[HN Gopher] Aphex Twin gave us a peek inside a 90s classic (2017)
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Aphex Twin gave us a peek inside a 90s classic (2017)
Author : indigodaddy
Score : 128 points
Date : 2024-07-27 17:54 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cdm.link)
(TXT) w3m dump (cdm.link)
| hansjorg wrote:
| The video with the tracker is only part of the final track, it's
| missing percussion at least. Here's the version of Vordhosbn from
| the Drukqs album:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ro1aHvhGec&pp=ygUJdm9yZGhvc2J...
|
| Drukqs is a great album btw, if you're at all interested in music
| you should give it a listen. It's got everything from tender
| prepared piano pieces to his signature drill and bass. Syro from
| 2014 is also an amazing album.
| bellgrove wrote:
| I love most of his work. Drukqs is his weakest (but still
| good!) album IMO - Avril 14th is a great track. His Analord
| series is also amazing and Rushup Edge under another alias -
| The Tuss.
| enneff wrote:
| Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but this take seems
| absolutely out of pocket to me. Drukqs is Rich's most well-
| rounded, polished, and arguably revolutionary project. From a
| sound design and arrangement perspective it still sounds
| contemporary, more than 20 years on. It's also the only one
| of his albums besides SAW 85-92 of which I like every track
| (and love most of them).
|
| You do you, but maybe give it another dedicated listen and
| you might change your mind! :)
| trollied wrote:
| > Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but this take
| seems absolutely out of pocket to me
|
| Made me laugh. We all have our tastes and loves/hates.
| Accept it.
| enneff wrote:
| Clearly I do accept it since that's what I said in the
| quoted text??
| pentaphobe wrote:
| Seconded - Drukqs is spectacular!
|
| Random tidbit: around when the album came out I chucked it on
| my friend's CDJs (IIRC I skipped straight to Mt St Michael) -
| by chance the CDJs were set at some lower speed, maybe 50-75%
|
| Highly recommend trying it out - being able to hear how much
| groove and complexity sits behind those super fast tracks is
| quite enlightening. We ended up listening to both discs of the
| album like that, just boggling the whole time
|
| The track in question:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6kN4zRfnHm8
|
| PS. Whilst YouTube has playback speed it's unlikely to give the
| same benefits - but if you've no other options it could be
| worth a shot
| glitcher wrote:
| He's got a catalogue of bangers I've always loved, but Selected
| Ambient Works Volume 2 was so unique when it was released it
| really took me by surprise. It was hypnotic, sometimes eerie,
| other times introspective and beautiful.
|
| If you're to believe the account Richard James gave, he claims
| to have used sleep deprivation and lucid dreaming to compose
| the album. I used to listen to the entire thing beginning to
| end on headphones, and I believe it!
|
| https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aphex-twin-selected-amb...
| hansjorg wrote:
| I've spent so much time listening to it, it really is
| beautiful.
|
| Just noticed on Bleep that they're releasing a 30th
| anniversary expanded edition on the 4th of October:
| https://bleep.com/release/460396-aphex-twin-selected-
| ambient...
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Nice! #19 (and #21) sound great and/but really nostalgic;
| remind me of Funki Porcini a bit.
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| 90s and early 2000s were cemented by works like these. By these I
| really mean electronica and it's influence. It had hit
| mainstream. Warp was full on, having all sorts of artists and
| releasing their Artificial Intelligence compilation. Darude had
| just come out with Sandstorm and Digitally Imported radio was
| taking off with Shoutcast. Elsewhere, Nu-Metal for example was
| starting to come into its own, lots of new music that we haven't
| heard before with all sorts of genre overlaps. Textures that did
| not exist before. We knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that we
| were in a musical zeitgeist.
|
| Has anything like this ever happened since? I keep chasing the
| dragon but I haven't seen anything of this sort occur. It seems
| like we've mostly stabilized and are back to an equilibrium.
