press release for new aphex twin album 'chosen lords'

[Constance Labounty]

The notion that AFX post rdj (or hangable auto bulb) is a sort of teleological end in western music is amusing but I can sympathise with it.

Thats just the thing though. Fundamentally its not really western music. Its a teleological end (whatever that is!) in African music (rhythm/groove centered, lacking a notation system, etc). This is what is so fascinating about it. IDM is to tribal African music as classical music is to old European music (gregorian chants? etc). Aphex and Autechre and folks are distinctly separate from the experimental electronic composers of the classical tradition.

 

[Constance Labounty]

in order to seperate themselves form that, the americans coined IDMin order to seperate themselves from orbital/ norman cook etc. therefore an essentially snobbish term which shpows very little understanding of the development of 'electronica' in the UK.

I thought it was the British who were first on the snobbish tip, with the releases on Warp starting with the artificial intelligence comp being a reaction to rave music. Isn't this what started this whole 'intelligent' notion? Or is this a whole backstory made up by americans? If it wasn't called idm back then, what was it called? Braindance?

 

[Constance Labounty]

A better way to think about the RDJ album, instead of just having both complexity and groove, is that it has a new combo of the two. A complex groove, a unique type of groove from the complexity. It is a combination of the aesthetic of autechre (that complex abstract conceptual vibe) with dance grooves. The enjoyment of following a complex progression that sounds like it is falling apart at the same time it is building up is grafted onto/into grooves to make a strangely appealing beast. I think you need to be able to appreciate the autechre type vibe or else it'll just destroy the groove for you, rather than adding to it. (This is a very important point. Some people just can't dig it. I guess they just aren't dorky enough or something.) You may not be able to feel the groove because it is too complex, just as some people may not be able to feel the groove of, say, dubstep because it is too simple. This combo of the experimental and groove aesthetics seems to be the ideal of "idm" and aphex is the one person who achieved it most.

Needless to say, this complex groove bizness is hard to explain. You just have to feel it when you hear it. Listen to 0:46 to 1:20 in Yellow Calx. Or 0:26 to 1:35 in Girl/Boy song. I dunno. Its just complex unique rhythms. Scattershot and syncopated. Consider even 1:25 to 1:54 in Fingerbib. That amalgm of emotion and rhythm is just delectable right there (one of the few tracks on the album which sounds honestly emotional and not garish). Or consider 0:41 to 1:55 of Corn Mouth. Mad funky skippiness and then one hell of a ferocious groove.

 

[matt b]

If it wasn't called idm back then, what was it called?

'electronica' was working fine.

 

[mms]

I thought it was the British who were first on the snobbish tip, with the releases on Warp starting with the artificial intelligence comp being a reaction to rave music. Isn't this what started this whole 'intelligent' notion? Or is this a whole backstory made up by americans? If it wasn't called idm back then, what was it called? Braindance?

nah braindance was a pisstake name rephlex gave their music .
artificial intelligence was like sit down twchno but yep there are a few railings on run out grooves against breakbeats etc on warp releases.

constance all this musicology is putting me off a perfectly good record

 

[droid]

If it wasn't called idm back then, what was it called?

'electronica' was working fine.

Thank god for that! I thought i was the only one!

Been through about a million electronica vs IDM arguments. One constant is the fact that people who were into this music pre the late 90s almost always go for 'electronica' over 'idm'...

BTW - much as I love Aphexs later stuff, (including RDJ) earlier works like the SAW LPs, 'I care because you do' etc... are his masterworks IMO. The rhythmic space on those records give a lot more room for his atmosphere, melodies and textures to shine through..

Anyone rate melodies from Mars?

 

[hamarplazt]

I do love On Land, and there is an uncanniness about it... but I still don't think it actually sounds that much like SAW II. It's more diffuse, more layered, it sort of burbles away. SAW II tends to be very simple synth melodies repeated endlessly, or almost undifferentiated planes of sound.

Music For Films I've always found disappointing, really.

All I can say is, that when I heard SAW2, my immediate reaction was: "Hey, that's just Eno", which disappointed me, since I've heard so much about this guy breaking all sorts of musical limits and being the future of techno/electronica/whatever, and then all he did was recycle ideas that had been around for so long. Ofcourse, a more appropiate reaction would probably be: "Hey, that's just dark ambient", but at the time I wasn't really aware that there existed so much music in that vein, and that SAW2 is more a part of that tradition that anything else. Over the years I've become very fond of SAW2, but it'll never be half as strange, scary and unreal as On Land. Wonder how much it depends on which you heard first.

