APHEX TWIN Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (R&S)

Originally released late in 1992, it’s hard to imagine the impact of Richard D James’ first (double) album length opus on the dance music cognoscenti of the time. Barely out of his teens, he had already issued the groundbreaking EPs "Analogue Bubblebath", "Digeridoo" and "Xylem Tube" (later anthologised on the "Classics" compilation), which flitted between the warm’n’balmy and the evilest of madbastard techno. Then came "Selected Ambient Works", mythologised as a collection of his bedroom experiments, some allegedly the work of an astonishingly precocious 14-year old who claimed complete ignorance of all other music of the day.

Hindsight only heightens how terrific this album is, and I’ll freely admit to being biased, ‘cos this is one of a handful of works that soundtracked my university years. Here be thirteen tracks saddled with impenetrable titles such as "Schottkey 7th Path" and "Ptolemy", featuring insidious, uncoiling melodies that owe more of a debt to jazz and classical traditions than the abrupt, brutal dance music of the time (which, it must be remembered, RDJ was a leading exponent of). Adding to the allure was the low-fi smog that smothered it all, emphasising the album’s primitive production - you can hear the Portastudio faders being jerkily raised, the tape dropouts (the NME joked that some tracks sounded as if they had been mastered on a TDK AD90) and the fluctuating treble levels, all of which makes it sound more human, less machine-like.

But "Selected Ambient Works 85-92" is probably best celebrated for containing the first real flowerings from the seeds of the Twin’s genius: there are moments here that will never fail to seduce this listener, irrespective of the memories bound up with them. "Xtal" is the Cocteau Twins recording in a garage, gorgeous floaty ethereal vocal samples looped over a melody to die for, anchored by a drum beat that seems to be echoing from somewhere back in the stone age. "Tha" is nine minutes of questing synth bassline, reverberant drum track and snatches of muffled conversation. "Green Calx" is about as close as this album gets to convention, and even then it’s a squidgetastic decidedly non-ambient pummeler that plays the kind of trickery his more usual one-dimensional EP offerings in the genre can only hallucinate about. And then there’s "Heliosphan", quite simply one of the most beautiful dance tunes ever made.

Since this album he’s flirted with chart success, subliminal sell-outs (Pirelli and Orange have both used his music on television ads), and thundered across genres such as drum ‘n’ bass, new age, classical and death metal (see elsewhere in this issue for a review of some of his other current activities). But despite all the fine music he’s programmed in the last five years, this is still the album to play to confused acquaintances doubtful of Mr James’ well-deserved genius tag.

APHEX TWIN Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Warp)

He does his accounts on acid because it gives him a better grasp of figures; he wants to buy a dalek to collect his washing from the launderette in; he wrote and recorded the "Surfing On Sine Waves" album at the age of 14; he talks to his modified synthesizers and builds his own equipment; the master tapes of his debut album have been involved in car crashes; he remixes other people's tracks by playing them all night whilst he's asleep and recording the first thing that comes into his head the next morning; he has x-thousand untitled unreleased tracks...the sheer weight of disinformation that surrounds Richard D. James, a.k.a. Aphex Twin, AFX, Polygon Window, Caustic Window, Blue Calx, Diceman and no doubt thousands of other undiscovered aliases, has been unmatched by any other musician (in it's broadest sense) since Tom Waits, even Dylan, maybe. Yet despite being in his early twenties, he's already a very big fish in the ever-expanding pool of ambient techno, and this album, his third 'proper' full (very full) length release might be some kind of reaction to it all.

The specifics: on triple (brown) vinyl, double CD and double tape, "Ambient Works II" contains 24 untitled tracks, identified only by different shades of yellow and blurred photographs on the cover (although track 13 has been previously released as "Blue Calx", by, erm, Blue Calx), lasting way over two-and-a-half hours, this is the "Topographic Oceans" of ambience...and it's really quite good. Restful isn't the word: there's scarcely a drumbeat present (nor even a heartbeat) to disturb the flow. The feel is womblike, heavily reverberant, full of what could be muted temple bells, what might be a vacuum cleaner, what sounds like indecipherable conversation, wasn't that a burst of static then? Who knows, perhaps not even its creator. All the other Aphex Twin fans I know detest this, because, unlike it's predecessor, the superb "Selected Ambient Works 85-92", which had a fair selection of bone-rattling danceable tunes, "Ambient Works Volume II" is exactly that: background music, wallpaper, ambience or 'pure texture', as the man himself says, but at the same time spooky and in places quite frightening.

