Aphex Twin - Spex Interview [translated by rd1994 at WATMM]

Ten days before the attacks of 9/11 the last interview with Aphex Twin took place. His album Drukqs, which was the only album being sold in Rough Trade record shops for that day, was released at the same time as the Jay-Z album "The Blueprint", which featured a young producer named Kanye West for the first time. In short: the "heydays" of Aphex Twin, lie so far back, that one whole generation of todays listeners doesn't remember, simply because they were too young. 13 Years ago, that was different, although Richard D. James hadn't released in 5 years time, but in the meantime his two biggest hits were released "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker". Hits, that brought Aphex Twin as close to the main stream as never before, whose videos, courtesty of Chris Cunningham, that spread the Richard D. James grin on MTV worldwide. Stars like Björk and Madonna wanted to work with Chris afterwards. YouTube didn't exist yet, neither SoundCloud nor Facebook. Not even MySpace. DJs still played vinyl, the Laptop-Revolution just started off.
Why does Aphex Twin come back now, at a time where everyone doubted a new album? "Most of the time I don't really care about my new tracks, once they are done.", he says. "For me it's mostly about finishing the ideas that I have in my head. This is what I did all these years. But now I feel I live in a new part of my live. I make different music, I have a new wife, and it seems to be a right time to compile tracks into an album." During the talk Richard D. James, already 44, seems optically unchanged. His long, ginger hair is tied together, one of his hazel eyes is stil moving - he can't focus it.
Two years ago, he got divorced, his young second wife, a russian art student, joins us in the interview and draws us. The day before, he frustated called off one of his, to begin with, rare photo shootings for an english music magazine, and swore that he would not be photographed by people he didn't know. But now he is totally relaxed, like someone who knows what he wants, and what not. "I do this interview, because I want to put my music back into the public. Not as much, as earlier, but still. The mainstream is full of people, that set false priorities. People, who are mostly interested in being famous. Or DJs, who want to make money instead of music. For me, what I do, the music, is most important." Richard D. James is funny and serious at the same time like just a few interview partners. Full of childish anticipation he tells of an upcoming lab visit with the german artist Florian Hecker at BMW, where he wants to use the analytic microphones for his compositions. And when he sees the recording app of the interviewer, he excitedly exclaims. "Now that's what I call a well-arranged interface. You can drop drunk onto the iPad and always hit the big, red recording button with your nose."
Like all Aphex Twin albums, Syro rather feels like a collection of tracks, than an album. Different to his labelmates Boards of Canada, James is not that interested in the album as an release format, it doesn't even fit with his way of working. Drukqs, for example, consisted of tracks, which were on an lost MP3-player and were rushed to release, simply for fear of piracy. But for that the twelve tracks on SYRO are very well sequenced. The opener "Minipops 67" doesn't sound as catchy as any other Aphex Twin track since "Windowlicker" thanks to it's simple beat, shuffle rhythm, a synth-pop melody and acid sounds, which are joined by effected vocals, in its second third. on "180db_" a jazzy drumkit, that reminds one of "IZ-US" from the COME TO DADDY EP, is joining rave signals and a spooky background melody. "s950tx16wasr10" is dominated by an always changing Amen break, and the tracks reach their closure with "Aisatsana" a programmed piano piece, similar to "Avril 14th" the one Erik Satie-like piece, that later was sampled by Kanye West and used in the Sofia Coppola move "Marie Antoinette". "Most of the albums tracks are mostly ones, that remind me of other things, that I've done. Not really new stuff. A while ago I also made some fucked-up or newer sounding music, but I wanted this album to be as accessible as possible." James says about the tracks ranging from 6 months old to 6 years old. Three years alone, he spent on building his new studio, which could remind someone of an well prepared synthesizer museum. Different to his previous album, which was mostly created on a computer, Aphex Twin usted a computer only to sequence things. For the sounds he used all kinds of new and old hardware, which often was responsible for naming the new tracks. "The problem with the new equipment is, that you keep changing the instruments you're working on." Richard D. James explains. "I constantly try new things. A few years ago, I tried putting all existing music software on my computer, but I gave that up." Nowadays I write new tracks, while I accustom myself to a new synthesizer. But I can't stand all these Soundcloud-streams or Youtube videos, where people upload music with machines they use for the first time. That's annoying! But I know I am good at what I do, and most of the time I come up with an interesting result from the beginning."
Richard D. James grew up in rural cornwall. As a child he prefers to prepare the strings of the family piano, rather then playing the keys, he messes with tape loops and gets his first synthesizer by the age of twelve, which he finds so bad, that he starts mucking around with it. Besides music from video games, he grows up without deliberately listening to electronic music. Later he organizes his own parties with friends near the beach, before having been to a rave or to a club himself. Aphex Twin releases his tracks under about half a dozen pseudonyms, of which Aphex Twin remains the most important one. Under this name alone, he covers a musical bandwith, for which other producers would use numerous pseudonyms: There is the hauntingly beautiful ambient of "Selected Ambient Works", the tinnitus-techno of "Ventolin", the combination of string instruments and breakbeats on "Girl/Boy Song" or the aforementioned piano music of "Avril 14th"
Even after his first releases in the early nineties, the radical sounding "Analogue Bubblebath EP" or the club hit "Digeridoo" and the first track collection released as a double LP "Selected Ambient Works 85-92", Richard D. James got the name of a "freaky prodigy", that sleeps his music and records on synthesizers he built himself and that drives a tank in his free time. The earliest tracks on SAW 85-92, he according to him, produced at the age of 14. When his Warp-debut "Selected Ambient Works II" was released in 1994, of which a book in the "33 1/3" series was written, he claimed in interviews that he created the droning sounds and bittersweet melodies of the untitled tracks in dreams, created by concious sleep withdrawal. The British music journalist Simon Reynolds used the word "hypnogogic" for the first time, which describes a neurologic state of conciousness with can come up while drifting either into or out of sleep and is predominantly of the visual kind.
