Cheetah EP

 

darn it, too slow

  On 6/23/2016 at 12:21 PM, MDM Chaos said:

 

 

!! toot toot

  On 6/23/2016 at 1:07 AM, marf said:

I agree. Just look at Autechre. If that were the case they would just be recreating amber over and over by now. Rich has definitely softened. He seems to only make music to suit his mood and his current mood is pretty damn relaxed.. and hardware obsessed. Ya never know what he may do next though.. but as I type this I sort of feel like I do (???) I sort of feel like after analord he never completely left that general mood/method. (deathfuck a pretty big exception) generalizing a ton but maybe ya know what I mean.

I agree. Everything from Analord onwards has felt like different stages of development on the same form. Can't complain though, I love it all.

 

CIRKLON3 is terrific. It beats anything on Syro for me.

i know i know, pfork is sort of a parody of itself these days and they have made some big misses, but man, do they nail the review of this track. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/18386-aphex-twin-cirklon3-mix/.

 

It's buoyant, bubbly, and fluid, with repetitions that recall arcade games, side-scrolling, and all the fun of being young somehow. It isn’t always apparent when listening to Aphex Twin, but deep inside the postmodern ennui and irony of his music, there is an eternally youthful feeling, or at least one that is naughty and childish.

 

yeah yeah there's a lot of prankish prickish stuff in his past, but i think /hope a lot of that stuff isn't coming back. folks have already noted how much fun we are all having with this grand return and totally new relationship with fans. it's hazardous to go too far down this road, but there's something about dad-life that makes you take yourself less seriously and i wonder how much dadding around has lightened RDJ and made this all possible. if that really is him in the mask in the video goofing with the kid / playfuly chasing him the field, awwww man!!!!!!

alright, so is it confirmed that richard has a wife and children? the last thing i heard about that issue was from the syrobonkers interviews, which haven't been very credible/consistent iirc.. why do we now seem to know that hes got family? :p i must have missed something somehow...

  On 6/23/2016 at 1:14 PM, Caribou said:

 

  On 6/23/2016 at 1:07 AM, marf said:

I agree. Just look at Autechre. If that were the case they would just be recreating amber over and over by now. Rich has definitely softened. He seems to only make music to suit his mood and his current mood is pretty damn relaxed.. and hardware obsessed. Ya never know what he may do next though.. but as I type this I sort of feel like I do (???) I sort of feel like after analord he never completely left that general mood/method. (deathfuck a pretty big exception) generalizing a ton but maybe ya know what I mean.

I agree. Everything from Analord onwards has felt like different stages of development on the same form. Can't complain though, I love it all.

 

CIRKLON3 is terrific. It beats anything on Syro for me.

 

 

To me, Analord almost seemed like a reset button, and since then it's been almost an alternate history - what if Rich had stuck with using his analogue boxes rather than experimenting with computers in the mid '90s. My favourite stuff has always been the '91 - '95 releases so I'm totally down with everything he's done from Analord onwards.

  On 6/23/2016 at 2:26 PM, purlieu said:

 

  On 6/23/2016 at 1:14 PM, Caribou said:

 

  On 6/23/2016 at 1:07 AM, marf said:

I agree. Just look at Autechre. If that were the case they would just be recreating amber over and over by now. Rich has definitely softened. He seems to only make music to suit his mood and his current mood is pretty damn relaxed.. and hardware obsessed. Ya never know what he may do next though.. but as I type this I sort of feel like I do (???) I sort of feel like after analord he never completely left that general mood/method. (deathfuck a pretty big exception) generalizing a ton but maybe ya know what I mean.

I agree. Everything from Analord onwards has felt like different stages of development on the same form. Can't complain though, I love it all.

 

CIRKLON3 is terrific. It beats anything on Syro for me.

 

 

To me, Analord almost seemed like a reset button, and since then it's been almost an alternate history - what if Rich had stuck with using his analogue boxes rather than experimenting with computers in the mid '90s. My favourite stuff has always been the '91 - '95 releases so I'm totally down with everything he's done from Analord onwards.