| Barneyhill wrote:
| Yeah... I definitely share the feeling that we've hit a wall in
| terms of new sounds. Currently I think some of the work
| happening in the audio/ML space is the most promising in terms
| of emerging possibilities but things are still moving much
| slower than I thought they would. Here's a couple projects
| we've done developing novel audio interfaces that leverage ML:
| https://github.com/vroomai - I'm still confident we'll see a
| breakout use-case in this area soon.
| pentaphobe wrote:
| If you find the dragon I hope you'll let us know!
|
| I've a suspicion that what's missing is those early producers
| drew inspiration from a diverse set of non-genre (or non-
| electronic) art, and also were driven at least partially by the
| lack of good experimental electronica in their early years
| (scarcity breeding experimentation or something?)
|
| Whereas nowadays most people are (justifiably) inspired by a
| preponderance of music _within the style they're creating_.
| Pair that with a strong focus on "how to sound like X" style
| tutorial content and I imagine it's tougher to extricate
| yourself from Building A Product long enough to invent.
|
| I often feel kinda retroactively jealous of how much amazing
| tutorial content is at our fingertips these days, "you can
| learn anything!" but do wonder if the relative isolation and
| drought in those early days was perhaps more of a benefit to
| prolific output than this abundance of input is.
|
| Much easier to consume than produce - unless there's nothing to
| consume :)
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I suspect it falls in your early 00's umbrella but dupstep from
| 04-08 was a pretty special time that saw literal school
| children producing a sound that went global with the rise of
| internet usage at the time.
| imp0cat wrote:
| I think that every generation has such an event. The invention
| of electrified instruments must have been quite similar.
| chungus wrote:
| I can still remember the first time I listened to aphex twin when
| I was 12. On my Sony discman. I've been listening for decades...
| pentaphobe wrote:
| Very cool to get a peek behind the curtain!
|
| I've never been as productive and free as when I was mind-melded
| with FastTracker2 in the 90's
|
| For a peak couple years I was generally writing 100s of
| (unrefined) 5-14 min tracks every month. Total unbound freedom to
| experiment at (close to) the speed of thought.
|
| For anyone who's not had the pleasure, It's like when you first
| get good at touch typing and find you can suddenly put down
| thoughts dozens of times faster than ever before - it frees up
| your self-expression and gets The Censor out of the way.
|
| Renoise is pretty cool, but I never fully glommed with it to the
| same level - might be time to try again! Recently started playing
| with a Polyend Tracker - pretty neat to feel those old synapses
| waking up. There's no way it can ever approach the speed of full
| keyboard-operated Tracker programs but the chance to revisit that
| beloved workflow in a solid and portable unit is so far really
| compelling.
| dsclough wrote:
| Hope you managed to preserve these, I'd be keep to take a
| listen if they're hosted online somewhere. I've been using
| renoise for 15 years on and off and while nowhere near 100s of
| tracks a month I fondly look back on the first year I used it
| similarly - that combination of youthful energy and tracker
| software is really something special. Renoise has come a long
| way and is a joy to use.
| pentaphobe wrote:
| Alas most died on boxes of floppy discs which succumbed to a
| flood
|
| I recently discovered some 50 odd floppies which survived,
| and a couple old 5" hard drives - so I'm hopeful! I assume
| most of the data will be pretty patchy by now (if not totally
| gone) but I'm gonna try some forensic recovery
|
| If I manage I'll put the survivors somewhere for sure :)
|
| Anywhere I can check out your renoise stuff? Always keen to
| find new stuff to boggle at
| avtar wrote:
| Not the person you were replying to but here's someone who
| still uses Renoise for releases
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Robot_and_Proud
| pentaphobe wrote:
| Oh cool, hadn't heard of this person - thanks!
| masfuerte wrote:
| I had more than a hundred 5.25" floppies from the 1980s and
| I successfully recovered all but two of them thirty years
| later. It's definitely worth a try.
| pentaphobe wrote:
| That's super impressive, and very reassuring!
