― jimn (jimnaseum), Thursday, 8 February 2007 17:55 (seventeen years ago) link
― jimn (jimnaseum), Thursday, 8 February 2007 17:56 (seventeen years ago) link
― Disco Nihilist (mjt), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:17 (seventeen years ago) link
For me, it's got plenty of good things but it's the least interesting of the "proper" studio albums, no doubt.
― It's Tough to Beat Illious (noodle vague), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:23 (seventeen years ago) link
I pretty much thought it was shite when it came out.
― KeefW (kmw), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:33 (seventeen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:42 (seventeen years ago) link
― and what (ooo), Thursday, 8 February 2007 19:11 (seventeen years ago) link
― and what (ooo), Thursday, 8 February 2007 19:15 (seventeen years ago) link
― held tony (held tony), Thursday, 8 February 2007 19:59 (seventeen years ago) link
― held tony (held tony), Thursday, 8 February 2007 20:03 (seventeen years ago) link
― Treblekicker (treblekicker), Thursday, 8 February 2007 21:19 (seventeen years ago) link
I got into Aphex Twin way late and sorta heard everything all at once. Drukqs struck me as the best. It's still my favorite.
― Nigel (Nigel), Thursday, 8 February 2007 22:46 (seventeen years ago) link
― Christopher Costello (CGC), Thursday, 8 February 2007 23:38 (seventeen years ago) link
― plan b: videodrome (fauxhemian), Friday, 9 February 2007 00:00 (seventeen years ago) link
― friday on the porch (lfam), Friday, 9 February 2007 03:10 (seventeen years ago) link
― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Friday, 9 February 2007 03:16 (seventeen years ago) link
― Zachary S (Zach S), Friday, 9 February 2007 03:24 (seventeen years ago) link
― and what (ooo), Friday, 9 February 2007 03:25 (seventeen years ago) link
― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Friday, 9 February 2007 03:50 (seventeen years ago) link
but... the drill stuff was already getting kinda old when this came out and he was looking to end his relationship with warp. I found the analord stuff actually pretty good and at least had a bit of a new direction.
― hector (hector), Friday, 9 February 2007 03:57 (seventeen years ago) link
― Christopher Costello (CGC), Friday, 9 February 2007 04:25 (seventeen years ago) link
I keep replaying "Avril 14." Is the rest of the album this good?
― Tape Store, Sunday, 21 October 2007 19:11 (sixteen years ago) link
i finally picked this up a couple weeks ago. it's a bit of an inconsistent album, but i think there's some great stuff on it. i've not yet really digested disc 2 (which seems a little spottier) but disc 1 is excellent.
it kind of got trashed, it seems, when it was first released, but i'm quite happy i finally picked it up. it's a lot better than some of those early reviews made it out to be.
― Mark Clemente, Sunday, 21 October 2007 19:44 (sixteen years ago) link
Tape Store, it's his most complete album, however it was let down by the fact it came out about 4 years too late. Rather than a huge stylistic leap, it's a sprawling double album that concentrates on refining what he had been doing since 1996, so to seasoned fans who expected another wacky twist in the ongoing Aphex saga, they were to be disappointed. It has an awful lot of material, some of it excellent and a lot of it, well, awful. But that was always the idea with Aphex I suppose. It was never about being polished and more about the fun ideas. Throw it at a wall and see if it sticks, and if it doesn't chuck it in the pot anyway.
― the next grozart, Sunday, 21 October 2007 20:09 (sixteen years ago) link
"54 Cymru Beats" is one of his all-time best.
― Noodle Vague, Sunday, 21 October 2007 20:38 (sixteen years ago) link
The stretch between "vordhosbn" and "Afx237 V7" is great, but after that I usually turn it off or skip 7 tracks
― robertwolf8080, Sunday, 21 October 2007 20:50 (sixteen years ago) link
You can makea a dinky 60 minute cut by ripping out all the whoops-I-left-the-tape-running moments.
