Short Forgotten Produk

The Soundcloud page belonging to user18081971 is widely recognised as belonging to Richard D. James, Aphex Twin. Every now and then he uploads previously unreleased material to it, presumably when recordings re- appear in front of him when looking through folders/ DATs/ tapes while searching for something else. Back in July this one was uploaded...

Short Forgotten Produk Trk Omc

Two minutes of fuzzed bass, a lazy drumbeat and some almost jazzy synth chords and keys. Just before the minute another synth part appears and shifts it into different territory before disappearing again and everything stripping back for the last thirty seconds, leaving just the bass. According to Richard  it was 'as promised to people that pm'd me. made approx 2006- 07'. It's not much more than a sketch, an idea slightly fleshed out, short and forgotten until now, but the AFX magic is located within it. 

If you want a further reminder of Richard D. James' ability to create transcendental music earlier this year he released an EP led by the track Black Box Recorder 21f, four minutes of electronic alchemy, dedicated to his parents both of whom he has lost in recent years, his dad in 2020 and his mum in 2022. 

Forty Minutes Of Aphex Twin

A few weeks ago I thought I'd do a mix of Aphex Twin tracks for this Sunday series of half hour mixes and then suddenly felt quite daunted by it- by the sheer range, breadth and depth of his back catalogue- and shelved it. Recently, feeling a little more confident about it, I dove in and just stitched together the Aphex Twin tracks that I'd reach for if I wanted to hear some of the inner workings of the mind of Richard D. James, pulled gravitationally towards the less nosebleed stuff and more towards the more ambient/ dreamy/ chilled output. There are umpteen potential further Aphex Twin mixes lurking in my head/ on my hard drive but for the moment this one will have to do- since throwing it together I've listened to it several times and it works much better than I expected it to. 

Forty Minutes Of Aphex Twin

• #19 aka Stone In Focus
• 34 Ibiza Spliff
• On
• Alberto Balsam
• Delphium
• Analogue Bubblebath
• Avril 14th
• Avril 14th Reversed

Track 19/ #19 aka Stone In Focus is from 1994's Selected Ambient Works II, the vinyl only, it was omitted from the CD releases for lack of running time (it's over ten minutes long), a slow moving ambient recording, three chords in very minimal style. It sounds something like the universe shifting around slightly. Planets and stars in super slow orbit. Dust forming over eons. 

34 Ibiza Spliff is from the Soundcloud page belonging to user18081971, widely recognised as Aphex Twin's unreleased tracks dump, a treasure trove of recordings. On came out on Warp in November 1993 and had a video directed by Jarvis Cocker and filmed in West Kirby, Wirral. 

Alberto Balsam is from the third Aphex Twin album, ...I Care Because You Do, released in 1995, a record that combines analogue ambient, Philip Glass inspired minimalism and brain mashing techno. 

Delphium is from Selected Ambient Works 85- 92, the legendary 1992 album made up of tracks Richard James did using homemade synths and drum machines and recorded onto cassette, full of moments of subtle, melodic, organic, acid house/ dance music/ IDM. 

Analogue Bubblebath was The Aphex Twin's debut, out on Mighty Force in September 1991. The record's Wikipedia page says 'it's release has been described as a key event in the history of dance music' and that's putting it mildly. 

Avril 14th is a Satie- esque minimalist piano track from 2001's Druqks. It has been streamed hundreds of millions of times, been used in films and sampled by Kanye West.

Avril 14th Reversed was officially unreleased until 2018 when James dropped it onto his online store. The mp3 comes with this information- 'reversed music not audio [tapedel] played and programmed modified yamaha disklavia pro, recorded to Nagra IVS 5_' which is a very technical and unromantic description of something very beautiful indeed. 

User Music

It's been nearly a year since Aphex Twin made an appearance round the Bagging Area way and a Friday in February seems as good a time as any to post some customary, casual Richard D. James brilliance. Richard has a Soundcloud page under the name user18711971 which he uses as a track dump, sporadically uploading previously unreleased music/ magic from his presumably enormous collection of cassettes and hard drives. 

Tha2 [world scam mix] is a moody, low tech thumper full of (as a Reddit user has it) 'pseudo- transcendent beats'. Mournful synth chords and acidic squiggles playing off against each and with each other over a distorted kick drum. I don't know why it's called the world scam mix and frankly I think I'd rather not. 

Tha2 [world scam mix]

The title of 34 ibiza spliff would seem to be self- explanatory. The music is otherworldly. 

34 ibiza spliff

Lost Tracks

There were various posts running through my head for the final day of 2020 but in the end what does it matter? The year has concluded in sadly typical style with a day of rising Covid cases, tiering announcements and Brexit debacles. At this point, the year could only really reach a suitable climax if Godzilla and a plague of giant mutant locusts riding an asteroid crash landed in Piccadilly Gardens, proclaiming themselves the vanguard of an invading alien army, ready to enslave us all. 

