Aphex Twin Stephen James Knight - Everyone Is Beautiful To Someone

[Guest EDGEY]

Not a "new" release, but I never posted about it here. So it's new to you...

 

http://www.myspace.com/sjknight

http://www.thoughtbludgeon.com

http://www.reducedphat.com

http://www.stephenjamesknight.com

 

Here's some reviews:

Review: Adnoiseam

Excellent debut full length album by Edgey (under his real name). Flowing melodic electronica, slightly syncopated rhythms, delicate tones and mid-tempo beats result in a beautiful, head-nodding and encompassing album. The whole thing ends with two bonus tracks, noisier and more jungley, but, on average, the whole thing would fit well next to the Merck and N5md catalog. Congratulations to Reduced Phat and Stephen Knight / Edgey for this mesmerizing album."

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Review: Slugmag

Stephen James Knight = Edgey violence + emotion

With Edgey, the side project of Stephen James Knight, you get torn up beats where they get mashed into a bloody pulp. To contrast, the latest project of Knights takes a visceral tone with intelligible melodies to ride the wave of subtle percussion in eleven compelling tracks. Headphones are a necessity to feel the impact of tracks like lighter days and Good Star while Glass Craft and Good Star melt into the background of what you see when your eyes are closed. Edgey spent two years digging into his emotive core to pull out this dreamy tour de force and his effort really shows. To make sure you dont get too comfortable listening to Everyone is Beautiful Knight throws in two Edgey remixes showing off how different the two projects are. This very personal outtake abandons the madness of Hyde and reveals his pleasing Dr. Jekyll.

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Review: Brainwashed

It would be a crime to overlook the Aphex Twin influence on Knights work on Everyone is Beautiful... and as the record gets going it honestly sounds like outtakes from Selected Ambient Works Volume 1 for a while. While a lot of people ape the Aphex sound, most try for the sputtering drill n bass of later era material, choosing to skim past the subtle earlier sound. Of course Knight has his own agenda and his own sound in the record somewhere, it just takes a few tracks for the album to actually get there. Once it does, Knights keen sense of space takes over and while his melodies tinker around without jumping out of the speakers: they are balanced nicely with manipulated samples and a laid-back rhythm section.

 

For an album released in 2005, Everyone is Beautiful to Someone works with an almost alarming lack of computer trickery and DSP wank-off. Its actually nice to hear a record in this style that isnt obviously a collection of virtual experiments for the sake of making things sound fucked up. Knight knows how far to push the envelope of sound design without letting the sounds take interest away from the compositions. This is, after all, an emotional journey of sorts and it works by building up and breaking down in predictable ways.

 

Sometimes the most affecting music is that which plays strictly by the time-honored rulesthey dont get to be rules otherwiseand this record is a lot like that. Its not an album that will set new standards or light up the faces of those looking for a quick breakcore fix of the late-breaking, just-released-in-beta-yesterday plug-ins, but its a nice way to see the softer side of a talented composer whose work is just starting to speak for itself.

 

All of my early to mid 1990s ambient techno feels dated now because Ive heard those albums dozens if not hundreds of times. Stephen James Knight has the antidote to that situationa record that sounds like it could have been produced in 1994, but that is absolutely as enjoyable today as it would have been then. As the record closes up with some frenetically programmed breaks, it leads into a pair of bonus Edgey tracks that change everything up and remind me whos behind the whole thing in the first place.

[Guest tht! tne]

congs

[Guest EDGEY]

congs