― Autumn Almanac, Monday, 22 October 2007 05:51 (sixteen years ago) link
grozart's response intrigues me; I'm going to buy this.
― Tape Store, Monday, 22 October 2007 06:32 (sixteen years ago) link
"Avril 14th" is like the best soundtrack piece Jon Brion never wrote.
― jaymc, Sunday, 10 August 2008 21:51 (fifteen years ago) link
i love drukqs
― Creeztophair, Sunday, 10 August 2008 22:03 (fifteen years ago) link
i wonder if druckqs will be one of those albums that gradually gets the kudos and props that weren't there initially, until, one day, it is described as a classic (probably around the time of the next release, when people will say "man this, shit is just druckqs redux, now that was a cool lp"???
― gareth, Monday, March 11, 2002 8:00 PM
^^
― am0n, Saturday, 5 September 2009 23:53 (fourteen years ago) link
miss gareth :(
― ian, Sunday, 6 September 2009 04:17 (fourteen years ago) link
Hmm, I just noticed that my copy of "Druckqs" has a parental advisory sticker on it. What am I missing?
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 6 September 2009 15:45 (fourteen years ago) link
It has a song called "Cock", no other reason really.
― Neotropical pygmy squirrel, Sunday, 6 September 2009 15:48 (fourteen years ago) link
Which I guess makes Richard James the only other act besides Frank Zappa (at least that I can think of) to get a parental advisory notice stuck on an instrumental release.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 6 September 2009 16:03 (fourteen years ago) link
There's a swear on one of the tracks I think?
― Relatin' Jews to Jazz (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 6 September 2009 16:07 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah 'Cock/Ver10' has the word "cunt" on it
― braveclub, Sunday, 6 September 2009 16:09 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah. All I could hear in my head was the Squarepusher track with "I'm the fucking daddy" on it.
― Relatin' Jews to Jazz (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 6 September 2009 16:10 (fourteen years ago) link
Jeez I bought my copy from Warp and I actually have a sticker somewhere that says "Come On You Cunt Let's Have Some Aphex Acid"
― Relatin' Jews to Jazz (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 6 September 2009 16:16 (fourteen years ago) link
I have just bought this album again, and am about to listen to it for only the second time in 10 years.
It's just become such a "thing," my fear of this album. I think I'm such a different person and have such different tastes in music and different expectations that it will be interesting for me to see how my reactions to it have changed.
― The Curve Of Binding Energy (Masonic Boom), Thursday, 20 May 2010 10:04 (thirteen years ago) link
how can you even remember your reaction to an album (a double disc album no less) that you heard once over 10 years ago?
I always wrote this album off due to hearing a lot of bad reviews (ok, just from allmusic, but in my teen years AMG was biblical to me), I'm kind of curious about it now.
― Tonight I Dine on Turtle Soup (EDB), Friday, 21 May 2010 00:44 (thirteen years ago) link
i remember my reaction and that was that it was good, but nothing new - and "something new" was what i'd come to expect of aphex, and therefore druqks was a bit of a failure. i've dug this out recently and it's a real re-assessor. Ziggomatic is a good fun tune peeps.
― village idiot (dog latin), Friday, 21 May 2010 00:56 (thirteen years ago) link
i was disappointed by this when it came out for the same reason. i've since come to see it as the last word in "drill n bass" shit or whatever, with a pretty brilliant mix of other material thrown in. doesn't always work though, and admittedly i most often listen to a single-disc redux of favorites i made if i put it on these days...
― Billy Crystals (another al3x), Friday, 21 May 2010 02:41 (thirteen years ago) link
i love this album and i really can't wait to see what he comes up with next
― ma/y/aoi (Future_Perfect), Friday, 21 May 2010 03:19 (thirteen years ago) link
i didn't really get into chosen lords or much of the analord stuff but bwoon dub off analord02 is very nice
― ma/y/aoi (Future_Perfect), Friday, 21 May 2010 03:20 (thirteen years ago) link
I also liked Drukqs a lot more than critics did, but admittedly could've done without the multiple straight-piano songs.
