No wonder Aphex Twin's music stands out the way it does. He's always a fair way ahead of the curve.

Fun trivia: he was trolling the SuperCollider mailing list under the alias "eric hard jams" which is an anagram of Richard [D.] James. Some of his messages were truely horrendous and he got kicked out eventually. He is quite a character...

Look at how easily a producer can make a pop song in Ableton https://youtube.com/watch?v=F5CPQ8LU36w

Pure algomusic/tracker setups are usually a poor fit for pop music, though. DAWs have indispensable tools for vocal processing that you cannot forego most of the time.

SuperCollider and music programming languages are like the modern day bass clarinet.

There isn't much bass clarinet in modern pop music either. Part of what defines pop music is the familiarity of the sound and popular expectation of what music is supposed to be.

How strange it is that we so easily forgive bad behavior from people we love.

People are complex.

Being a bad person in one domain doesn't mean that someone can't generate value in another.

There are plenty people just the same, with the same capabilities without the quality of being a tarpit of suck.

I find it so odd that people overlook severe faults in those whose other qualities they rather love and greatly appreciate. It seems so unjust, yet it's universal.

If you're not familiar with Aphex Twin, it's hard to understand that this hatred does nothing to inhibit his success.

Is Giger’s art created to cause suffering? How about Beksiński’s paintings? The emotions they invoke are not happiness or joy, but neither are they purely dread or loathing.

Aesthetic pursuit isn’t solely (or even primarily) about the emotions it conjures in the consumer.

Remember: the customer is always right in matters of taste.

Also, what you personally find offputting, other people may enjoy. For example, I don't find 'Ventolin' particularly challenging to listen to.

Andy Kaufman was challenging, disturbing, and irritating in equal measure and he did hate his audience.

Because human decency is often overrated and hard usable value is often underrated.

If we removed the value (changes, inventions, artworks, products, etc) made by people which were lacking in "human decency" in this or that aspect, billions would be poorer, sicker, die sooner, and have much worse cultures.

>There are plenty people just the same, with the same capabilities without the quality of being a tarpit of suck.

Understanding is a great component of human decency too, as is not being a sanctimonious hollier-than-thou type. For example, not labelling someone who "wrote something mean in a forum" as "a tarpit of suck", as if that defines them totally, or as if the persons making such statements shit doesn't smell.

Plus "plenty people just the same, with the same capabilities", really? As if the output of an artist is interchangeable with that of another, so that we can just discard those that have done such grave offenses as "being rude on a forum" and just listen to another?

We can't all be on your level of moral perfection.

Even if it was true, who cares? I like the guy's music, it's had a strong influence on me at various times in my life. But I have never had a strong opinion of whether I like him, and I still don't. Why would I?

Nope. By then RDJ (the actual person) was of course known for using anagrams so it would be an obvious thing to do for any troll.

That's part of what loving someone means. It's easy to love someone convenient who never does anything to bother or hurt you.

Besides, he was trolling. It's not like it's a big deal. If you were on a mailing list or usenet group or forum in the 80s and 90s everybody did that, and few if any had an issue with it, we could take it!

We not only forgive but tolerate 100000x worse stuff everyday that directly fucks our lives that we could prioritize not tolerating.

http://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n224

http://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n225

http://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n226

http://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n227

(note I am not personally claiming this is RDJ)

  Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 22:20:06 -0600
  From: James McCartney <[email protected]>
  Subject: Re: [ OT ]very low signal to noise ratio .
  
  on 1/17/01 9:18 PM, eric_hard_jams at [email protected] wrote:
  
  > 
  >> ok boss. i'm really sorry. back to normal now. much better.
  >> my apologies.
  >> 
  > ass licker.
  > 

  shut the F up already, richard.

JMC and RDJ know each personally and hung out together. Here's a picture of the two together: https://www.reddit.com/r/aphextwin/comments/6oheli/screen_ra...

Richard was sort of annoying at times, in the way someone on the spectrum can be. A bit of a troll with poor timing, and poor social skills, but a good, kind lad who spent his time doing things completely orthogonal to anyone else and that made him quite interesting.

I lost touch with him in around 2000-2001. He kinda went dark in those circles. I don't know what he's up to these days, probably raising a family like me.

There is also this email from Tue, 16 Jan 2001 19:02:12 +0000 in https://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n225 where he is clearly talking as Aphex Twin. He might be just an impersonator, but given that he speaks directly to James and James calls him Richard has me pretty convinced that it's actually him.

That he did, according to a surprisingly extensive 2014 interview: https://www.pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/aphex-...

I mean, wtf, the mailing lists are astonishing if you think about them .. like, how UUCP and mailman and qmail/sendmail used to be all you need to get access to the archives …

While it is possible these fake enjoyers exist, I'm fairly certain a lot of fans of Mr Twin's work like it in a straightforward sense of most music appreciation.

Personally, 'Vordhosbn', 'Windowlicker', 'Rhubarb'... etc are all great tracks. Are there some that I don't get on with? Sure, of course. However I can speak for myself when saying I'm not listening to the music performatively. At least, not much!

Who cares? Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to crank up Vordhobsn and write some code.

Am I right in saying you like the _idea_ behind the music rather than the music itself? That's almost as strange to me as people who do not listen to music at all - it's fine, of course! They are your ears, and you can do what you like with them :)

shrug Different people are different, I suppose.

