"A decade of Drukqs" Drowned In Sound article

[Guest sirch]

fucking fatboy slim!, lol, and the chemical brother's... holy lol

 

[Adieu]

Yeah Ziggomatic v17 is a creation of a human being that has total control of the entire audio output of a composition. Everything is perfect.

 

 

I've actually always thought the second time the original line comes in it sounded a bit forced. Other than that it is an amazing song.

[beerwolf]

Great album which only gets better with time. Love it now more than ever.

[sneaksta303]

Still my favorite album of all time, so far.

 

Great album which only gets better with time. Love it now more than ever.

[Berk]

My favourite part of Avril 14th is the outro, song is like a pop version of Erik Satie's work, brilliant.

[Suffocate Peon]

Hy A Scullyas Lyf A Dhagrow has always been my favourite piano track from drukqs.

 

I love how varied drukqs is, how Mt. Saint Michael coming after avril 14th is designed to be as relentless as possible. Bbydhyonchord after Gwely Mernans is also pretty perfect. He doesn't really make perfectly sequenced albums, they always feel like a collection of stand alone tracks, none more so than ICBYD, druqks is the same. It makes me think the only thing preventing him from releasing a new album is that he wants the music on it to be something new (and something timeless and artistic) from him as the piano tracks were, rather it being because he can't find a way fit all these different tracks together on one disc. (he says in one interview that they were his first attempts and that he likes to release stuff early, which I thought was quite interesting...Iittle things like the hand written track titles on the back of the cd make it seem like the music is deeply personal to him, and that it's never about sharing a polished product). I'd love it if he just took all kinds of tracks from different periods and threw them altogether. Listening to drukqs when unfamiliar with electronic music of any kind was so trans-formative for me that I barely remember any of it. There were moments where it clicked but it was gradually over time. I do remember listening to Mt. Saint Michael loud several times and being amazed but I didn't know why. Avril 14th was the first track I could understand but I just thought it was funny in some way, like it was too sweet.

[awesomeperson]

Pretty good album, it's an alright album, could be worse.

[Berk]

Yeah, it's quite good actually

[awepittance]

OENIS <-- -my new band name

[kinski]

i find it weird that after a decade of ignoring drukqs, all of a sudden there's such a strong crowd claiming to love it (and not even here, but overall) on it's anniversary. i was always under the impression that nobody cared about it because of the initial let down.

[perunamuusi]

i find it weird that after a decade of ignoring drukqs, all of a sudden there's such a strong crowd claiming to love it (and not even here, but overall) on it's anniversary. i was always under the impression that nobody cared about it because of the initial let down.

 

When the huge european ships first approached the early native Americans, it was such an ‘impossible’ vision in their reality that their highly filtered perceptions couldn’t register what was happening, and they literally failed to ‘see’ the ships. Only a handful of natives - the shamans and tribal elders or whatever could see the approaching ships. That's kind of what it was like when drukqs came out. Even an extremely advanced consciousness such as myself could only half hear drukqs in 2001.

[Tessier Ashpool]

Still my favorite album of all time, so far.

 

Great album which only gets better with time. Love it now more than ever.

[sheatheman]

like this dude?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE-g0mWbxlE

He plays it pretty well, misses a few notes and a bit of the syncopation, but the song is much springier and he is playing it like a chopin etude. It's not impossible to play either. Richard probably didn't use any midi sequencing at all. It's just one of his many media pranks.

 

I pretty much discovered all of aphex twin after it was released, because I lived in a cultural wasteland, so drukqs still sounds completely fresh to me and it was never a letdown at all. I'm not one of these people who were jamming to come to daddy in middle school.

[phudoshin]

Does anyone not think the the percussion is a bit on the "tinny" side...? The beat structure is great across drukQs but the hihats, snares etc sound a little bit flat/cheap...

 

Compared to analrod/tuss tracks which are much more warm and vibrant in the drums department...

 

Hey i like the album a lot but prefer hearing the tracks at his DJ sets than off the album.

 

alos Go Plastic that year blew me a away much more than drukqs.