It could be a joke of course, something to test his ever-expanding, perhaps overly-devoted (particularly in America, it seems) fanbase, in which case the incredible length and, frankly, lack of variety of the project would make some kind of sense. But when he's capable of creating music as quite soundscapingly beautiful as track three it's more tempting to conclude that the Twin has just leapfrogged all his rivals yet again.

AFX Analogue Bubblebath IV (Rephlex)

The Airfix Twin's first release since the, er, controversial "Selected Ambient Works Volume 2" triple album (not counting the Polygon Window track "My Teapot" on Warp's "Artificial Intelligence II" compilation, because it was clearly intended as some kind of very elaborate joke) conforms to the well established "Analogue Bubblebath" tradition: four (untitled, of course) tracks, no indication of which side to play first, or even of what speed to play it at.

As if such terrestrial concerns actually matter. (It sounds better at 33 rpm, but one side sounds pretty plausible at 45 rpm too.) The music harks back to the original "Analogue Bubblebath" E.P. - one superb radio friendly unit non-shifter, which this time round, if it sounds like anything else (which of course it doesn't) sounds like Stereolab performing an impromptu instrumental rendition of "Dancing Queen" in the middle of a rainforest, followed by a minimalist techno samba, then two tracks that sound like an argument between a machine shop and a scrapyard.

It's a relief that Richard D James has started making music with beats in it again, even if the "Analogue Bubblebath" template is getting a little worn and over-familiar now, over two years after its original implementation. However, the insert, as well as including "The Rephlex Guide To Rocks, Minerals and Gemstones" and information on "Playing This Record On Your Turntable", promises the forthcoming album-length "Analogue Bubblebath 5". Pass the loofah...

APHEX TWIN ...I Care Because You Do (Warp)

"Whatever happened to disco?" inquired Michael Smyth in the last edition of Feedback. Well, as I understood it, it hitchhiked to Detroit, misplacing its baggage en route, bought itself a TB303 and an SL1210 and mutated into ‘dance music’ and all its little baby genres (techno, ambient, acid, jungle and whatever’s being dreamed up and spliced together in urban bedrooms as we speak). And, unquestionably at the top of the pile of its British practitioners, along with Orbital, the recently deceased Black Dog and the recently renamed Chemical Brothers, stands Richard D James, man of many aliases.

His work as the Aphex Twin has consistently remapped and expanded the territory occupied by ‘dance music’. Early EPs like "Digeridoo" were full of uncompromising hardcore techno, but his debut album-length release, "Selected Ambient Works 85-92" was, with the exception of the storming "Green Calx", mellowness given a gorgeous new set of clothes and a makeover, and along with Saint Etienne’s "Foxbase Alpha" became the essential student accessory. Last year’s "Selected Ambient Works Vol 2" was a plot-loser on a grand scale: a triple album full of lightly sketched outlines rather than actual tunes, it hit the top 20 despite containing only two or three inspirational moments. And now comes the third volume, "...I Care Because You Do", prefaced by "Ventolin", a twelve-part concept single about asthma. Is the Twin turning into the Rick Wakeman of techno?

Thankfully not, though looking at the grotesque sleeve self-portrait you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s becoming its Bob Dylan, circa 1970. "...I Care Because You Do" attempts to access all areas of the Aphex Twin’s canon, and nearly succeeds. Over the space of twelve tracks, recorded between 1990 and 1994, he navigates back and forth along the line that separates his hardcore and, er, softcore work. In the former category are the frankly silly "Ventolin", presented here in a ‘video edit’, whatever that means, "Start As You Mean To Go On" and "Come On You Slags!". The oldest track here, and eerily similar both in concept and execution to "Tamphex" from the "Xylem Tube" EP, it manages to create a quite frightening atmosphere of dirty mac-ed voyeurism. In the Aphex-as-fluffy-cuddly-bunny corner, there’s the luminous and eggshell fragile delights of "Mookid" and "Alberto Balsalm", and the orchestral sounding synthesis of the closing "Next Heap With".

Given RDJ’s eclecticism, it could’ve sounded like anything, or more likely nothing, on earth, when in fact it smacks of much-abused squidgy noise machines and overloaded analogue synths and drum machines being forced to make the kind of sounds they really weren’t designed to. But, mild disappointment that he hasn’t totally trumped us this time apart, "...I Care Because You Do" is mostly classic Airfix Twin, destined to stand alongside greats like the first "Ambient Works", the third "Analogue Bubblebath", "Joyride J4" and "Surfing On Sine Waves" when future historians evaluate the Cornishman’s role in the dance wars. Maybe 1995 will finally be the year that ‘proper’ dance music begins to pollute the mainstream (comparing the Aphex Twin to 2 Unlimited, for example, is about as valid and helpful as calling both Bryan Adams and Metallica ‘heavy metal’). Already we’ve heard Biosphere on Levis adverts and the music of Richard D James (as Caustic Window) selling tyres, as well as the Tribal Gathering festival event. Albums like this (which again went top 20 on week of release) can only help with the re-education.

