Aphex Twin aye or nay?

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Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Aye
12
80%
Nay
3
20%
Never heard it.
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 15

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Penk!
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Re: Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Postby Penk! » 12 Mar 2017, 20:29

Jimbo wrote:
driftin wrote:
Jimbo wrote:
Exactly what i can't understand. With so many talented musicians making melodic music, a guy who mimics a garbage truck crusher or wood chipper is not fun nor entertaining.

There's plenty of melody in many of his songs.


Yeah, there are notes and music, I guess




Last edited by Penk! on 14 Mar 2017, 20:10, edited 1 time in total.
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.

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Penk!
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Re: Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Postby Penk! » 12 Mar 2017, 20:52

Jimbo, Aphex Twin is one of the most significant artists of the last 30 years. He is one of the first names to be dropped by anybody remotely interested in electronic music, whichever of the myriad subgenres, niches and cul-de-sacs they have burrowed into, because in many cases he already went there and made himself at home.

Sure, he might have gotten some mainstream attention through the jokey horror techno of 'Come to Daddy' (and its sister video, the hip-hop spoof 'Windowlicker', where his gurning face is instead photoshopped onto bikini-clad models), but it's not the churning metallic stuff (and really, why is someone experimenting with rhythm and sound any less worthy than a guitar solo?) that made his name; it's his gift for melody and fragility, for chunky acid hooks, and for that most elusive signifier of genius: being one's instantly identifiable self in whatever one puts out even when working in so many different fields and styles. How many artists truly manage that?

You can carry on believing that turning on a guitar amp and playing some chords is somehow more "real" or "organic" or that writing a verse-chorus-verse number in 4/4 is a better example of songwriting, but you're really just more attracted to that particular sound than you are to synth sounds (or whatever Aphex is using now). His ambient pieces might be repetitive - that's kind of the point - but elsewhere he's got a great sense of how to structure and develop a piece, much more than most rock musicians, and his music is bursting with hooks, melody lines and little throwaway tunes.

And there are loads of stupid stories (most of them rumours, embellishments or plain lies) that an old stoner like you would love, Jimbo: he started out by building his own synths and instruments in his adolescent bedroom. He has DJed by just spinning sandpaper on the turntable and spinning a mic in a blender. He writes most of his music via the medium of lucid dreaming. He lives in an old bank vault in the middle of a roundabout. He drives around in a decommissioned tank. He got paid a wedge to do a remix for the Lemonheads, forgot about it, and when they turned up, just gave them a random tape from the nearest table.

Oh, and if you still need convincing, Jimbo, he's into conspiracy theories.
Last edited by Penk! on 12 Mar 2017, 21:06, edited 2 times in total.
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.

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algroth
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Re: Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Postby algroth » 12 Mar 2017, 20:58

What Penk said.

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Darkness_Fish
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Re: Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Postby Darkness_Fish » 12 Mar 2017, 22:10

Not as ginger as Ed Sheeran, mind.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.

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pcqgod
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Re: Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Postby pcqgod » 14 Mar 2017, 18:27

I've enjoyed what I've heard.
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Re: Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Postby sloopjohnc » 14 Mar 2017, 19:59

Jimbo wrote:He/They are headlining at Fuji Rock this summer.

What I have heard so far sounds like a lot of noise rather than music (yes, I sound like my dad), and as a side act at the festival I wouldn't mind but headlining??? I vote nay.


I take it you've never heard Skrillex.
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KeithPratt
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Re: Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Postby KeithPratt » 15 Mar 2017, 12:47

I can relate to Jimbo's point, even as a relative "fan" of his music.

I love SAW and SAW II, plus the Polygon Window material. He had a golden period of around 10 or so years and there's pretty much a triple album of absolute belters that you can put together of that time which soars above most other contemporary acts. The most recent stuff has the odd moment but I think to a certain extent his status has inevitably led to a period where his fans salivate over anything that emerges and this distorts things a great deal.

He's certainly one of those artists who doesn't look back, doesn't really do "classicism" in that he could rely on essentially churning out "the old stuff" over and over again, so I respect him for that. But like a lot of musicians in his field, as they get older and into periods of their life when they become more reflective and must go through the same sort of experiences that all of us in this age go through, there's something of a gap between this almost academic electronic music they release and what their emotions must be like. I think that "gap" becomes more problematic, at least for me, as I get older. I went to see Autechre last year and I've loved what they do for decades, but for the first time I watched them and thought "what are their emotions, what are their personalities?" whilst trying to decipher what was the musical equivalent of a load of noise and random beats.

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ConnyOlivetti
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Re: Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Postby ConnyOlivetti » 15 Mar 2017, 14:11

Toby wrote:I can relate to Jimbo's point, even as a relative "fan" of his music.

I love SAW and SAW II, plus the Polygon Window material. He had a golden period of around 10 or so years and there's pretty much a triple album of absolute belters that you can put together of that time which soars above most other contemporary acts. The most recent stuff has the odd moment but I think to a certain extent his status has inevitably led to a period where his fans salivate over anything that emerges and this distorts things a great deal.

He's certainly one of those artists who doesn't look back, doesn't really do "classicism" in that he could rely on essentially churning out "the old stuff" over and over again, so I respect him for that. But like a lot of musicians in his field, as they get older and into periods of their life when they become more reflective and must go through the same sort of experiences that all of us in this age go through, there's something of a gap between this almost academic electronic music they release and what their emotions must be like. I think that "gap" becomes more problematic, at least for me, as I get older. I went to see Autechre last year and I've loved what they do for decades, but for the first time I watched them and thought "what are their emotions, what are their personalities?" whilst trying to decipher what was the musical equivalent of a load of noise and random beats.


Great post!
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martha
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Re: Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Postby martha » 15 Mar 2017, 15:00

I just don't like the sound. I get what he's going for, but I don't derive any pleasure from listening to Aphex Twin at all.
--m.

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Re: Aphex Twin aye or nay?

Postby Jimbo » 16 Mar 2017, 00:48

martha wrote:I just don't like the sound. I get what he's going for, but I don't derive any pleasure from listening to Aphex Twin at all.


Thank you. :D
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