Aphex Twin aphex twin, warez king?

[ZoeB]

Before i [made music] i definitely thought about it a lot. did my research. took music leasons all through childhood.

 

Ah, well if you you took music lessons all through childhood, that probably counts towards your ten thousand hours. :) I started off tracking, so I learnt how to make sounds and how to play them as instruments at the same time. I worked out how to make interesting sound collages and rhythms long before I learnt any music theory. If you knew how to play an instrument before you started composing, I'm sure your first compositions would have been much better than mine! I didn't even realise I liked music until I made my own, so I definitely had no taste at all. I just sort of jumped right in and worked things out.

 

When people say hundreds of tracks I don't know how they do it. Thats a lot of tracks. Albums and albums worth of music. but i guess "track" can mean a lot of things

 

Yeah, I just find it helps to assign a unique number to each different composition I'm working on. The majority are unfinished, and some are only a few bars long. In terms of albums you'd actually want to sit down and listen to, I only have a few of those in the vault that I haven't released yet. The rest are definitely sub-Joyrex-tape quality. :)

 

I haven't made music in a while. A long while.

 

Hold on, why'd you stop? It sounds like you enjoyed it, given the level of gumption you went at it with.

[SR4]

im more or less the only person that digs my tunes. i can live with that.

[ZoeB]

im more or less the only person that digs my tunes. i can live with that.

 

That's fine, as long as that's what you want, and you're still always striving to improve them.

[SR4]

it would be nice if more people listened to them, but it would also be nice to have my own aeronautics empire and heavy weapons caches stored in my own private decommissioned nuclear silos. But I can take what i can get. :)

[ZoeB]

it would be nice if more people listened to them

 

Link..? I gave up after the latest few pages of Your Latest Creations... I'm guessing they're in there somewhere? You may want to link to your Bandcamp / Soundcloud / whatever page from your profile page...

[SR4]

lol

 

 

http://soundcloud.com/user6105815

 

 

knock yourself out?

[ZoeB]

lol

 

http://soundcloud.com/user6105815

 

knock yourself out?

 

Yay, thanks! ^.^ Me likey!

[kinski]

im more or less the only person that digs my tunes. i can live with that.

 

dont worry, one day you, me and other anonymous musicians will rule the world or at least move on with life.

[marf]

i haven't stopped. (its still all i care about really). im always learning. im reading, currently,

Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques, and Controls. Im learning some programs. Ive realized programming software is not for me. Like max etc. Im not a programmer. Ive wasted years on the technical stuff , shooting above my head. Lost track of why I love music , and what makes a good musician... I still have more reading to do. Im thinking of buying a macbook air. I hang out with people that actually play instruments. Its hard to explain the music I like. If you want a pdf of the Allen strange book PM me. Its excellent

[ZoeB]

i haven't stopped. (its still all i care about really). im always learning. im reading, currently,

Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques, and Controls. Im learning some programs. Ive realized programming software is not for me. Like max etc. Im not a programmer. Ive wasted years on the technical stuff , shooting above my head. Lost track of why I love music , and what makes a good musician... I still have more reading to do. Im thinking of buying a macbook air. I hang out with people that actually play instruments. Its hard to explain the music I like. If you want a pdf of the Allen strange book PM me. Its excellent

 

Hey, thanks for the kind offer! I'll wait until I can hunt down a copy of the tangible book though, thank you. I've accumulated a scary amount of books to "some day" read, but every time I try reading something, I get far too quickly frustrated that I'm not writing instead, or making music right then... I really should work on that, so that I can focus more on long term creativity. But yeah, that book is on my list, I've heard good things about it.

 

And yeah, if programming isn't your thing, you needn't force yourself into it. Pianists don't take up woodwork. If you're writing music for non-musicians to listen to, they neither know nor care if you're using presets, let alone if you built a synthesiser with your bare hands!

[marf]

i think you have the best attitude. just get on with it. ive prepared so much . im afraid to start

[ZoeB]

i think you have the best attitude. just get on with it. ive prepared so much . im afraid to start

 

Thanks! May I ask why you're afraid to start? You needn't be afraid that you'll write something bad. You will, of course, but you'll also write something good, and you only need to publicly release the latter. This kind of ties into what I was talking about regarding branding and trust. I got a few of those B12 Records Archive releases, and realised that Electro-Soma's selection was exactly the tracks I liked anyway. A big part of being a musician or record label (and especially both) is not just creating things, but being your own editor and working out which of those things are fit for public consumption. This is probably one of the underappreciated services Warp and other labels provide, not just finding the best artists of a certain style or mindset, but working out which are their best tracks too. It could just be me, but I suspect Rephlex isn't quite so discriminating, and the artists' personal collections of their own music have even more that's not yet ready for public consumption. Or, to put it another way, "I've got six albums completed." (Having said that, I love Melodies From Mars, but I'm not sure if that's because it's public-worthy or I've been listening to his work too much.)