APHEX TWIN Donkey Rhubarb (Warp)

Four more squidgetastic tunes from the prolific pen of Richard D James, his first new material since April’s still-wonderful "...I Care Because You Do" double album. The title track and "Vaz Deferenz" are both fantastic high BPM epics, with the faint stench of overheating analogue synthery in the background, certainly the most creative examples of 303 abuse to reach these ears since David Holmes’ remix of Saint Etienne’s "Like A Motorway". Flip it over and there’s the almost self-explanatory "Icct Hedral (Philip Glass Orchestration)", in which Philip Glass orchestrates one of "...I Care Because You Do"’s spookier, more traumatic tracks to marvellous effect, sounding strangely like soundtrack music from a horror film. Truly a match made in minimalist heaven, one that could only be rivalled by Michael Nyman collaborating with Orbital, a dream booking if ever there were. Finally "Pancake Lizard" brings up the rear, the only partial success present, it uses the same slowed-down sample technique as Saint Etienne’s "Johnny In The Echo Café", to similarly uninteresting effect. Still, three parts genius to one part failed experimentation sounds like a good deal in my book.

AFX Hangable Auto Bulb EP (Warp)

The Airfix Twin returns with his latest rickety vehicle, a six-track (mercifully, perhaps) limited-edition 12" single that marks his conversion to the joys of jungle, about eighteen months after the rest of the world. Well, sort of: he hasn’t exactly thrown his lot in with the shouty-bloke-in-big-trousers school. The looped tin-can drum tracks that buzz around the speakers like a confined insect are present and correct, but whereas some might top it off with boorish machismo booming, RDJ adds, among other delights, samples of children discussing mashed potatoes. Slightly less atypical service resumes on the flip side, where dark and sinister chords wrap themselves around tracks called stuff like "Laughable Butane Bob", "Wabbly Legs" and "Custodian Discount". Ultimately, though, "Hangable Auto Bulb" sees James veering dangerously towards the ‘king-has-no-clothes’ (or ‘producer-has-no-tunes’) status he last got trapped in during the somewhat over-ambient "Selected Ambient Works Volume 2" triple album.

MIKE & RICH Expert Knob Twiddlers (Rephlex)

Sleeved in an immaculate parody of the box of the children’s game Downfall ("Cleverly manoeuvre your records onto the platters and then listen to the tracks in the right order to Win! But Watch out-the tracks are different on each side you could be helping your opponent instead of helping yourself!"), "Expert Knob Twiddlers" is the first released collaboration between Richard James (a.k.a. AFX, Aphex Twin, Caustic Window, Diceman, Polygon Window and Q-Chastic) and Michael Paradinis (a.k.a. m -Ziq and Jake Slazenger). It’s the sound of the easy listening bandwagon being well and truly hijacked by beings from a planet where daytime television presenters are deified and cartoon characters appointed to key governmental positions - what else could explain the theme for a deranged mid-afternoon gameshow that "Winner Takes All" just has to be, or tracks with titles like "Giant Deflating Football" and "Upright Kangaroo"? "Expert Knob Twiddlers" is bathed in the same low-fi fog as much of James’ solo work, and the acrid stench of primitive synthesisers sequencing their last is never far away. Although not in the same league as his last proper full-length work "...I Care Because You Do" (think of it as a primitive cross between that album’s "Cow Cud Is A Twin" and Paradinis’ clanging, metallic sequence of Auteurs remixes), the Mike and Rich album is an interesting experiment in seeing how many sub-genres you can invent in one go (queasy listening, anyone?), and, as a diverting diversion, should be welcomed by the faithful.

APHEX TWIN Richard D. James Album (Warp)

That we should live to see the day when Richard D James made a pop album! But spookily that’s exactly what "Richard D. James Album" looks like. Beside being the first RDJ long playing experience ever to confine itself to only two sides of vinyl, it also boasts one genuine top 30 (well, top 30 in the Indie Album Charts, anyway) hit in the shape of "Girl/Boy Song". What on earth is going on?