Eventually, I agree that Music for Films is problematic, but the problem most of all seem to me to be that most of the tracks are so bloody short, they never really manage to explore the moods. If they went on forever, like the tracks on SAW2, I think Music for Films would be even more like it than On Land.

 

[hamarplazt]

The notion that AFX post rdj (or hangable auto bulb) is a sort of teleological end in western music is amusing but I can sympathise with it...

Within those releases (and those of Autechre and Squarepusher) you could see the sort of exponential increase in complexity of form and effect during celebrated artistic phases like the early modernist period, Stravinsky up to the rite of spring for instance. The future looked far more interesting than the bedroom idm/mashup juvenilia that followed.

Thankfully a few years treating this stuff like the second viennese school later this looks quaintly absurd but I can see why I was so infatuated...

Actually, I think it makes a lot of sense in the case of Autechre, they just seemed to follow the internal logic of what they were doing, taking the music beyond it's breaking point, and alienating a lot of people in the process. It reminds me a lot of the way Schönberg would go into atonality simply because he had to, because that's what the next step had to be.

However, that's not what Aphex did, his use of drum'n'bass-trickery was in no way a logical step from what he did before, it was so obviously an attempt to appear up-to-date by using the amazing musical evolution that had developed in the jungle scene completely independent of him.

Of the all the drill'n'bass-bigwigs I have a lot more respect for Squarepuhser, simply because he didn't have a great, personal style that he abandoned to make pseudo-jungle - pseudo jungle is his original, personal style, so rather than jumping the bandwagon, he made the bandwagon.

Generally speaking, drill'n'bass seem much closer to Les Six-neo-classiscism than to the second viennese school: Drum'n'bass used as exotic novelty, like jazz with neoclassicism, the omnipresent irony.

 

[bassnation]

However, that's not what Aphex did, his use of drum'n'bass-trickery was in no way a logical step from what he did before, it was so obviously an attempt to appear up-to-date by using the amazing musical evolution that had developed in the jungle scene completely independent of him.

i guess this is backed up by his "return to form", i.e. going back to his original style.

having said that, afx was looked at as a part of the wider rave scene and even his earlier tunes have breakbeats (digeridoo for instance).

 

[hamarplazt]

A better way to think about the RDJ album, instead of just having both complexity and groove, is that it has a new combo of the two. A complex groove, a unique type of groove from the complexity. It is a combination of the aesthetic of autechre (that complex abstract conceptual vibe) with dance grooves. The enjoyment of following a complex progression that sounds like it is falling apart at the same time it is building up is grafted onto/into grooves to make a strangely appealing beast.

But the thing is, a lot of the best jungle had the exact same sense of simultaniously falling apart and bulidning up, and because the groove was so much more physical, it actually feels much more complex than drill'n'bass.

I thought it was the British who were first on the snobbish tip, with the releases on Warp starting with the artificial intelligence comp being a reaction to rave music. Isn't this what started this whole 'intelligent' notion? Or is this a whole backstory made up by americans? If it wasn't called idm back then, what was it called?

Yep, the british definitely started it. One thing it was called back then was electronic listening music, which was the most horrible name ever, indicating that you couldn't listen to rave music, supporting the myth that it was something only working on the dancefloor.

 

[hamarplazt]

having said that, afx was looked at as a part of the wider rave scene and even his earlier tunes have breakbeats (digeridoo for instance).

True, but it seems to me that he more or less broke with the rave scene when joining Warp. Anyway, he was synth/drum machine-guy to begin with, using samples very sparsely. Computers gave him so many possibilities, and he seemed to develop a kind of horror vacui, feeling that every single moment of his music had to be filled with endless detail, constant change, never resting. And as droid pointed out, the space of his early music allowed him to shine much more brightly.

 

[dHarry]

However, that's not what Aphex did, his use of drum'n'bass-trickery was in no way a logical step from what he did before, it was so obviously an attempt to appear up-to-date by using the amazing musical evolution that had developed in the jungle scene completely independent of him.

i guess this is backed up by his "return to form", i.e. going back to his original style.

having said that, afx was looked at as a part of the wider rave scene and even his earlier tunes have breakbeats (digeridoo for instance).

