exhaustive idm/drill n bass/ambient/glitch
regarding convenience and indulgence and impermanence
...
When I was 14, it was the only album I had downloaded on my phone. Without fail, every single morning on the bus route to school (and many nights going between my dad's house and wherever my mom happened to be staying; I specifically remember my grandmother's apartment, R.I.P. Paula), I would sit by the moving window, observing every street light in the dark of a hidden sun, a blow-up snowman deflated and struggling to wave hello, cornfields cut down months ago, the wondrous rainbow lights strung around houses. It was a rather shitty and angst-ridden time for me (but who didn't suffer and think the world was against them when they were 14?) but the music from that time made things so much better. None of my friends got it when I put them on, of course, but I would high-five past me for being so cool if such mechanics of time were possible so it doesn't matter. I digress.
Aphex Twin is somebody who has absolutely benefited from the technology present at any time since he started crafting electronic music, but one of the greatest problems that technology has faced since its starting innovation is that of portability. Obviously, it was that portability that has made producing and listening to music so much more convenient. Concert halls to shitty plastic tubes, then onto mass-produced vinyl, then radio, then cassettes, 8 tracks, CDs, the ipods that the hipsters of today crave just like the millennials revitalized vinyl, and finally we have stumbled into the convenience of streaming services. This isn't a purely pessimistic thing, as the internet gives you what you put into it; if phones and PC music technology weren't as insane and convenient as they currently are, then artists like LAZER DIM 700 likely wouldn't be able to produce as much music as they do (and THANK GOD for it). Brat by Charli xcx would absolutely be damaged if it weren't for AG Cook's hyper-technological instrumental coked up dance. I know that I certainly wouldn't have been able to create 5 albums, a slew of EPs and features and singles, etc. if it wasn't for the convenience of punch-in recording that allowed ideas to flow out of my rhythmically-challenged teenage brain to be fixed in post-production (in my defense, I have gotten better lol). There's no way I'd be able to get something worth listening to out of tape. Some people crave the inconvenience and I really respect them for that work. When I achieve flow-state in music and in writing, however, it tends to happen much quicker on digital mediums than on analog workspaces. I'm not sure I could write something like this on my typewriter in the office.
Of course small electronic things are convenient- I remember a conversation about cigarettes vs. vapes I read online a while ago. Cigarettes require more conscious action- standing outside, physically lighting the tobacco, etc. They insist on themselves in the physical realm a lot more than vapes do. You breathe in and put it back in your pocket. It's easy, but easiness is a strange beast. It's addictive. It can go missing and turn your paranoia and curiosity into a growling primal beast. I personally watched friends in high school and college turn on each other like the mafia trying to find whoever "stole my fucking vape bro".
Speaking of my time around vape addicts (and, by association, their music) in the rural Midwest in the 21st century, noted bro-stepper Skrillex had his laptop stolen in 2011. Some dickhead broke into Mr. Moore's hotel room, and consequently an entire album was gone. Aphex Twin had something similar happen with a missing MP3 player, which is why Drukqs is such a mess of an album. He rushed to get something, ANYTHING out of his system before his music was leaked. Due to that, we had some of the most frenetic and intense dnb of the 2000s directly next to ambient pieces, Erik Satie-esque piano, and a swarm of distressing lo-fi noises/field recordings/whatever the hell "Gwarek 2" is. Something RDJ would eventually do himself was expose an even vaster collection through his anonymous and gargantuan soundcloud account, but in that unsure time of his back in 2001, I couldn't imagine how in that state he managed to create such deeply complex and intricate pieces. Aphex Twin is a mad scientist. The electronic works, most noticeably, violently experiment with every aspect of what a sound could be- stretched, chopped up, thrown from left to right, degraded, and spectrally altered. Voices, brass, drums, and everything else in the album are processed and given a special appreciation by RDJ. Even the prepared piano pieces he wrote like "Avril 14th" or "Kesson Dalek" have such charm and delicacies within their duration that I wouldn't be surprised if he had been writing them obsessively for years.
Overall, not my favorite Aphex release (that would go to the album prior to drukqs, 1996's Richard D. James Album, which I have many less words for), but for what it's worth, this is an absolutely fascinating listen.
fav sound: probably the chimes in the intro of "taking control"
