9/2/2023 0 Comments Bleep recordsAnd when I’m listening to tracks like ‘Alberto Balsalm’ or ‘Schottkey 7th Path’ I’m sometimes aware that, no matter how fleeting the feeling, I’m having emotional states I’ve undergone described back to me tonally, even though I would struggle to define them verbally myself. In the same way that great writers drive themselves half insane trying to think of original ways of expressing universal experiences while constantly avoiding cliche, great musicians often strive to do something similar. However, there is one thing I’ve been keeping my fingers crossed for this whole time and that was a re-engagement with the complex, sincere and weirdly emotional core of his music as expressed via an inimitable strain of (Martian) melodicism for the ‘tunes’ to make themselves felt once more. He has steered me right way more often than wrong, even if I don’t always initially realise it. So, I try to practise being a ‘good fan’ I keep my expectations of what I feel he should be doing to a minimum, and my ears wide open. Once you get past the idea of blotter chewing acid overwhelm, berserkly foment-filtered analogue synths and intricately, infinitely shifting pointillistically programmed breaks forming a bank of Aphexian signifiers, it’s actually impossible to single out much in his back catalogue that sounds precisely like this. It’s funny how some electronic music fans were delighted by the “return to form” signified by the Collapse EP – it was a view I no doubt initially shared – as the more you listen, the less clear it is where we’re supposed to have returned to. But it feels almost churlish to bring this up as nearly everything else he’s done since Syro in 2014 has been the exploration of a new or newish avenue, albeit with some kind of through line from his incredibly varied past. It doesn’t matter how many times I listen to it, it all but evaporates the second I lift the needle from the vinyl, and its parallel release with the vital, ear-boggling Soundcloud Dump – the product of a racing mind clearly caught in a feedback loop with an audience via live performances and DJ sets – didn’t help matters. It seemed like these self-imposed boundaries of wrangling with antiquated, notoriously difficult to use kit, were possibly constructed out of boredom and aimless tinkering as much out of the desire to set himself a genuine challenge. It’s true that one of his ‘post-return’ releases, the Cheetah EP (2016), has been slow to reveal its worth to me I have the sensation that this was an inwards-looking project, created with his back turned to us, his audience, and this feeling is hard to shift. (That time, initially, unseating some fans of rave and techno, who were howling for more of the breakbeat acid they’d already come to expect from the Analog Bubblebath series.) The criticism from people who confidently feel they know better – that he has somehow fumbled the ball – has plagued him since the release of his first album, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 on Apollo in 1992. This, of course, has always been one of his long term strengths – no matter how many folk it has frustrated in the short term – he has an utter inability to give people what they expect or feel they need at any given time. How can there be when we’re talking about the artist who made the tweaking Cornish hardcore acid of Caustic Window’s ‘Humanoid Must Not Escape’ the vaporous song of the stones ‘Blue Calx’ the boinging gary-addled oi-oi lunacy of Power Pill’s ‘Pac Man’ the 90s-terminating broken R&B of ‘Windowlicker’ the solemn but childlike clifftop processional of ‘Logan Rock Witch’ the crushing tinnitus-inducing industrial techno of ‘Ventolin’ the heartstring-yanking piano minimalism of ‘Aisatsana ’ the sophisticated liquid funk of ‘Minipops 67 ’. Mention his name to a selection of music fans over a period of time and the sounds/sensations triggered immediately, automatically, synaesthetically by nominative association will cover a multitude of affects and vibes, simply because there is no definable RDJ sound. This is to the extent that serious consensus on what it is exactly that he does is impossible to reach. One of the core strengths of Richard D James as a producer is that he has clearly been many things to many people over the previous three decades. Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / in a room7 F760 by Aphex Twin
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