― kelpolaris, Friday, 21 May 2010 03:20 (thirteen years ago) link
Because it was SOOO hyped before hand (and Aphex phanboys are a whole WORLD of obsessiveness if you've never encountered them) and then the critical reaction was a bit "hrrrmmm" and because it was just such an EVENT that Mr. D.James could put out an album that was viewed as less than stellar. It was also the early days of the Blogosphere and I guess EVENT records that send shockwaves across the Blogosphere are a dime a dozen now and therefore not such an event, but at the time it seemed to take up a lot more space, culturally, than it might otherwise. I guess I just heard so many Aphex phanboys who were outraged that it coloured the experience for me and I approached it on first listen with the expectation that it was going to be both hard going and not very good.
It's odd how the critical reaction of other people can colour your experience of a record, even to make you dislike something you wouldn't normally pay attention to. But also, at the time, I don't think I *liked* Aphex. I was a Spacemen 3 stan who didn't see the point of "modern dance music" - i.e. I liked Selected Ambient Works (but saw it as an outlier that was nothing like the rest of his stuff) and Orbital, but wasn't prepared to go any further out than that at all.
In 2001 I was in a very different place, emotionally and musically, and listening to a lot of glitchy era Radiohead and people were saying to me "you shouldn't be listening to that, you should be listening to Aphex and Squarepusher" and so I tried this album, and my reaction was that it was NOTHING like what I liked about Kid A/Amnesiac - my immediate reaction was "bleurgh, this is a lot of noise and disjointed random rhythms that make no sense."
It's funny, though, *now* having learned a lot more, and broadened my tastes, my reaction to it is very different. I mean, the other record I just bought at the same time was the new FlyLo and if I can pick out order and pattern from that burst of randomness, Drukqs is almost easy listening by comparison. A lot of the stuff that just irritated me at the time (WTF? Why does he have his parents singing happy birthday on one track? And some random chick shouting at him in French on another? What's with the awkward piano solos?) makes a lot more sense in the context of knowing more about him as an artist and as a human being. It seems less like a random assortment of sounds, and more like a carefully crafted collage of a self portrait.
So it's partly about taking a record on its own terms, rather than as a Cultural Event. And partly about how my tastes have completely changed. (It's funny, I thought people's tastes were supposed to get narrower in their 30s. My tastes got narrower in my 20s, then just completely exploded in my late 30s)
― The Curve Of Blinding Energy (Masonic Boom), Friday, 21 May 2010 09:32 (thirteen years ago) link
There's something very creepy in Richard's mum's Cornish-accented voice isn't there? What about that whooping laughter on one of the Ventolin EPs?
― village idiot (dog latin), Friday, 21 May 2010 09:42 (thirteen years ago) link
Erm, no. I thought his mum sounds like a right laugh. Especially the impromptu harmony on the "tooo yooouuu" bit. More Welsh than Cornish accent, though.
"Richie" made me laugh, though. The idea of anyone calling him Richie seems inconceivable but clearly his mum does. Adorable.
― The Curve Of Blinding Energy (Masonic Boom), Friday, 21 May 2010 09:49 (thirteen years ago) link
COME ON YOU C*NTS LETS HAVE SOME APHEX ACID!
― ma/y/aoi (Future_Perfect), Friday, 21 May 2010 14:51 (thirteen years ago) link
I've been pissed up in SE1 many times and I do feel for the guy if that's what it sounds like for him. I thought it was rather joyous.
― Keith, Thursday, 21 March 2024 22:59 (one week ago) link
Scanning over the soundcloud dump and a couple of the cheetah tracks are in there as early edits/mixes.
