Aphex Twin Drugs & electronic music (culture)

[tokn]

Yeah I always wanted to create this topic, but I always told myself to wait... so here it is and I hope there is room on this great forum for this topic.

 

For me personally, electronic music and drugs were always associated with each other. I'm not talking about club culture - that would be to obvious. When I started to listen to good music - early Pink Floyd in my case - I also started enjoying weed. When I discovered electronic music like Aphex Twin or Clark I continued smoking weed and found out about psychedelic drugs, mostly acid. Whenever I produced electronic music I was at least high on weed, in the last years it even took some psychedelic afterglow (when the effects of the drug go away, but you feel very rewarded and focussed and happy) to motivate me to start a serious track. When I started enjoying electro/acoustic or more complex, ambient stuff I was in a phase doing lots of ketamine.

 

So... I've taken plenty of stuff over the years and I'm only 23 right now

 

 

I also had to experience that drugs are seriously bad, m'kay. I'm talking about a small psychosis, which really turned my life up side down. This year I had to watch my best friend getting really mentally ill und being on a psychosis for some months until he was forced to get into a mental institution which actually was a good thing cause he was really a mess.

 

So maybe you see where I am heading with this. I didn't used hard stuff for some while now and I recently even quitted smoking weed. But in all this time, besides of mixing a little bit, I really didn't get in the mood to produce (or even to listen to serious electronic music). I think this is the case because in my mind electronic music and drugs have always been connected.

 

So I really would be interested in your opinion and your experiences. Maybe this post should be something like a warning for young users on here, thinking stuff that I used to think like "Afx is just made to listen to high" or "Weed makes you so creative". And maybe you have some ideas how to improve my situation.

 

I'm even as far as thinking that electronic music is not really something the sober me wants to do or is good at - maybe it was just a stoned teenage dream...

[Cryptowen]

Kudos to people who can write good music while high - I can't even listen to music while on drugs. Too much to handle.

[kcinsu]

This has been a novel about some people who

were punished entirely too much for what they did.

They wanted to have a good time, but they were like

children playing in the street; they could see one

after another of them being killed--run over, maimed,

destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow.

We really all were very happy for a while, sitting

around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing,

but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then

the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could

see it, we could not believe it. For example, while

I was writing this I learned that the person on whom

the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself.

My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman

died before I began the novel. For a while I myself

was one of these children playing in the street; I was,

like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being

grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below,

which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated,

and what became of each.

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like

the decision to step out in front of a moving car.

You would call that not a disease but an error in

judgment.

When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social

error,a life-style. In this particular life-style the

motto

is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but

the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is

a memory.

It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of

the ordinary human existence. It is not different from

your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place

in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the

cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But

that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit

a whole lifetime.There is no moral in this novel; it is

not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play

when they should have toiled;it just tells what the

consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning,

as a society, to discover science, which means causal

law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate,

because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing

in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part

of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who

kept on playing. I myself,I am not a character in this

novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation

at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew

personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers.

It was, this sitting around with our buddies and

bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad

decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out

of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us.

We were forced to stop by things dreadful.

If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted

to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished

for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the

punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of

it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science,

as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect.

I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate

my love:

 

To Gaylene deceased

To Ray deceased

To Francy permanent psychosis

To Kathy permanent brain damage

To Jim deceased

To Val massive permanent brain damage

To Nancy permanent psychosis

To Joanne permanent brain damage

To Maren deceased

To Nick deceased

To Terry deceased

To Dennis deceased

To Phil permanent pancreatic damage

To Sue permanent vascular damage

To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage

 

. . . and so forth.

In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are

no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will

never be forgiven.

The "enemy" was their mistake in playing.

Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.

Philip K Dick on A Scanner Darkly

[chassis]

Neither have ever had any connection for me.

[dr lopez]

Neither have ever had any connection for me.

[Cryptowen]

Spaced out 60s rock sounds a lot more like drugs to me than most experimental electronic/noise. Probably because with the latter you can get very unusual sounds even with a very clinical mindset. Harder to do with a couple of guitars & a drum set.

[tokn]

Thanks for this touching quote. Very very true words, above all:

 

If there was any sin it was that these people wanted

to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished

for that

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVWLl15TlTY

 

A wrong left turn left a bad sunburn on a dirty mattress for 72 hours

you didn't even have the strength left to scream out to scream out

"NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE!"

[murve33]

Neither have ever had any connection for me.

[GatorGreen]

Neither have ever had any connection for me.

