Aphex Twin Aphex Twin interviews thread

Did the Richard D. James album originally have the gravestone artwork that eventually became the Girl/Boy cover? I seem to recall a load of journos getting the two mixed up around that era.

  On 2/21/2015 at 12:39 AM, balbulus said:

Awesome, I didn't expect such a quick response! The WATMM genies are on top form tonight. Cheers! :)

Well, it was a mighty coincidence - I just saw them being posted online, never saw the full thing before that too :)

  On 2/21/2015 at 10:29 AM, Herr Jan said:

 

 

 

  On 2/21/2015 at 10:16 AM, valleyinaire said:

 

Did the Richard D. James album originally have the gravestone artwork that eventually became the Girl/Boy cover? I seem to recall a load of journos getting the two mixed up around that era.

The EP was included with RDJ Album in the US distributed version, so the artwork for Girl/Boy was also included in the album.

Ah, makes complete sense actually. I never thought to put two and two together haha. Thanks for clearing that up!

Rock Furore #1 1994, first ever Norwegian interview. I'll see if I can be bothered to translate it to English at some point.

Translation of the RDJ quotes:

    Quote

- House music can't die. It keeps developing steadily. Myself, I've recorded music for several years to come.

- It's weird that what I've made has been called "the music of the 90s", even though it was recorded in the 80s. What I've made later on... People aren't ready for it yet!

- I grew up in a little hole called Lanner in Cornwall on the south coast of England. I lived together with some birds and my family, and started to experiment with music early on. At first on a piano that I later rebuilt into a reverb and sound box. Later on I started using tape machines and synths. I rebuilt pretty much everything, since it sounded shit. Since then I've just continued and continued.

- I got a kick out of some of the house music, and organized a few raves. But too much music is influenced by a few trends that everyone jumps on after a while. I'm much more inspired by serious and possessed composers who have completely created their own world , who live in it and explore every detail in and around themselves.

- I've recorded thousands of hours of music, that neither you nor anyone else will ever hear, and that even I won't hear again. Some of it is the best stuff I've ever done, but I'm too busy making new material. And there is a limit to how much music you can release, even under different names.

- Not sleeping changes you completely. Your mind jumps from one thought to the next all the time, and that's a very good tool in the creative process.

-To me house is the most sensitive music, more than rock, soul, jazz and anything else. It catches the spirit right there and then.

- I've managed to get away from beats and pulses. Instead it's the constantly recurring and changing meshes of timbres that keep the sound together. But I don't think the world is ready for that music yet.

- There's a limit to how much music my regular label Warp can release, so we just as well started our own label. Rephlex was also founded to get the creativity within the acid house music going. We consider the label a sort of laboratory for acid in the future. Or else the music will end up in the hands of people like The Shamen or Altern8, who are just fucking awful and plastic. This music is about completely different things.

- A new album is coming up, "Selected Ambient Works 2", and hopefully also a series of films...

Pretty crazy how even back in '94, he had thousands of hours worth of unreleased material. I wonder what the rough total would be nowadays, two decades later.

Thanks psn! Interesting read.

- but "thousands of hours of music"? I'de beleived if it's some kind of noise / experiments / field recordings / countless variations of same track maybe, but different actual tracks? If we take bare minimum of "thousands" - 2, it would take around 3 months (no sleep/eat/nothing) just to listen to all this stuff in one sitting, and around 1000 DATs to keep it.

and I like some Altern8 stuff . (they actually broke up same year this interview took place lol)

Has to be a slight exaggeration. In light of the recent happenings there is no doubt he's sitting on a huge amount of music, but hundreds of tracks seems more probable than thousands of hours of tracks.

  On 2/24/2015 at 9:33 PM, psn said:

 

Translation of the RDJ quotes:

 

    Quote

- House music can't die. It keeps developing steadily. Myself, I've recorded music for several years to come.

- It's weird that what I've made has been called "the music of the 90s", even though it was recorded in the 80s. What I've made later on... People aren't ready for it yet!

- I grew up in a little hole called Lanner in Cornwall on the south coast of England. I lived together with some birds and my family, and started to experiment with music early on. At first on a piano that I later rebuilt into a reverb and sound box. Later on I started using tape machines and synths. I rebuilt pretty much everything, since it sounded shit. Since then I've just continued and continued.