 

For sure. His early to mid-90s stuff is my fave as well. What got me in the door was Come To Daddy (I was 15) but once I heard SAW1-2, that is when the full on obsession began. I do feel there is a certain "lushness", missing from his newest stuff though. The actual sound is a bit dry in comparison (maybe what I'm hearing is just "good production" I don't know).. But those reverberating walls of the bank or what have you gave something to those incredible melodies back in the day..

 

Saying that, I still really really like the new stuff, and listen to it constantly.

Yeah the reset button thing is dead on. His new music isn't much like his old stuff at all. His entire process seemed to permanently change.

  On 6/23/2016 at 2:57 PM, Vaaler9 said:

What got me in the door was Come To Daddy (I was 15) but once I heard SAW1-2, that is when the full on obsession began. I do feel there is a certain "lushness", missing from his newest stuff though. The actual sound is a bit dry in comparison (maybe what I'm hearing is just "good production" I don't know).. But those reverberating walls of the bank or what have you gave something to those incredible melodies back in the day..

This is exactly my feeling (and was actually the same introduction to him) - there seems to be almost an entire eschewing (is that the word) of reverb in is tracks from the past decade, I wonder what the decision for that is ?

No reverb, are you deaf? Listen to the intro to Umil.

  On 6/23/2016 at 12:10 PM, Psychotronic said:

 

Was wondering when somebody was going to post that...

 

  On 6/23/2016 at 2:07 PM, Scarb0 said:

alright, so is it confirmed that richard has a wife and children? the last thing i heard about that issue was from the syrobonkers interviews, which haven't been very credible/consistent iirc.. why do we now seem to know that hes got family? :p i must have missed something somehow...

Yes, wife and two kids - it will be interesting to see what affect married life, fatherhood has on his music in terms of themes and output.

 

  On 6/23/2016 at 4:05 PM, mcbpete said:

 

  On 6/23/2016 at 2:57 PM, Vaaler9 said:

What got me in the door was Come To Daddy (I was 15) but once I heard SAW1-2, that is when the full on obsession began. I do feel there is a certain "lushness", missing from his newest stuff though. The actual sound is a bit dry in comparison (maybe what I'm hearing is just "good production" I don't know).. But those reverberating walls of the bank or what have you gave something to those incredible melodies back in the day..

This is exactly my feeling (and was actually the same introduction to him) - there seems to be almost an entire eschewing (is that the word) of reverb in is tracks from the past decade, I wonder what the decision for that is ?

 

I think like any artist, when you use an effect or technique constantly, you get bored of it and look for other ways to express yourself - he probably just got bored with reverbing everything, and decided a more tighter sound was the direction he wanted to go in.

 

One of my biggest complaints about electronic music in general is the lack of stereo separation - for some reason, more traditional music (pop, etc.) has nice separation, with sounds coming from distinct parts of the soundspace - with electronic music, it seems very flat and not dimensional. Of course, there are some standouts, but the vast majority of it is really 2-dimensional (to my ears, anyway). FWIW I don't listen with headphones very often; usually in the car or on computer speakers.

Oh I always try and have everything either panned quite hard or moving around in the stereo field when possible.

 

One of the major differences between Rich's first 'analogue' period and the newer one is the quality of what he's using to record. Those early records are full of tape hiss, sometimes the sound of a degraded cassette, it's all distinctly more amateur sounding. Which is part of its charm to me (and I imagine a lot of others). 85-92 and AB3 in particular have such a lovely overall sound. Certainly the reverb plays into that aesthetic pretty well. That said, I think a lot of it is just the warmth of the gear too, and the grooves that come from jamming with hardware.

So yeah, while the new era heralded by Analord certainly has a much cleaner sound that lacks a little of the mystery and magic of those earlier records, I still find lots to love in there, and it's definitely more my kind of thing than the run from Hangable Auto Bulb through to Drukqs (not that they aren't great of course).