― octobeard, Friday, 22 March 2024 00:34 (six days ago) link
280 tracks are you for real
― Premises, Premises (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, 22 March 2024 00:46 (six days ago) link
hmmm looks like it's up to 298
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 22 March 2024 00:59 (six days ago) link
xp and most of it is good-to-great, it's insane
― I painted my teeth (sleeve), Friday, 22 March 2024 01:53 (six days ago) link
Yeah holy shit I was unaware of the last 18 tracks, all uploaded in the last 7 years. A few at least exceed a good majority of his released tracks during the same period, honestly, like Love 7. Why wasn't this on Collapse? blargh.
Many of the classics were cleaned up and mastered to be tacked on as bonus tracks for a number of his albums too.
― octobeard, Friday, 22 March 2024 01:58 (six days ago) link
Jah bless archive dot org
https://archive.org/details/aphex_twin_user18081971_soundcloud
― Marten Broadcloak, mild-mannered GOP congressman (Raymond Cummings), Friday, 22 March 2024 02:07 (six days ago) link
(they also have several complete analord downloads)
― koogs, Friday, 22 March 2024 06:12 (six days ago) link
listened to this in the day and now Confield at night. wow, can't believe both of these albums were seen as disappointments. the world was not ready
― frogbs, Thursday, 28 March 2024 02:39 (nine hours ago) link
Confield is easily one of my most disliked albums ever, terrible sonics and no material to justify it. When I’m dead and in hell I’m sure Pen Expers will be on loop
― Premises, Premises (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 28 March 2024 04:22 (seven hours ago) link
“lentic catachresis” tho! exquisite.
i like confield a lot myself. kinda like the ae boys playing catch-up with mego digital noise of that era but not quite losing what made them autechre in the process.
is it better than “interesting” tho? still not quite sure! guess i’ll play it yet again…
― (⊙_⊙?) (original bgm), Thursday, 28 March 2024 04:45 (seven hours ago) link
I think it's great. I was actually surprised how listenable it was, despite what I'd read in the reviews. The only moments that are really overwhelming are Bine and the end of Lentic Catachresis, though I love the latter because it's such an aural rollercoaster. There's even that moment where like, you stop rising, you speed up a bit, you see the cliff over the horizon and know you're going over very soon...it nails that feeling
totally understandable why someone wouldn't like it though, I guess "head in a pinball machine" isn't all that enjoyable for some people
― frogbs, Thursday, 28 March 2024 04:52 (seven hours ago) link
to me it feels a lot like a real noise record with a pretty major profile, which is cool. but of course… not for everybody. i myself like noise and find it very listenable (sometimes, when it’s done right). but i mean that it’s a “real noise” record as opposed to afx stuff that uses noise more like nine inch nails or a hardcore band like botch might. hits different but both approaches are valid. confield is more like what you get when you already loved roland kayn records also start to love kevin drum’s mego stuff (im guessing). it’s electronic music with very few concessions for people that don’t already find electronic music of this style to be perfectly listenable music. which is cool but… not for everybody.
― (⊙_⊙?) (original bgm), Thursday, 28 March 2024 05:05 (seven hours ago) link
I just realized this thread isn't about black metal band Drudkh. Maybe I should listen to Aphex Twin and post in the "listen to an album... and tell us about it" thread
― Nabozo, Thursday, 28 March 2024 08:09 (four hours ago) link
There are so many odd choices on Confield that if they'd not made them I'd probably enjoy it a lot more. Some sounds are so overwhelmingly loud in the mix, if they'd been toned down just a tiny bit it would have made a big difference to my enjoyment
― your mom goes to limgrave (dog latin), Thursday, 28 March 2024 09:12 (three hours ago) link
<3 confield, the most synaesthetic album ever, incredible sounds, no aural fatigue like i get with exai.
but this is an aphex thread. i've been working my way through the analords (thanks fgti), slowly because i'm suddenly in loads of all day meetings for the first time in my career. i'm digging the faster acid breakbeat workouts, most of the rest of it i could take or leave - i was never that crazy about saw 85-92 though.
― gene besserit (ledge), Thursday, 28 March 2024 10:15 (two hours ago) link