CLASSIC ALBUM REVIEW :::::: APHEX TWIN - RICHARD D JAMES

Current mood: WOO BAD
Category: WOO BAD Music

This is madness, I cried, regretting ever turning the radio on This isn't fucking music! This is just stu- and then from complete chaos of whips and bangs, the essence of it broke clean. Cornbib made sense. And from that point on I've never thought about music in quite the same way again...

I'm talking about the first time I heard a track from The Aphex Twins – Richard D James LP.

Before this fine day, I'd heard a lot about the Aphex Twin: I'd heard he was some kind of bearded freak from the West Country who made interesting Rave music. That he owned a tank. That he made his own instruments – at least these were the rumours curried by the NME and at the time the NME was about the only paper tool available to expand ones musical horizons.

Yes boss, it's hard to believe, but it's not so long ago (as all us old gits know) that the internet didn't exist in any meaningful way. In fact in 1997 in an old fort on the very edge of a cliff on the south western most tip of Wales, it didn't exist at all...

There was no myspace, emule, itunes, internet radio or youtube. To hear new stuff you relied on John Peel, Steve Lamaq, the NME and well educated friends.

So, that particular night I was listening to Steve Lamaqs Evening Session and fascinated as I was by what I'd heard, I repaired to London a few weeks later, bought the album and was soon entranced....

Richard D James is a ground breaking LP in many different ways.

For a start, it's one of the first 'dance' records that didn't rely on sequencers. indeed, up until then, with few exceptions, electronic music (short of the real abstract end of things) was regimented and religiously rhythmic - It was all 4/4 straight beats. It was Orbital and Underworld and 101 hands in the air imitations.

Richard D James on the other hand is grating, jagged, but melodic and sublimely beautiful. It's casual yet religiously strict and clever. It has feel and liquidity, but liquidity that swings between crystal clean melodic and raw sewage effluent baad! It's not a cakewalk: Parts are difficult and aggressive, random and disjointed. But it's a piece of competent and groundbreaking music that has been copied so many times since, it's more or less formed it's own genre..

So influential has this LP been that since it's release, people like Thom Yorke have gone on about Aphex Twin and Autechre defining this last musical epoch far better than Radiohead ever did. Yorke goes as far to say that LPs like OK Computer are irrelevant, that it won't be remembered, but Richard D will. (Hence Kid A and those other albums where Thom and the boys tried to get a piece of the Warp action)

Well for once, I agree with the Oxford miserablists 100%. Like the Velvet Undergrounds first album, Richard D James will be referred to time and time again. And in 40 years, people will laugh at how the idiots of the day didn't buy it, about how it peaked at number whatever in the charts, about how obvious it was that it was great from day 1.

So if you've not heard it, don't be caught in numpty land, go find it and be there now!

Currently listening : Richard D. James Album By Aphex Twin Release date: By 28 January, 1997

05:14 - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

	stephen	bravo. it is probably aphex twin's most accessible album, and i mean that to be in no way condescending. it is the sound of an artist at the top of their game effortlessly creating a modern masterpiece. yes, it has some difficult (at first listen) parts, but as one becomes, shall we say, educated in this genre(?) it is apparent that this is beautiful chaos, something found par excellence on 'girl/boy song'. you are bang on in stating its importance in doing away with the 4/4 elements of dance music, but more than that this album is an emotional listening experience; comparable with the feelings stirred when listening to the classics (and i don't mean that in a nevermind/led zeppelin III/sgt pepper sense). it is soul-stirring stuff. Posted by stephen on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at 08:27 [Remove] [Reply to this]

PAUL GIOVANNI 3RD : AKA : PIOUS THE UNPOPULAR

Yep agree with everything you say. It definately has soul alongside it's clever randominity...It also sounds so effortless - like you say: A man at the top of his game... Posted by PAUL GIOVANNI 3RD : AKA : PIOUS THE UNPOPULAR on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at 08:37 [Remove] [Reply to this]