[Braintree]

There is definitely a drug culture in electronic music.

 

I've never done drugs, though.

[sup]

some electronic people did drugs and are cool and some didnt and are cool also, same of the other way

[l1fef0rm]

i've been listening to electronic music since i was 14. i am now 29. got into the music before i touched any drugs. no connection.

[Guest disparaissant]

i got into idm and shit right after i started smoking weed and sicne i quit i havent been listening to as much so i guess theres a connection there

[vamos scorcho]

I was 13 listening to 'Acid Again' by Meat Beat Manifesto. Had no idea what acid was. Accidentally played the song for my mom.

 

Chemical Brothers 'Lost in the K Hole.'

 

The narcotic suite. Etc.

 

I will say that mixing Autechre with weed was pretty vital to life for a while. Actually mixing marijuana with music was essential for a while. Any drug really, that was the main reason I took them. It's a fun topic.

 

I stopped taking drugs a while back and after a long time of 'sobriety' I can get those same 'mindfuck' experiences without being high.

[Hautlle]

I write my tunes stoned to the bone, and sometimes drunk. I love to listen to music while high. Ae with weed as mentioned above... fucking amazon. Acid had a huge influence on me while listening to the iddems too. The first time I tripped was around the same time I was transitioning from nu-metal type stuff to idm/electronica

[skotosa]

I've been listening to electronic music (Aphex Twin) since i was 11 (or 13) I think. Didn't do weed till like 19 and now I'm 20 (almost 21) and have done it about 10 times on and off (when the occasion called for it).

 

I've considered doing shrooms maybe possibly LCD but haven't had the right circumstance to do either yet. If and when the arise I'll come back here (If I remember) and report my experience.

 

Electronic music sounds the same to me high or not high, maybe a little more focused (Definitely giving a slight enhancement to the experience). But overall weed isn't all that great as other people make it or perhaps its just me? I think I must have a natural tolerance to the stuff.

 

Still good to have at social events though. To bad it is illegal, everyone in their mother either does it or doesn't care about it, except the people who own the prisons and the political figures that all profit from it being illegal of course but now I drift off on a tangent so I shall shutup.

 

(If weed were legal I think I'd be stoned more often) (good or bad?)

[Zephyr_Nova]

I made one ridiculous track while on E, but it wasn't electronic aside from the bass/drums. It was like a really grungy Ween song, but more random and with Chris Cornel on vocals (as sung by my girlfriend). It was called Porcupine Eater. We also did another track while drunk on red wine. It was all one major7 chord, a disturbing yet somehow sweet romantic duet between what sounds like a middle aged tranny and a little girl (again both courtesy of my girlfriend).

 

Other than that I've always been sober while making music, caffeine being the only enhancer.

[essines]

i generally don't listen to music while high.

[Silent Member]

I've smoked a joint here and there but nothing else. Last week I noticed what appear to be shrooms growing in my tomato plants in my living room window. I thought about eating them, when drugs seek you out and all. I'm afraid they'll kill me though, because, you know, poisonous mushrooms. I'll post a pic here if they haven't withered away and all you experts can tell me if they are the right kind. I have no experience with this shit and can't tell you about drugs and music. Sub-bass feels like a warm blanket when I've smoked, but that's it.

[essines]

i don't know how many times i've said it but if you don't know exactly what kind of mushroom you see in front of you then don't you dare fucking eat it. chances are you'll hallucinate whilst in extreme pain just before you die, poisoned. just don't.

[Silent Member]

Haha, cool, I'll leave them alone. I wasn't sure if they had killer doppelgangers.

[gaarg]

I'd rather associate a drug and music experience with such music as Terry Riley's. I think he did so too.

[megapussi]

i did it once

[Macca]

some people do, some people don't.

 

There is a strong subculture around it and most definitely a lot of movements in electronic music have close ties to recreational drug use (the acidhouse scene, Dubstep + the rise of Ketamine). Bunker records starting out selling LSD anyone?

 

I would say in the UK at least with the flourishing of illegal raves (that still go on to this day just not in the same quantity) it allowed the music to spread with a lot of happy memories for a lot of people...

 

Illegal raves in the States generally got stopped(get stopped still I'd imagine) with policeman carrying guns, bit of a big incentive to not hold such parties and therfore the popularity of said music wouldn't be close (as evidenced by the tiny minority of Americans that actually know about good electronic music/listen to it).

 

 

Doesn't need to be a connection if you don't want there to be :sup: (in your mind)

 

enjoy the music ;)

[chim]

x