  On 6/23/2016 at 1:35 PM, mammalsolidarity said:

i know i know, pfork is sort of a parody of itself these days and they have made some big misses, but man, do they nail the review of this track. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/18386-aphex-twin-cirklon3-mix/.

 

It's buoyant, bubbly, and fluid, with repetitions that recall arcade games, side-scrolling, and all the fun of being young somehow. It isn’t always apparent when listening to Aphex Twin, but deep inside the postmodern ennui and irony of his music, there is an eternally youthful feeling, or at least one that is naughty and childish.

 

yeah yeah there's a lot of prankish prickish stuff in his past, but i think /hope a lot of that stuff isn't coming back. folks have already noted how much fun we are all having with this grand return and totally new relationship with fans. it's hazardous to go too far down this road, but there's something about dad-life that makes you take yourself less seriously and i wonder how much dadding around has lightened RDJ and made this all possible. if that really is him in the mask in the video goofing with the kid / playfuly chasing him the field, awwww man!!!!!!

 

 

yes, of course, the postmodern ennui and irony of the 'phex

 

Bruh.

  On 6/23/2016 at 5:27 PM, AliceS said:

 

Bruh.

 

Bruh.

  On 6/23/2016 at 4:21 PM, psn said:

No reverb, are you deaf? Listen to the intro to Umil.

I know, I know. I guess when I say "reverb" I mean something else. I listened to the new single a bunch of times, then immediately switched to one of the pretty saw 2 tracks. The saw 2 track was so full and dripping with...reverb? I don't know. Still sounds otherworldly and alive. I'm not a mastering guru, I just feel those tracks have a ton of impact, even on the sound front. All subjective of course.

^ Less hall, more plate and spring.

I love Ryan's Lichen video so much.

  On 6/23/2016 at 5:36 PM, slate said:

 

  On 6/23/2016 at 5:27 PM, AliceS said:

 

Bruh.

 

Bruh.

lucky fuckin' kid. no doubt.

According to that interview posted earlier, the Ryan Wyers kid who did the video has autism. And RDJ has aspergers to some extent (right?) so maybe he sort of felt fellowship with the kid and it influenced him into letting him do the video more. Just a random thought

Edited June 23, 2016 by Zeffolia

  On 6/23/2016 at 7:12 PM, Zeffolia said:

According to that interview posted earlier, the Ryan Wyers kid who did the video has autism. And RDJ has aspergers to some extent (right?) so maybe he sort of felt fellowship with the kid and it influenced him into letting him do the video more. Just a random thought

RDJ said he was 'probably a little bit autistic'.

autists unite I guess

 

Really happy for Ryan, especially if he did meet the man himself

  On 6/23/2016 at 2:07 PM, Scarb0 said:

alright, so is it confirmed that richard has a wife and children? the last thing i heard about that issue was from the syrobonkers interviews, which haven't been very credible/consistent iirc.. why do we now seem to know that hes got family? :p i must have missed something somehow...

 

I'm not sure where this constant attitude that he is lying or trolling in his interviews. Yes there are a couple of interviews where he takes the piss but the vast majority of things he says in interviews are true. Yes he did record/live in a bank, yes he DOES have a fucking tank, yes he has all that crazy gear, yes he had hundereds upon hundereds of unreleased tracks. That shit is all fucking real.

Love the video but pretty dissapointed by the track. It's just so completely average. As an old unreleased track in the sc dump, that's cool, but as the single for a new ep?!

 

Maybe this is where i'm going wrong, but i view aphex as one of the musicians at the forefront of electronic music because he puts out stuff that makes you think "This is aphex twin and it could only be him". The stuff is to such a standard that you know that it couldn't be anyone else. But with this, i could totally imagine just stumbling across it while browsing bandcamp or something. I get what some of you guys are saying about how if it's a good tune you should just enjoy it regardless, but is it wrong to hold someone of rdj's caliber to higher standards? I dunno just thinking out loud.

 

Still looking forward to the ep though.