You can find something to like about a lot of things. I also enjoy watching videos about wristwatch repairs and seeing the construction of them. However, I do not want one and would never wear one.

I remember buying some of his tapes and cd's from Amoeba music in 1999 and the feeling they gave me. I often wonder what its like to been born in 2010 and never experiencing this.

It’s always amusing to see these cycles continue. If his music is indeed as good as you claim it will still be listened to - just as so much of the best music of the last 75 years is. People have been lamenting the loss of the thing they felt was their transformative experince, and each generation keeps finding a new generation defining experience

And my other point was how lots of electronic musicians seemed so distant and mysterious because they weren't livestreaming and and social media that made them/their personality/tweets etc available.

as for AFX, I think like one in 15 of his songs are amazing, the rest is just noise/filler

i installed a pirated copy of Windows XP through floppy disks and i had a CD walkman. i was still a teen when i got a ipod touch 2gen. the latter was much more magical to me. sometimes i stare at my android phone with the screen locked thinking how impressive the tech is. termux x11 can go a long way. i don't wear rose tinted glasses even though my childhood was a freaking blast

It doesn't bother me too much. Many indie scenes have this sort of self-consciously avant garde sub-movement - theater, dance, fashion, games...

While I find 99% of braindance to be aggressively unlistenable and/or thoroughly tedious, the 1% that isn't tends to be truly great. Imo the best thing that ever happened to this genre was digital record stores, because casual fans can skip over all the limited edition vinyls and albums full of abstract noodling and just pick up the bangers.

If your expectation of good food is In-N-Out Burger, you might think praise of a three star Michelin restaurant is performative too.

I am not even much a fan of Richard but he is absolutely one of the greatest musical geniuses of the past 50 years bar none.

Avril 14th is my favorite. Clearly Satie influenced but maybe even a little sweeter than Satie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxTdTaNIUxo

Also consider Satie himself is exactly the type of musician people would have said praising is performative at the time. He wasn't taken seriously as a real musician much at all in his life.

A friend told me a story about Satie, that they found two pianos in his appartement, one stacked on the other, with unpaid bills tossed on the top. Seems very RDJ-like (or v.v.).

Richard and James Aphex; the Aphex twins. :P

> leaves a doubt if some of the praise being heaped on it is 'perfomative'.

This sounds rather like someone that doesn't like art in general complaining about those that do. I've heard many people complain about "modern art" in the same way.

I think it's a valid enough opinion but I still like Aphex Twin's music for the same reasons I like Eno's.

To me, RDJs music always stood out as having uncanny, unique melodies and harmonies. As a teenager I fantasized about him being some sort of benevolent alien music shaman, beaming melodies onto our planet.

Stuff on SAW II where you can't figure out if you're hearing single notes or mutating chords and everything is near-synaesthetic bliss. The wistful otherness of 'Italic Eyeball'. Whatever 'fingerbib', ICBYD, and things on Melodies from Mars are doing was very formative to my 16 year old brain.

It's clear that whatever he does, he channels some unique creative juices.

Fantasized? Facts are facts but I admire your humility.

From my phone to Desktop to remote NUCs, his noises pervade them all. And indelibly in my mind.

I think there's still a strong case that he ain't human.

"Aisatsana - Aphex Twin - Barbican, London 10th October 2012. It's a bit dark so it's probably difficult to tell but that's a grand piano being swung back and forth across the stage like a pendulum."

"Yeah, it's written for my wife. When I first did that, I did this installation-y art thing at the Barbican with a remote orchestra. [The song] was made on my Disklavier [controlled piano], which was swung from the roof at that gig, and there was this massive Doppler effect. It is pretty mental. There's a bad cameraphone version of it on YouTube, but in the flesh it's fucking amazing. To listen to this piano swinging, you almost see all the notes stretching out, so it'll hit you at different times. I never knew if it was going to work or not, and everyone was like, “What the fuck is he swinging a piano for?” But when we actually got it going, we were just like, “fucking hell.” It was so extreme. My friends were like, “Are the strings stretching?” The pitch deviation is that big, it sounds like the actual frame is contorting. Maybe it is, I don't know!" - Richard D. James

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJHsT8kEyzs

Now of course we have to know what the rotary speaker equivalent of a grand piano sounds like... anybody have a couple of very large bearings lying around?

> Missing track from Syro, didn't make it for technical and personal reasons.

https://soundcloud.com/user21041984001/syro-013-aphex-twin-e...

Also, this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbnb09xAQR8

It's in the lead in to the article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsWpmrBN9gY

Source is available: https://warp.net/editorial/richard-d-james-speaks-to-tatsuya...

https://web.archive.org/web/20141111015756/http://noyzelab.b...

https://web.archive.org/web/20141112205122/https://noyzelab....

https://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/

(Not the programming language from 2004.)

It's hard to overstate the influence RDJ has had on modern music. Maybe even more impressive than his ability to develop multiple compelling distinct styles is the way he has taken existing niches, completely mastered them and then pushed the boundaries all over again.

>I’ve since gone on to learn more about this damn 440 Hz.

Being a proud Cornish surfer and one of his earlier fans this saddens me. We were his first fans!

There used to be raves in Cornwall like the one in cult UK surfing classic 'Blue Juice'. They were 'lush' (i've noticed Aphex regularly says 'lush' too so is clearly from a surfer-adjacent group of friends and maybe he's just p1ssing about).