what would be the worst possible RDJ bonus track?

a companion to the "least favourite aphex song" thread.

scenario: you are RDJ. the new album is about to drop, but the big men at the top are forcing you to include one extra bonus track, for some mega-exclusive limited edition which is so expensive no-one will even hear it. so instead of a good track, you choose something so terrible, so hilariously bad and anti-climatic that not a single rich bastard owner of the box set would be impressed.

there are many different strategies you could use. we could look at some of the pranks richard himself has done in the past - there's the "Aphex Airlines" track, which happened after Virgin commissioned a fluffy ambient track to use in adverts. they clearly did not conduct themselves in an RDJ-friendly way if this is what he gave them:

(this is the version of the track that got released on the compilation, Ambient 4: Isolationism)

it's obvious that RDJ wanted to leave Virgin with nothing to work with. it's not only terrible, but distinctly piss-takey, to the point that you couldn't even take it seriously as a piece of dark ambient/noise music.

or, you could take a track like Akunk. one of many reasons the original Tuss albums were destined to be legendary, well sought-after collectables were the way they included little bonuses, like replacing the last track on the CD with something completely different on vinyl editions.

if you were a fan in 2007, and the track wasn't on a CD, you'd be trying to pirate it, and it was rare for pirates to own a turnable. i swear to god, when i finally got to hear this track, with those ridiculous synths, i was dying of laughter! imagine getting hold of the 12" edition of this EP, before youtube, just to hear Akunk.

so besides ear-shredding noise, or something outright silly, you could do something a little more aggressive - like richard taking over the 2014 Grammy Awards. the producers wanted to play a snippet of their Best Electronic album, but someone had other ideas...

i still don't know how the fuck he managed to do this. (nobody checked the sample??) but of course, this is a clip from the "hidden" track on AB 3.1 with its incomprehensible conversations about shit smothered on microphones. this very good prank potential, in fact some snippets of it have found their way onto certain compilation tracks.

maybe you'd want to create some confusion? maybe get some slap bass in there and have your fans convinced there's a misprint going around

it could even be as simple as announcing a 2-track EP and leaving a 3rd track on there. you could completely destroy their hardware setup...

besides all these devious techniques, which involve being able to actually listen to the track, you could go a step further and make it impossible to find.

back in 2005, when the Analord series had just been released in, people on this forum were losing their minds over the limited edition Analord Binder - one of the most ambitious, production-intensive products ever put out on Rephlex. between the hefty price tag, the tantalising collectability of the series, and the many disgruntled fans - who had their packages delayed or even cancelled, rumours began to spread of a "flexidisc" which was supposedly hidden inside the leather covering of the binder. there are claims that some fans actually fell for this and destroyed their Analord binders, slightly increasing the rarity of other copies in the process.... hopefully those were just rumours too! 

and let's not forget Bradley's Beat - the EP with the enormous centre sticker, proudly boasting of being the first ever release on Rephlex. if you a fan in the 90s, with a record collection vast enough to figure out that there are two completely different B-sides on differing issues of this EP, you may have been inclined to track down a release on the Xtra Nova label in Belgium, under the name "Bradley's Beat" to find another potential B-side. if you did, you would find...

absolutely nothing on the B side

i would like to take special time to mention the holy grail of hidden aphex material - the unsolved mystery of the paper puck, included with the limited edition of Syro in 2014:

this is a full vinyl record, printed in extremely fine detail, on paper. it's generally considered to be impossible to play and to discovering the audio on this print would require deep analysis and specialist tools.

if you own the Syro limited edition, with only 200 luxuriously hand-finished copies, then stop holding out on us, get some of your pocket change and hire a studio so we can finally crack this thing!

what could it be? is it the greatest piece of music in human history? is it a speech recording telling us where to find the location of another planet with sentient, music-making creatures? is it a fully mastered set of James Brown multitracks?

or maybe it's a prank? just a really, really bad track?

that's what this thread is about. so let's talk about it and let me know what you think. what kind of content, sound and style would you employ to make a track that pisses off as many people as possible?

Huh, some of those, like Akunk or the UI track I just thought were weirdo experiment tracks, but now you mention it they might actually be trolling.