- I got a kick out of some of the house music, and organized a few raves. But too much music is influenced by a few trends that everyone jumps on after a while. I'm much more inspired by serious and possessed composers who have completely created their own world , who live in it and explore every detail in and around themselves.

- I've recorded thousands of hours of music, that neither you nor anyone else will ever hear, and that even I won't hear again. Some of it is the best stuff I've ever done, but I'm too busy making new material. And there is a limit to how much music you can release, even under different names.

- Not sleeping changes you completely. Your mind jumps from one thought to the next all the time, and that's a very good tool in the creative process.

-To me house is the most sensitive music, more than rock, soul, jazz and anything else. It catches the spirit right there and then.

- I've managed to get away from beats and pulses. Instead it's the constantly recurring and changing meshes of timbres that keep the sound together. But I don't think the world is ready for that music yet.

- There's a limit to how much music my regular label Warp can release, so we just as well started our own label. Rephlex was also founded to get the creativity within the acid house music going. We consider the label a sort of laboratory for acid in the future. Or else the music will end up in the hands of people like The Shamen or Altern8, who are just fucking awful and plastic. This music is about completely different things.

- A new album is coming up, "Selected Ambient Works 2", and hopefully also a series of films...

 

Cheers for translating psn, interesting. Finally I can place the motivation behind the 'innovation in the dynamics of acid' slogan on their old shirts / on that mix CD. I wonder what he meant with a series of films too?

  On 2/25/2015 at 1:53 PM, Herr Jan said:

 

I wonder what he meant with a series of films too?

indeed. Something to do with his unreleased soundtracks perhaps?

Also in the NME interview he talks about doing pop music, or getting royalty checks. In another interview posted in the soundcloud thread he talks about writing top 40 hits. We must locate rdj pop tunes!!

Does anyone know in which interview Rich said that stuff about Die Antwoord trying to control him?

APhex sex-files, Select Magazine, may 1993

elephantine girl is a good track name

lol at the mary ann hobbs remark

totally agree

"She was doing things I didn't want her to do. I couldn't get her away."

does anyone have this article? Or maybe you know where this came from?

afex is not even that smart, dont fool yourselves

i will probably get ban for words like this

i am prepared and ready

one two three ban

  On 9/28/2015 at 11:42 PM, Mag said:

afex is not even that smart, dont fool yourselves

We can only wonder what Aphex music would sound like if he were a towering intellectual super heavyweight like you.

perhaps the two things aren't mutual, although in having musical sense, i'd say that he's pretty withit. more so than most. So given that smart can mean better than the general riff raff at something, i'd say he's musically smart. His views on alternative news mean that he's probably skeptical, which is another kind of smart. So that's two pluses on the smart meter, i don't know much else about him so can't assess the other areas of smart, like hole digging or ability to make decent gravy from a roasted joint of beef.

that story about those lines in the sky was pretty smart and full of skepticism.

*sarcastic cough*

Talking about skepticism: filz, what makes you think that pic belongs to an interview? To me, it looks more like artwork for a german bootleg cd for the girl/boy cd single. And i'm not saying, or even insinuating it is btw.

Never saw / heard this one before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq_fsEMGj68

Stumbled upon that a few weeks ago, first time I'd seen it myself.

  On 9/29/2015 at 3:44 AM, delet... said:

His views on alternative news mean that he's probably skeptical, which is another kind of smart.

By "skeptical" do you mean "a conspiracy theorist"? That's not a good thing. There's skepticism as in "well, let's A/B test it first to make sure", then there's skepticism as in "don't believe anything the government tells you!" One of these is more useful at getting to the truth than the other. Being "skeptical" of what most people believe while automatically believing everything they don't isn't going to get you anywhere, it's just contrarian, not truth seeking.

conspiracy theorist was a term made up by the cia to defame people that didn't believe the official story of the kennedy assassination. As for the rest of that bollocks, i'm tired of defending my views on watmm for the week.

/you know i loves ya, but you know, not everyday is sunshine and mooncandy.

zoeb made some good points! there's a difference between critical thinking and just going for the opposite. although the last thing can be useful as well.

* loves deleter, but is skeptical with respect to anything he says *