock's Headhunters filtered through DeepDream.
Oh thanks! And I think that's a good way to put it. I didn't get into it enough in the writeup, but one of the things with starting the New Game+ path was that instead of changing things up, there's a more linear progression, like this time he was committing to leveling up his rubbery bassline skills. And so if those basslines don't work for people that's going to be a problem, but I am all about them.
Fischman wrote:
Re: Fenn O'Berg
[...]
The one remaining drawback is, on some songs, an inherently nasty, unmusical (to my ears) sound. Like mechanical space crickets massing to mob a poor traveler in some sci fi movie. Just wrong for music... at least as more than a quick point of emphasis.
Haha that's probably Peter Rehberg, the berg in the name. Fennesz and Jim O'Rourke are friendlier in their electronic music, but Peter Rehberg has some harsh computer noise that I like a lot. I'll get into it more at the end of the thread, but yeah, I can understand that being a big hurdle. I'm glad it was able to click more on the 2nd listen!
Tha1ChiefRocka wrote:
What do you think about him being at Coachella this year? I hope we get a similar performance.
I'm not sure, I'd figure it'll just be like the DJ sets but it would be cool if we could get some dancing bears. I'm excited to not spend hundreds of dollars on going to it, and getting to stream it for free from the comfort of my home.
Skinny wrote:
Anyway, apologies to Tap for in any way derailing your thread.
Haha no worries, it wouldn't be my thread if it didn't have some arguing!
Oh I just realized some of those sounds Fischman mentioned on Fenn O'Berg may have been from the Japanese bonus track Adidas Sun Tanned Avant Man that is now included with this album. I strongly recommend people leave that off and stick with the original tracklist, it feels sort of tacked on and unnecessary/unnecessarily harsh.
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