The best of Aphex Twins tracks are always infused with extreme emotions, sometimes melancholic, sometimes euphoric, sometimes both in the same track. Maybe it is also the feeling for simple melodies, typical for extraordinary techno producers, that Aphex Twin made symbolic for the "break of electronic int the safe world of guitar music", in the middle of the nineties, how Martin Pesch from our magazine in 1996. The "Artificial Intelligence"-series on Warp, which also featured a Richard D. James release under the name "Polygon Window", Labels like Mille Plateux or Mego and artists like Panasonic, Oval, and Mike Paradinas helped with their "Electronic-Listening" albums in "discoursing music, which was Functioning for the party, the dancing or going crazy."
A few years later albums by Aphex Twin and other Warp Records artists like Autechre, Squarepusher the main drive for Thom Yorke, to change the sound of Radiohead with their album "Kid A". "It was refreshing, because the music was just made from structures and worked without the human voice. But still it was emotional as guitar music." Yorke said at the time.
On one hand this division between Indie- and dance culture in times, in which a genre is just a YouTube or Soundcloud link apart, seems awkward. On the other hand, these borders still exist, although less defined, today. There are plenty of listeners who enjoy the music of Moderat but don't know what exists on their lables "Monkeytown" or "50 weapons", those who ignore the bangers of a Jamie xx, but love the songs of their band, those who are fans of Caribou but don't know Daphni, and the other way around. As much as there are people who wait for a new Aphex Twin album, but have never heard of the about 50 tracks, that James released under pseudonyms like AFX or The Tuss, since the release of Drukqs.
Earlier this year another album by Richard D. James was released. This time under the name of Caustic Window, originally planned for release in 1994 on James' Rephlex label, but after test pressings were made, changed his mind.
The release surfaced thanks to a Kickstarter campaign of the Aphex Twin forum "We Are The Music Makers". After one of the few test pressings was put on ebay for over 10.000 euros, fans got together after striking a deal with Rephlex, to buy the record, create digital copies and then sell it again on ebay. (Later bought by Minecraft maker Magnus Notch Persson). This example shows the extreme fan culture, revolving around Aphex Twin.
"Normally I don't care about this stuff." he says. "To announce the album Warp posted a picture of me, that I folded. Then there was someone, who tried to find out what kind of scanner, what printer and what kind of paper I used for that. There are alot of anal wannabe-forensics. You imagine this kind of serial killer guy. But with the Kickstarter campaign I HAD to wipe a tear from my eye. It really touched me, how much people are interested about my music, that they care so much."
For James these celebrations are rare confrontations with "the world out there": "I live very reclusive, don't talk much and don't give out a lot of information. My music is very personal for me, and I don't want people to know what I thought about it or what I felt about it. But I think if you put that much detail into the music, as I do, people think of it as a puzzle to solve."
That Richard D. James returns after 13 years with a new album, might be because he is in a new part of his creativity and his life. But even when he, after all keeps making new music, he admits as being not as creative as he used to be. "I just need more time to make music." he says. "I think it has to do with getting older. I get bored easier, which is why I make the tracks more complicated, and then they get so complicated I forget the details." Nevertheless it won't get easier: "I still find it strange to be a musician, it feels so abstract. If I was a cabinet maker, I could grasp what I do much easier. As a craftsman you see progress. But what I do feels like nothing. Sometimes I feel as if I get better at doing nothing."
For years now, James lives in a cottage in Scotland, together with his wife Anastasia and his to kids, 5 and 8 years old, from the previous relationship. "Having kids almost means "game over" to the music." Richard D James claims. "Since the last album, I spent most of my time with my family. But it gets easier the older the kids get. Nowadays it happens, that I barely get my kids to play with me, even if I want to." That doesn't count for music making: "My five year old son has created six tracks with the software Renoise and I think they are better than my tracks. When he made his first track I was amazed but then he made 5 more and I thought 'oh shit!'. When my mother would hear the track should would think it's just noise. Put yesterday I played it for the people at Warp, and they said it remined them of this duo, SND. I would prefer if children would become craftsmen or roofers, learn something practical. Otherwise we sit at our laptops. And when our roof would break we look up and think "Shit, what do we do now?" But it's also nice to see something carried on from myself. With his five years he is not able to make a sandwich or make himself tea, but he can produce tracks!"
Aphex Twin is conviced, the best music is at the core. with this he speaks of breaking new grounds and new genres, but also his own music. He thinks his first productions and tracks he made afterwards, are still the most interesting ones. Now he announces a new wave of new records, that haven't been, if they will be released, haven't been done to this degree, in the nineties. "I have tons of upcoming stuff." he says "I want to follow up Syro with new releases rather quickly. One record that is in the pipeline is electromechanic stuff, that I made with MIDI robots, a Disklavier, and mechanic drums. Then there will be some dance-style singles and things from my back catalogue, that I am compiling at the moment. The problem is I lose control quickly. I do a playlist with tracks, that could fit together and when I listened to them for four hours, I get distracted and forget them again."
The reason why Richard D. James wants to release this huge amount of music right now, is the fact that he wants a mass-produced backup of his work. "I could put up my music on the internet, but I want them to be avaible on recording media, and it is a lot of work to just to it alone. I see them as a form of backup. That is the biggest advantage of a new release for me." he says honestly - and ends the talk. To follow up a short pause with "Let's see how many albums Warp can put out." which is followed by a scruffy laugh.