I read an interview with James around the time of SAW1/11 where he said he hated hardcore/rave (something like "Do you listen to rave music?" "Only when I have to, I hear it in record shops, I hate it") and thought of his music as pure techno. Didgeridoo was initially a joke wasn't it, to clear the crusties off the local Cornish dancefloors or something? Presumably Pacman/Pillman was too? But soon he was copping/chopping jungle breaks and rhythms, much to the detriment of his music imho.

Bucephalus Bouncing Ball is a real peak of crazed creativity, the sampler/sequencer pushed to the limit, but a lot that followed in the drill'n'scrape vein yields diminishing returns. Still, an artist's gotta do what s/he's gotta do.

But it's the sheer loveliness of the Tha/On/Alberto Balsam/Girl-Boy Song lineage that redeems him for me. What I've heard from Analord doesn't quite hit those peaks; despite (or maybe because of?) the Chicago/Detroit purism, there's not enough of that fragility or beauty, just a churning out tune after tune after tune - then he's always been like Picasso in that sense, a one-man art factory. He mused on schizophrenia in an interview once, that he might be able to make twice as much music with two personalities!

 

[Slothrop]

However, that's not what Aphex did, his use of drum'n'bass-trickery was in no way a logical step from what he did before, it was so obviously an attempt to appear up-to-date by using the amazing musical evolution that had developed in the jungle scene completely independent of him.

Yep. Obviously he nicked a bunch of ideas from jungle because he wanted to appear up to date, and not because he thought he could make better music that way...

 

[mms]

I read an interview with James around the time of SAW1/11 where he said he hated hardcore/rave (something like "Do you listen to rave music?" "Only when I have to, I hear it in record shops, I hate it") and thought of his music as pure techno. Didgeridoo was initially a joke wasn't it, to clear the crusties off the local Cornish dancefloors or something? Presumably Pacman/Pillman was too? But soon he was copping/chopping jungle breaks and rhythms, much to the detriment of his music imho.

nah that's a rumour about digeredoo and he's always bought hardcore and whenever he djs or has djed there has been a fair amoutn of hardcore altho i remember a period where hard acidic techno and all that sw1 club stuff took over for a bit.

i don't mind the fact that he tried to do more up date drum and bass inspired things because that's what good producers do, adapt and react but retain their own character and techniques, it's also not all he was doing at the time, i mean melodies from mars etc were going into other areas entirely

 

[matt b]

Of the all the drill'n'bass-bigwigs I have a lot more respect for Squarepuhser, simply because he didn't have a great, personal style that he abandoned to make pseudo-jungle - pseudo jungle is his original, personal style, so rather than jumping the bandwagon, he made the bandwagon. .

cough. Plug. cough

 

[hamarplazt]

Yep. Obviously he nicked a bunch of ideas from jungle because he wanted to appear up to date, and not because he thought he could make better music that way...

I can't say what he "thought", maybe he really was inspired. However, the result (or the breakbeat part of it, at least), still sound like a forced attempt to keep up.

 

[hamarplazt]

cough. Plug. cough

Vibert made lots of ambient/trip hop-stuff before going drill'n'bass. Having a sample-approach to begin with maybe made it a more obvious step for him, but still, he didn't really do it until after the jungle breakthrough, did he?

 

[mms]

cough. Plug. cough

but vibert was doing all sorts of stuff before plug, i think all these guys are just default musicans , they can't really make any proper scene music that keeps inside the parameters of a type of scene sound as they are all havetoo much of their own characteristic sound and techniques.

 

[matt b]

Vibert made lots of ambient/trip hop-stuff before going drill'n'bass. Having a sample-approach to begin with maybe made it a more obvious step for him, but still, he didn't really do it until after the jungle breakthrough, did he?

i'm being difficult. the plug eps were the first 'drill'n'bass' records that got afx, mu-ziq etc started on the jungle tip.

squarepusher is a little different- was 'discovered' playing in pubs in london, being influenced by pirate radio and weather report.

i do agree with your 'squarepusher was consistent' point, although there's not much intrinsic worth in that.

 

[Slothrop]

I can't say what he "thought", maybe he really was inspired. However, the result (or the breakbeat part of it, at least), still sound like a forced attempt to keep up.

It sounds to me (in places, at least - I'm not too keen on Drukqs) like inspired music.

I think, though, that the difference between 'nicking stuff from drum and bass and using it to produce inspired, original, mental sounding music' and 'nicking stuff from drum and bass and using it to produce a forced attempt to keep up' is based on whether or not you actually like the records, rather than vice versa. So we might have to agree to differ on that one.