 

jusayin

[KovalainenFanBoy]

I always loved this album, since day 1. It was actually one of the albums that introduced me to this kind of music. I've been listening to it at least twice every few months since it was released and still sounds just as good. Love it.

[Redruth]

avril 14th is obviously best performed as a piece for four hands or two pianos.

hmmmmmmmmmmm, i wonder why?

[xyrofen]

Thank you for your cooperation, bye.

[marf]

a grower for me. i was a little down at first. but i always love aphex's music. what was before drukqs? I guess i expected an extension of the previous stuff. windowlicker. hip hop influence but it was an entire different direction.

[skotosa]

Yeah Ziggomatic v17 is a creation of a human being that has total control of the entire audio output of a composition. Everything is perfect.

 

Thank you, you are far too kind :)

[awepittance]

i find it weird that after a decade of ignoring drukqs, all of a sudden there's such a strong crowd claiming to love it (and not even here, but overall) on it's anniversary. i was always under the impression that nobody cared about it because of the initial let down.

 

its for the same reason that evry hipster and his mom now talks about how much they love Throbbing Gristle an Coil, over time all obscure good things get cannibalized by the mainstream or more of the mainstream

[YEK]

i love drukqs. it's what i would call a "good album". who here can play avril 14th on piano? i can at least play it until it goes minor at which point i kind of have to slow down.

 

I was under the impression the full piece is actually impossible to play, because it was composed using a midi sequencer?

 

yes, Richard said before that it was impossible to play by hand. still some people have said that they can play it. twats.

like this dude?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE-g0mWbxlE

 

Mostly right, but towards the end hes missing a few notes. All the ones he hits are correct, he just didn't hit all of them. Its just impossible to hit them all at once with only 2 hands.

 

 

i have the correct sheet music and i have been able to hit all the notes in the past, it comes down to memorization and fast reflexes

but yeah, probably was played by midi and not rdj's hands.

 

i love drukqs. it's what i would call a "good album". who here can play avril 14th on piano? i can at least play it until it goes minor at which point i kind of have to slow down.

 

I was under the impression the full piece is actually impossible to play, because it was composed using a midi sequencer?

 

yes, Richard said before that it was impossible to play by hand. still some people have said that they can play it. twats.

like this dude?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE-g0mWbxlE

 

Mostly right, but towards the end hes missing a few notes. All the ones he hits are correct, he just didn't hit all of them. Its just impossible to hit them all at once with only 2 hands.

 

 

i have the correct sheet music and i have been able to hit all the notes in the past, it comes down to memorization and fast rephlexes

but yeah, probably was played by midi and not rdj's hands.

 

 

edit; rephlexes

[xyrofen]

Yeah Ziggomatic v17 is a creation of a human being that has total control of the entire audio output of a composition. Everything is perfect.

 

Thank you, you are far too kind :)

lol

[Claudius t Ansuulim]

I will never forgive Rolling Stone for giving both Drukqs and Go Plastic 1 star while the same reviewer in the same issue gave Wilson Pickett glowing reviews. I've never trusted their music "journalism" since then.

[awesomeperson]

The pitchfork reviews made me question reality.

 

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/225-drukqs/

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7447-go-plastic/

 

This one is good, then again it's Aphex's best work to date.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/223-selected-ambient-works-85-92/

[joshuatxuk]

I will never forgive Rolling Stone for giving both Drukqs and Go Plastic 1 star while the same reviewer in the same issue gave Wilson Pickett glowing reviews. I've never trusted their music "journalism" since then.

 

Seriously, fuck Rolling Stone, it's been payola driven bias horseshit since the mid-70s

 

The pitchfork reviews made me question reality.

 

http://pitchfork.com...ums/225-drukqs/

http://pitchfork.com...447-go-plastic/

 

This one is good, then again it's Aphex's best work to date.

http://pitchfork.com...nt-works-85-92/

 

Pfork has become far more friendly to electronic music and ironically name-check AFX and other WARP luminaries as benchmarks in new reviews all the time now. I've begun to notice I can't access their late 90s era 8+ reviews of Monkey Mafia, Chemical Brothers, Bentley Rhythm Ace anymore.