Well, breakbeats, substantially. Despite the lukewarm reception afforded his first foray into the world of the speeded-up drum track, the Airfix Twin has persevered and is now really quite good at it. Opening track "4" sounds like a string quartet performing at a firework display (how seasonal), interrupted by some AFX-style call-and-responding. "Peek 824543201" is bookended by the kind of noise you used to get when loading computer games from cassette, and "To Cure A Weakling Child" pursues the children’s voices sampling conceit originally explored on the "Hangable Auto Bulb EP" track "Children Talking". "Goon Gumpos" is a bizarre few minute’s respite from the battering, sounding like a horribly distorted orchestral Disney soundtrack. "Yellow Calx" is presumably a thematic successor to "Green Calx" and "Blue Calx", and oddly enough it doesn’t sound dissimilar to the former and the latter being played at the same time. Then follows the truly magnificent "Girl/Boy Song", in which that reticent and much-abused string section once again attempt to retain their professionalism whilst being battered within an inch of their resin by a succession of evil beats: it sounds like the "Clockwork Orange" soundtrack being played in a machine shop. Honestly. "Loon Rock Witch" closes proceedings, haunted by the ghost of Pink Floyd’s "Bike", James breaks into the room of musical tunes and decides, quite correctly, that it’d be the ideal place to record some vampiric pipe organ soloing. And there, barely 33 minutes after it begins, "Richard D. James Album" ends.

Halving the length of his tunes appears to have done the Twin no harm at all, but the sad thing is it won’t garner any more commercial acclaim than the little he’s been showered with already. Any work with as much diversity and imagination as "Richard D. James Album" deserves to sell by the truckload, but in these grim times it’s so far above Noelrock’s lowest common denominator ethos that it’s destined to sail straight into the cult classics bin, along with the rest of RDJ’s copious musical output. But that’s what you get for not writing songs stuffed full of alcohol references, it appears.  

APHEX TWIN Come To Daddy (Warp)

Mr James returns with the follow-up to last year’s marvellous "Girl/Boy Song" EP, this time toting a gruesome cover photo showing his, er, not conventionally attractive features grafted onto a schoolyard full of infants. The contents provide further evidence to suggest that he’s not a hot favourite on the local council’s approved childminder register: the title track, in "Pappy Mix" form, is, horror of horrors, a ‘song’, as in a verse/chorus thing. The verse goes "I want your soul/I want your soul/I want your soul/I want your soul", whilst the chorus features RDJ hollering the title repeatedly. Not particularly groundbreaking, perhaps, even though it succeeds in fusing death metal with jungle, as he’s been foisting this sort of thing on an unwary public for years (compare and contrast it with the scary techno of the "Analogue Bubblebath IV" EP, for example). What is heart-warming is the way "Come To Daddy" thundered to, uh, number 36 in the torpid top 40, showing that nowadays people are actually listening.

The other tracks on this 12" include "Flim", a pleasant balmy device not unlike the mellower moments of "Analogue Bubblebath 3" (praise indeed), the "Little Lord Faulteroy" mix of the title track and "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball", all of which shows that, even when treading water the Airfix Twin’s outpourings are still worth our time and attention.

CAUSTIC WINDOW Compilation (Rephlex)

If there’s one ‘dream album’ that most committed Aphex Twin trainspotters would love to become a reality, it would be a reissue of the three almost impossible-to-find EPs he put out under the Caustic Window banner on his own Rephlex imprint between 1992 and 1994. Well, lo and behold, prayers must have been answered because the smart, if devilishly impractical, transparent sleeve of "Compilation" contains most of the music he made as Caustic Window spread over six 45 rpm sides.

By turns brutal and soothing, always experimental (snatches of these 12 untitled tracks can be heard on many of his more regular releases, both before and after), Richard D James’ Caustic Window material is like an alternative best of album, parading the raw material that goes into the cauldrons from which bubble up his celestial sounds. My personal fave is the snatch of heavily distorted drum track that also pops up on "Phlange Phace" on the "Xylem Tube" EP and "Classics" compilation: mercifully brief, it’s the intense humming of dancefloor evil. An honourable mention must also go to the tenth track, which mixes dub baselines with AFX’s usual muted devilry. His Pirelli advert music’s on here too.

My one disappointment with "Compilation" is that, presumably for copyright reasons, his stunning ‘version’ of the 70s electro classic "Popcorn", essentially the Hot Butter original squeezed through all manner of sonic hooligan effects (distortion, phasing, reverb etc.) originally found on the "Joyride J5" EP is strangely absent here. However, don’t let that deter the Aphex Twin enthusiast in you from exploring the underside of RDJ’s lunatic sound world, or as the sleevenotes put it, "Classic Braindance tunes from Cornwall".