There doesn't seem to be much to look forward to in the immediate weeks of 2021 but by this point it's all we can do to keep on trudging on, wrap up against the cold and wait for it to pass. Lockdown 1 started in March, ten months ago, which seems a long time ago now in some ways. The wheel keeps turning. It will eventually be the spring. I hope you see in the new year in whatever way you can tonight, thanks to everyone who comes here regularly and irregularly, and let's raise a glass to putting this year behind us, as much as we can. Happy new year to you all, when it comes. 

Aphex Twin still has a Soundcloud page up under the name User18081971, a dump for a multitude of lost tracks, unreleased gems, demo experiments and odd and ends. This one, 34 ibiza spliff, isn't there anymore and I don't seem to have an mp3 of it but it is a minor masterpiece, on the face of it just a lazy beat and some synth chords but it is much more than that. The very slight changes in the volume on the drums, the amount of reverb and the pauses between the notes, the space between the different elements, are all the touches of a master craftsman. 

Also from the Soundcloud page is this, cut from similar cloth- a rhythm track and some melodies that sound downbeat at first but end up feeling more positive.

lost track [dat 24] icbyd

There's all sorts of freebies in there- I can recommend 8 utopia, bimbongo2 and his Joni Mitchell sample track titled parking lot and the two minute sketch called 7 summer festival love in the country. Some of them sound like pieces he started, worked on for half an hour and then saved and forgot about. Some sound like they could have been poured over for ages and then abandoned when a new idea came along. Impossible to tell but all fascinating and typically streets ahead of most of the rest of the field. 

a12.ab3 .215061

 

Soundcloud user18081971, Aphex Twin by another name, has posted another long lost track pulled from an old cassette. The track, catchily titled a12.ab3 .215061 is a superb piece of driving, fizzing acid recorded at some point around 1990. This piece of music, three decades old and not sounding at all like it, is four and a half minutes of buzzing 303 bassline, rattling snares and a topline that'll frazzle your head a little. There's a lovely breakdown part at two and a half minutes with a little tick tock melody playing, then everything else drops out for a while and then comes back in for the last minute with some loopy shit going on at the four minute mark. Proper lost in the strobe and dry ice of the backroom of a club stuff, wondering where all your friends have gone but deciding it doesn't matter, just stay near the speakers, it'll all be fine. The only problem with a12.ab3 .215061 is it's too short and ends abruptly, apparently because the tape ran out. It's on user18081971's Soundcloud page as a free download. 

Not entirely unrelated but written a century before is this by Erik Satie, Gymnopedie No. 1, one of Satie's modernist, minimalist piano pieces. As this was playing on the computer on Monday morning my daughter passed by and said, 'this sounds sad'. And it does but it's very nice too. 

I'm no expert on Satie. I need to explore further. Aphex Twin's 2001 album Druqks contained some Satie style piano pieces, interludes among some manic, rapid fire drum 'n' bass/ breakbeat music. Druqks was released after Richard D James left an mp3 player on an airplane and was concerned the unreleased music on it would be leaked and bootlegged. Alternatively, James had a load of music sitting on his hard drive and wanted out of his contract with Warp. Either way it made for a disjointed album, one which requires some dedication on the part of the listener (or as we'd do now, the ability to rip it yourself and pull out the ones you like into a playlist or a mix CD of your own- probably what he intended all along. I'm sure Satie would approve too). 

Avril 14th

Avril 14th is a beautiful piano piece by Aphex Twin. It was originally released on his 2001 Drukqs album, a double album only released after Aphex left an mp3 player on a plane and was worried that they'd be discovered and bootlegged. There are several other versions of Avril 14th, some of which surfaced at a Soundcloud page belonging to user18081971 (a pseudonym for Ahex Twin/ Richard D James). This one is gorgeous, the use of reverb and delay creating a completely self contained world.

Avril 14th (altdelay)

User18081971 uploaded some new songs last week including two slow, haunting synth pieces. The post was dedicated to his father who had recently passed away along with this, a piece of music called qu 1.



This one too, s8v1 [brooklyn] Both are still available to download. The rest of user18081971's free track archive is here.

Avril

I missed these back in the middle of December, Aphex Twin dropping more previously unreleased tracks onto his Soundcloud page (on the page he goes under the name user18081971 but it's widely accepted to be Richard D James). These two are particularly good, a pair of alternative versions of his piano track Avril 14th, both beautiful and prime examples of his talent. Both are also available as free downloads. A way to improve your day in just five minutes.

This one is Avril 14th with the notes played backwards and plenty of reverb.



And this one is Avril altdelay, a version with even more reverb and delay.