At this point it would probably be a QR code that creates an AR 3D model of his butthole on people's faces? Maybe with wiry hairs that fly around randomly and grow to engulf the field of view when you try to look around

  On 7/20/2023 at 6:48 AM, Dragon said:

a companion to the "least favourite aphex song" thread.

scenario: you are RDJ. the new album is about to drop, but the big men at the top are forcing you to include one extra bonus track, for some mega-exclusive limited edition which is so expensive no-one will even hear it. so instead of a good track, you choose something so terrible, so hilariously bad and anti-climatic that not a single rich bastard owner of the box set would be impressed.

there are many different strategies you could use. we could look at some of the pranks richard himself has done in the past - there's the "Aphex Airlines" track, which happened after Virgin commissioned a fluffy ambient track to use in adverts. they clearly did not conduct themselves in an RDJ-friendly way if this is what he gave them:

(this is the version of the track that got released on the compilation, Ambient 4: Isolationism)

it's obvious that RDJ wanted to leave Virgin with nothing to work with. it's not only terrible, but distinctly piss-takey, to the point that you couldn't even take it seriously as a piece of dark ambient/noise music.

or, you could take a track like Akunk. one of many reasons the original Tuss albums were destined to be legendary, well sought-after collectables were the way they included little bonuses, like replacing the last track on the CD with something completely different on vinyl editions.

if you were a fan in 2007, and the track wasn't on a CD, you'd be trying to pirate it, and it was rare for pirates to own a turnable. i swear to god, when i finally got to hear this track, with those ridiculous synths, i was dying of laughter! imagine getting hold of the 12" edition of this EP, before youtube, just to hear Akunk.

so besides ear-shredding noise, or something outright silly, you could do something a little more aggressive - like richard taking over the 2014 Grammy Awards. the producers wanted to play a snippet of their Best Electronic album, but someone had other ideas...

i still don't know how the fuck he managed to do this. (nobody checked the sample??) but of course, this is a clip from the "hidden" track on AB 3.1 with its incomprehensible conversations about shit smothered on microphones. this very good prank potential, in fact some snippets of it have found their way onto certain compilation tracks.

maybe you'd want to create some confusion? maybe get some slap bass in there and have your fans convinced there's a misprint going around

it could even be as simple as announcing a 2-track EP and leaving a 3rd track on there. you could completely destroy their hardware setup...

besides all these devious techniques, which involve being able to actually listen to the track, you could go a step further and make it impossible to find.

back in 2005, when the Analord series had just been released in, people on this forum were losing their minds over the limited edition Analord Binder - one of the most ambitious, production-intensive products ever put out on Rephlex. between the hefty price tag, the tantalising collectability of the series, and the many disgruntled fans - who had their packages delayed or even cancelled, rumours began to spread of a "flexidisc" which was supposedly hidden inside the leather covering of the binder. there are claims that some fans actually fell for this and destroyed their Analord binders, slightly increasing the rarity of other copies in the process.... hopefully those were just rumours too! 

and let's not forget Bradley's Beat - the EP with the enormous centre sticker, proudly boasting of being the first ever release on Rephlex. if you a fan in the 90s, with a record collection vast enough to figure out that there are two completely different B-sides on differing issues of this EP, you may have been inclined to track down a release on the Xtra Nova label in Belgium, under the name "Bradley's Beat" to find another potential B-side. if you did, you would find...

absolutely nothing on the B side

i would like to take special time to mention the holy grail of hidden aphex material - the unsolved mystery of the paper puck, included with the limited edition of Syro in 2014:

this is a full vinyl record, printed in extremely fine detail, on paper. it's generally considered to be impossible to play and to discovering the audio on this print would require deep analysis and specialist tools.

if you own the Syro limited edition, with only 200 luxuriously hand-finished copies, then stop holding out on us, get some of your pocket change and hire a studio so we can finally crack this thing!

what could it be? is it the greatest piece of music in human history? is it a speech recording telling us where to find the location of another planet with sentient, music-making creatures? is it a fully mastered set of James Brown multitracks?

or maybe it's a prank? just a really, really bad track?

that's what this thread is about. so let's talk about it and let me know what you think. what kind of content, sound and style would you employ to make a track that pisses off as many people as possible?

Expand  

There are rips of the SYRO paper track out there.

One that needed two factor authentication every time you went to listen to it.

i know this is all hypothetical, but i'd say there's more chance of rdj making a banger semi-unobtainable rather than a dud. 

just compare his unreleased live and soundcloud stuff over the past decade to the stuff that gets widely released via warp.