APHEX TWIN Windowlicker (Warp)

Possibly a little premature to review this, but here goes. At time of typing I only have the CD2 of this, Richard D James' first new release in over a year (although the track itself is reputedly three years old, and has been knocking around on white label for twelve months), which contains the original demo version and, more pertinently, Chris Cunningham's ten minute video for the song, shot at a cost of £130,000 and, just like his previous Aphex effort "Come To Daddy", highly unlikely to ever make it onto primetime television. An astute parody (at least I hope it's a parody) of the excesses of gangster rap that somehow drifts into a dance sequence choreographed to include some hot moves with a set of Aphex Twin umbrellas, it's well worth the price of admission, given the usual Quick Time movie caveats of a display size little larger than a cassette case and grainy, jerky images (the latter probably a function of me running it on a PC of less than half the minimum recommended speed demanded by the spec...oh dear). There's some music here as well, of course, and, yes, "Windowlicker" is as completely different to everything else he's ever done as everything else he's ever done is, a bizarre mix of celestial voices and grinding P-Funk riffage. And the controversy even extends as far as the cover art, with the already-legendary images of the Twin's grinning, bearded face grafted onto a bikinid body of rather more feminine appearance. Is it a clever and thought-provoking sideswipe at sexism in the media, or is it, as the man himself would probably describe it, just "lush"?

Ending five years of self-imposed long playing silence, Richard D James bites back with what could be considered his "White Album", a massive, bounteous outpouring of 30 tracks, 100 minutes of music, spread over four albums, two of which rotate at 45 rpm, the remainder adhering to the more conventional 33 rpm speed. The whole arrives packaged in a big box that, at over 18 inches long (or wide, depending on how you look at it) will sorely tax the storage abilities of most standard record shelves.

So, what lies beneath? Initial spins of "Drukqs" left me feeling confused and disappointed. As a travelogue of the most interesting parts of its creator's back catalogue, or as a first introduction to the Aphex Twin's impish, maverick genius it works satisfactorily, but there was little sense of the boundaries of electronic music being vaulted that normally accompanies an RDJ album event. The one real musical innovation "Drukqs" offered appeared to be a suite of short chamber pieces, performed using some kind of software that seemed to run along a three-dimensional sliding scale that was part typewriter, part player-piano and part harmonium. (The cover and label photographs, close-ups of ageing, unspecified machinery, might even be a fantastical concrete realisation of such a device.) At their finest - for example, "Avril 14th", which, in the absence of any single releases has established itself as "Druqks" most widely heard two minutes by virtue of its inclusion on a recent NME cover CD - these tracks seemed to filter Erik Satie's "Trois Gymnopédies" through Eno's "Music For Airports" and emerge clutching something quietly mighty. Similarly, on "Penty Harmonium", James seems to have synthesised the wheezy, creaking mechanics and gasps of ancient wood, metal and fabric mechanics into the melody's very score. And "Lornaderek", an answerphone recording of his parents singing "Happy Birthday" to their "little 28 year old son", is a fun way to spend 30 seconds. But elsewhere, on the more regular fare, it seemed as if the Twin was resting on his considerable laurels, and regurgitating carbon copies of the highlights of his decade-long recording career.

But persevere and concentrate and this unfavourable impression gradually begins to slide away. Even "Girl/Boy Song", the clattery highlight of his last LP "Richard D. James Album", didn't posses such skittery, abandoned beats as does "Vordhosbn", sounding rigidly mechanical and programmed in comparison. Always on the hunt for new methods of sonic expression, he brings us sampled whipcracks during "Omgyjya Switch7", a track that might be dismissed as a diluted version of his death-metal anthem "Come To Daddy" before you begin to appreciate just how frenetic it is, and "Gwarek2" seems to be predominately constructed from the sound of a stick being dragged along metal railings. "Gwely Mermans" might harken back to the static vistas of the "Selected Ambient Works Volume 2" red herring, but it's far more upbeat than anything on that album: nothing happens, but it happens fast. "Cock/Ver10" evokes the brutality of "Come On You Slags!" from the "…I Care Because You Do" album, whilst being far more intricate, with a brooding, minor key melody amidst all the battery that could have snuck off Roy Budd's "Get Carter" soundtrack. "Mt Saint Michel Mix + St Michaels Mount" might initially sound like the same old mix of acid and breakbeats, but that would be to ignore the fact that it's far harder and faster than the recipe has been before, with everything turned up way beyond 11. "Taking Control", by far the most straightforwardly funky tune he's yet released, could even be an old skool homage to Sleazy D's "I've Lost Control", with its sinister "I'm taking control of the drum machines" hookline.