 

Most of making things consists of getting on with it when you don't want to; rewriting existing work until it's so good that the original version seems terrible by comparison; and ruthlessly editing your work. Phrases like "don't be afraid to kill your babies," "performance, feedback, revision" and "the wit of the staircase" are relevant. You don't have to be always awesome, you just have to be always making things, weeding out the worst bits, and refining what's left. So, rather unsurprisingly, the secret to success is hard work. ;) Does any of that help at all, or am I just rambling?

[kinski]

monolith's welcome's tracklist was had-picked by rephlex i read somewhere in the press release.

so were rustie's sunburst and autechre's debut, by warp.

 

talk about quality control.

 

i have no idea what's going on in this thread anymore, though.

[ZoeB]

monolith's welcome's tracklist was had-picked by rephlex i read somewhere in the press release.

so were rustie's sunburst and autechre's debut, by warp.

 

talk about quality control.

 

Yes, that's my point. Warp aren't co-owned by either of Autechre's members, so they can be objective and lend a fresh ear, so they're likely to have picked better tracks for Incunabula than Autechre themselves might have done. (Although having said that, I prefer some of the Surfing On Sine Waves re-release's bonus tracks to some of the originals, so either I have strange taste or sometimes they don't always pick the absolutely best tracks. Maybe it had more to do with a smooth running order, which is another issue that's easy to overlook...)

 

i have no idea what's going on in this thread anymore, though.

 

I'm trying to give someone some helpful advice through a natural progression of a conversation. I could instead rigidly adhere to each thread's topic if everyone else considers that more important...

[Macca]

i think you have the best attitude. just get on with it. ive prepared so much . im afraid to start

 

Thanks! May I ask why you're afraid to start? You needn't be afraid that you'll write something bad. You will, of course, but you'll also write something good, and you only need to publicly release the latter. This kind of ties into what I was talking about regarding branding and trust. I got a few of those B12 Records Archive releases, and realised that Electro-Soma's selection was exactly the tracks I liked anyway. A big part of being a musician or record label (and especially both) is not just creating things, but being your own editor and working out which of those things are fit for public consumption. This is probably one of the underappreciated services Warp and other labels provide, not just finding the best artists of a certain style or mindset, but working out which are their best tracks too. It could just be me, but I suspect Rephlex isn't quite so discriminating, and the artists' personal collections of their own music have even more that's not yet ready for public consumption. Or, to put it another way, "I've got six albums completed." (Having said that, I love Melodies From Mars, but I'm not sure if that's because it's public-worthy or I've been listening to his work too much.)

 

quite the opposite, Grant and Rich generally choose exactly what tracks go on what releases, few rephlex artists choose the tracks for their actual release. This adds to the even longer timeframe of releases when you have to get these two to agree on exactly what tracks should go (given it is their label, it's pretty reasonable for them to be having the final word on what goes where for most.)

[ZoeB]

quite the opposite, Grant and Rich generally choose exactly what tracks go on what releases, few rephlex artists choose the tracks for their actual release. This adds to the even longer timeframe of releases when you have to get these two to agree on exactly what tracks should go (given it is their label, it's pretty reasonable for them to be having the final word on what goes where for most.)

 

Yes, but when it comes to Rich's own music, who says which tracks get released then? With those Analogue Bubblebaths, it seems odd sometimes which tracks were released and which weren't, or even which whole EPs were and weren't. For instance, AB5 sounds much better than AB4 to my ears, and if this is a generally held opinion, then it seems like an odd choice for only the latter to be released. If Rich himself got to choose them, maybe he was too close to be objective is my only point. Obviously when Grant and him are releasing other people's music, they can be a lot more objective, hence I'm looking forward to getting my copy of Welcome soon. :D

[Guest afekz]

At first, I thought it was just a joke edit, but a quick search proved otherwise.

 

A group of like-minded computer software crackers, the Phrozen Crew (PAC) was created back in 1993 by Aphex Twin.

 

1993 seems pretty early for someone to be fanboying the Aphex name. What do you think?

 

What an odd thread to come across. *smile*

 

I'm afraid it was actually a bit of fanboyism - SAW I had a major impact on me as a young, barely teenager. (And it was PC for Phrozen Crew, never PAC, never Forest Crew, etc - I don't know how that story got started.)

 

Greg from Canada (though oddly enough also born in South Africa) was an artist with iCE and was never associated with Phrozen Crew, Cartel, WaR or any other warez/phreaking (e.g. Scavenger's Dialer) matters. After we had had a few phone conversations, he ended up changing his handle to "Aphid Twix" to help avoid confusion.

 

afx was the shortened handle I used on efnet #hack/#phreak, for obvious reasons. I suspect that that was why Greg did the greet to "Afx (in SA)".

 

Anyway, simply put: the Aphex Twin of PC, WaR, Cartel, NakedTruth and whatever various hacking/phreaking/warez progs/mags etc isn't *the* Richard D James.

 

I can understand how it coulda been kinda cool though, if it had been =)

[chaosmachine]

neat. welcome to watmm :)

[lumpenprol]

Liar, I know in my heart it was Richard D James

 

 

 

 

(lol)

[kinski]

what if someone tipped richard fbi is after his 90s hacker crimes and now he's going around saying it's not him before fact mag picks up on the story???? WHAT IF GIES