  On 7/20/2023 at 8:34 AM, Rubin Farr said:

There are rips of the SYRO paper track out there.

I see what you did there, and I don't approve

  On 7/20/2023 at 6:48 AM, Dragon said:

so besides ear-shredding noise, or something outright silly, you could do something a little more aggressive - like richard taking over the 2014 Grammy Awards. the producers wanted to play a snippet of their Best Electronic album, but someone had other ideas...

i still don't know how the fuck he managed to do this. (nobody checked the sample??) but of course, this is a clip from the "hidden" track on AB 3.1 with its incomprehensible conversations about shit smothered on microphones. this very good prank potential, in fact some snippets of it have found their way onto certain compilation tracks.

 

Expand  

Wait wait - at the Grammys in 2015, that isn't actually what happened. This is an interesting story of WATMM memes replacing reality.

Here's the thread from 2015 where we all discussed the Grammys. Start at about page 9.

The actual real audio was quite weird, they just played a bit of random lift music:
 

Goiter Sanchez then posted a meme version with the AB 3.1 track dubbed over.

Goiter Sanchez also posted this 54 Cymru Beats version:

There were quite a few other meme versions that I can no longer find.

Warp Records then put out a news item about the win (its no longer on their site) and jokingly included the AB 3.1 meme version.

And then that became the one everyone remembered and now everyone thinks thats what happened.

Paging @Goiter Sanchez - congratulations sir, you have changed history.

  On 7/20/2023 at 10:17 PM, zazen said:

Wait wait - at the Grammys in 2015, that isn't actually what happened. This is an interesting story of WATMM memes replacing reality.

Here's the thread from 2015 where we all discussed the Grammys. Start at about page 9.

The actual real audio was quite weird, they just played a bit of random lift music:
 

Goiter Sanchez then posted a meme version with the AB 3.1 track dubbed over.

Goiter Sanchez also posted this 54 Cymru Beats version:

There were quite a few other meme versions that I can no longer find.

Warp Records then put out a news item about the win (its no longer on their site) and jokingly included the AB 3.1 meme version.

And then that became the one everyone remembered and now everyone thinks thats what happened.

Paging @Goiter Sanchez - congratulations sir, you have changed history.

Expand  

thank you for taking the time to find these!! that is fascinating. yet another example of a classic WATMM meme finding its way into journalism, this one became part of written history

  On 7/20/2023 at 10:17 PM, zazen said:

Paging @Goiter Sanchez - congratulations sir, you have changed history.

My greatest achievment without a doubt!

  On 7/20/2023 at 10:17 PM, zazen said:

Wait wait - at the Grammys in 2015, that isn't actually what happened. This is an interesting story of WATMM memes replacing reality.

Here's the thread from 2015 where we all discussed the Grammys. Start at about page 9.

The actual real audio was quite weird, they just played a bit of random lift music:
 

Goiter Sanchez then posted a meme version with the AB 3.1 track dubbed over.

Goiter Sanchez also posted this 54 Cymru Beats version:

There were quite a few other meme versions that I can no longer find.

Warp Records then put out a news item about the win (its no longer on their site) and jokingly included the AB 3.1 meme version.

And then that became the one everyone remembered and now everyone thinks thats what happened.

Paging @Goiter Sanchez - congratulations sir, you have changed history.

Expand  

  On 8/3/2023 at 7:49 AM, Goiter Sanchez said:

  On 7/20/2023 at 10:17 PM, zazen said:

Paging @Goiter Sanchez - congratulations sir, you have changed history.

My greatest achievment without a doubt!

what if  goiter  told you

  On 7/20/2023 at 6:48 AM, Dragon said:

I would like to take special time to mention the holy grail of hidden aphex material - the unsolved mystery of the paper puck, included with the limited edition of Syro in 2014:

this is a full vinyl record, printed in extremely fine detail, on paper. it's generally considered to be impossible to play and to discovering the audio on this print would require deep analysis and specialist tools.

if you own the Syro limited edition, with only 200 luxuriously hand-finished copies, then stop holding out on us, get some of your pocket change and hire a studio so we can finally crack this thing!

what could it be? is it the greatest piece of music in human history? 

Expand  

We already know what track is on it, it's a drukqs bonus track called prepared Un1

https://youtu.be/9G-UzUk61f0