|
| What sort of memories did you find? (if you don't mind
| sharing)
|
| Also: any tips for recovery? I'm so far assuming I'll
| just get them nice and cool, then do multiple raw read
| passes so I can then choose the individual bits which are
| the same across most passes
| masfuerte wrote:
| Mostly it was loads of 6502 software I wrote when I was a
| kid, and also some high school projects I did. It was fun
| to look through it.
|
| The disks that worked just worked! I did try multiple
| passes on the two that didn't, but that didn't help.
| pentaphobe wrote:
| Oh that woulda been a neat bit of time travelling, glad
| it worked out!
|
| I'm quietly hoping I end up finding a bunch of my old x86
| assembler projects in these discs (well - excited and a
| little scared... perhaps better through the rosy glasses
| of nostalgia)
| fzzzy wrote:
| Same, I had several hundred 3.5" floppies from the 80s
| and they were all fine when I ripped them. I think double
| density might be more reliable than high density.
| npunt wrote:
| If you can get your hands on an Applesauce low level copier
| you may be able to recover them. https://applesaucefdc.com
| stuaxo wrote:
| The greaseweazle is a very cost effective way of reading
| old floppies.
|
| There's a community on FB, you can occasionally but pre
| made drives, even without that, a board and a floppy drive
| is enough.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| For a fast keyboard-bssed workflow but also the ability to
| divide time however you like (I'm a big fan of strange swing
| fractions like 3/5 instead of 2/3), keep audio and midi side by
| side, and use whatever plugins you like, what's the nearest
| modern equivalent? Reaper?
| throwaway992673 wrote:
| When life throws me lemons I play aisatsana on piano.
| deng wrote:
| See also this video from Benn Jordan (The Flashbulb) on the
| software used by Aphex Twin:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wIOBBodoic
| krmblg wrote:
| Not sure if that dove evolution parody video got me introduced
| to the flashbulb's works initially but I sure enjoyed Kirlian
| Selections/Tape and Our Simulacra and for some reason came
| across Benn on numerous occasions (mostly HN related) in the
| past decade (didn't know about the YT channel until now though)
| skrebbel wrote:
| Wow this really blows my mind. I used trackers nearly every day
| when Drukqs was released and somehow I felt that Aphex Twin just
| had to have access to stuff I didn't. Obviously that was kinda
| true, cause he had synths and teenage me couldn't afford those,
| but still, turns out it all boiled down to plain old tracking,
| just samples. No special effects, no fancy overpriced sequencer
| orchestrating a million pieces of gear, just... samples. It
| really blows me away.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Does anyone on this list know Rich? A few years ago I ran into a
| zip file of Pure Data patches allegedly from the twisted mind of
| Rich James. They were absolutely mental (lookng at a pd patch
| lets you see directly into the composers mind) I've always been
| curious if they were really his.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Possibly the patches released by Autechre, I have seen them
| mislabeled as Apex Twin. Can you link or share them somewhere?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| That might make sense. tbh they sounded more like Plaid/Black
| Dog so maybe Autechre. I'll have a dig but unlikely I'll find
| them in the abysmal heap. iirc they were posted via the old
| puredata forum so maybe check wayback.
| enneff wrote:
| Autechre never really used PD so it's unlikely to be them.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| >never really used
|
| Are you saying they don't use it or do use it just not a
| great deal? I am fairly certain I first learned about pd
| back around the turn of the century from an interview with
| Autechre where they mentioned using it but I have no idea
| to what extent they used it. It might have been Max/MSP for
| the patches which often can be easily run in pd with some
| minor changes and sometimes works just fine without
| changes.
| krmblg wrote:
| Back in the mid to late 90s tracker stuff was what I considered
| "how techno was made" (I got an A grade for a presentation in
| "music" subject at grammar school, mostly because tracker
| terminology also included "patterns", samples, bpm and such
| (Future Crew Demos such as Panic and 2nd Reality were my baseline
| back then).
|
| Boy was it a revelation when I got my hands at a "real" 909,
| 303+MPC+MIDI setup..
| trollied wrote:
| Anyone else here have Octamed as a kid? (And fasttracker!)
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