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Aphex Twin: Syro Listening

jhonny

By jhonny
in Aphex Twin

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Guest jasondonervan

Guest jasondonervan

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occasional lighting/strobes and unproportionate green outlined Aphex logo from time to time laser projected behind the booth.

 

Sounds wicked

 

iCwh9ip7u4gPB.jpg

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silentvision Proficient

silentvision

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Lol

jasondonervan, much prefer your take with the stencil lazer. Close.

 

Please excuse the crudity of this model, as it is purely a recreation, didn’t have time to build it to scale or paint it.

 

KCMiGVa.jpg

 

Was stuck how the outside was three lines.

 

Oddly enough the base photo for this reenactment taken from flickr includes the gentleman who had the honors of pushing the play button.

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J3FF3R00 Grand Master

J3FF3R00

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At the LA event, the sound file was a quicktime played from a mac laptop, plugged into the projector & sound system. The quicktime file was an occasionally-strobing, yellow Aphex logo on a black background. Very fancy.

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WaxenPith Mentor

WaxenPith

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Thanks much silentvision and everyone else for the write-up/reviews!

 

jesus so sad I missed the smartbar thing. live about a 5 min walk from it and yet didn't get a ticket!>!>!>! argh

 

 

sucks especially when so close. after reading the reviews of it I am even more disappointed I was not chosen. I am glad for those of you who got to go tho, sounds like it was a good time

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psn Grand Master

psn

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Here are some thoughts after the Oslo listening session. The club could easily house 100 more people for this kind of happening. 90 percent were males in their late 30s. No security or frisking, but people voluntarily lined up to hand their phones over in the wardrobe. The phones were put in Syro shopping bags with a sticker in it. Goodies to be picked up after the session. There was no introduction or any framing of the event. The album was played from a Macbook over a Funktion-One rig in a cozy basement club. I was seated against a wall, so the sound was slightly muddy (I could tell from having heard Minipops at home). Accordingly, everything I say has to be taken with a pinch of salt. I might also mix up which track was which. I knew the Manchester/Metz/Minehead/Singapore/Snowbombing/Barbican tracks from before, btw.
It's a very cohesive album, doesn't jump from style to style like RDJ or Drukqs did. In particular the first four tracks sound like they all stem from the same jam. The overall feel is very deliberate and still loose and playful. The structure of the tracks feel like RDJ sits on a huge bank of little nuggets that he hands out to the listener one by one in a calm tempo. "Here, listen to this drum beat! Okay, how about this bass line? Now, let's exchange that part for this!". It never goes full on like it would on Drukqs or Rushup Edge. Some element is taken away, something else in introduced, but the forward momentum stays strong and decisive all the way. Like some old enlightened guru that has all the wisdom in the world, but is in no hurry to lay it down to you. It all has to be done at the right tempo, ie when he is ready to give you some more. It's all very subtle and at the same time catchy and exciting. You're kept on your toes for what's next, you always glimpse something new over the horizon.

Tempo and groove wise much of the album feels like hip hop and funk, but it's not loopy at all, rather it sounds like someone performed the parts and had some fun and played around a little. The sound staging feels very "live" and "in the room", and the percussion is organic and hi fi. I'm surprised that the drum robots are only used on one track, because most of the album has that kind of feel you'd imagine coming from them. Only two tracks used recognizable and/or lo fi break beat samples - the Singapore/Wobbly/Papat4 track has a strikingly shitty (in a good way!) snare drum (the track uses the Atari, probably for samples as well as sequencing), while s950tx16wasr10 had a short snippet of the Think break (Yeah! Woo!) and probably some Apache ++. (I might have mixed up what track that actually was, btw). The well known drum machines are kept in the background as well, I only noticed the 606 hihat and snare in one section, and some 808 perc (rim etc) in one spot. One track used the 909 clap in a cool manner, it only accented the upbeat once every two bars, or something like that.
The synth work is stellar and funky as all hell. A lot of it sounds like boosted versions of Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock, just over the top next level funk shit. A burning acid line dominates one of the last tracks (probably s950tx16wasr10), just insane filter programming. Some formanty craziness at the beginning, and then more acidy when the track kicks in.
There is quite a bit of new tonal material on the album, he's not relying so much on the good old modal things we know from Alberto/4/Avril, etc. He manages to make it slightly more hazy and restless, but still beautiful and catchy. One of the tracks toward the end made me think that "this doesn't sound much like Aphex at all". That track had all the tell-tale refinement and finesse of his, but I think I'd seriously doubt it was him if it was leaked anonymously - because of the harmonies and melodies.
There a very few "edits" and those kind of effects. The first place I remember thinking "oh, here's some of that!" was at the start of fz pseudotimestretch+e+3, where what sounds like the voice of his parents are chopped up and granalized. He does something new with it though, and makes a little blippy synth riff from the voice sample, which is panned around for a short while, before a slow guitar-like cadence takes over and the short track fades out.
The final track I didn't feel at all. I see that it has a very functional place on the album as a kind of soft landing, but it just doesn't stand up to the piano work on Drukqs I think. The birds in the background were nice, though. I'm sure it will grow on me, it just felt a little too sparse and melodically static or something.
On the question of the mastering - I did not notice the heavy "breathing" compression (that I hear in the Minipops single) while listening to the whole album, but that could be due to a lack of high end in my listening position.
To sum it up, he manages to make something very new and updated, and still reference all his previous work in nice ways. It feels very calm and "mature".
Some adjectives to round it off: Jazzy, funky, playful, ungimmicky.
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awepittance Grand Master

awepittance

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The sound staging feels very "live" and "in the room", and the percussion is organic and hi fi. I'm surprised that the drum robots are only used on one track, because most of the album has that kind of feel you'd imagine coming from them. Only two tracks used recognizable and/or lo fi break beat samples - the Singapore/Wobbly/Papat4 track has a strikingly shitty (in a good way!) snare drum (the track uses the Atari, probably for samples as well as sequencing), while s950tx16wasr10 had a short snippet of the Think break (Yeah! Woo!) and probably some Apache ++. (I might have mixed up what track that actually was, btw). The well known drum machines are kept in the background as well, I only noticed the 606 hihat and snare in one section, and some 808 perc (rim etc) in one spot. One track used the 909 clap in a cool manner, it only accented the upbeat once every two bars, or something like that.

i'm surprised to hear only 2 of the tracks had recognizable breaks, a lot of the break sounded sort of 'live' then? like they might have been sampled /chopped up but had more variance in hits than a typical break look?

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psn Grand Master

psn

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i'm surprised to hear only 2 of the tracks had recognizable breaks, a lot of the break sounded sort of 'live' then? like they might have been sampled /chopped up but had more variance in hits than a typical break look?

 

We'll see when the album is out, there are probably more. But during the first listen most of it sounded like he made his own samples from a very well mic'ed and well tuned drum kit in a good room. Or something like that.

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gtbean Enthusiast

gtbean

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"Previously, Aphex Twin made music that was supposed to sound like the future, meant to sound like now as envisioned back in 1996. Syro, in effect, continues his work in a way that, nearly two decades later, irreverently disregards that we’ve already arrived. Our present day is somehow unsatisfactory to his time traveling mind, and so James has conveniently opted out, breaking the fourth wall and the laws of physics in the process. Unwilling to be defined by our perceptions, he's broadcasting from an alternative universe where rave music never evolved into what we now call EDM."

 

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/i-cared-because-you-did-inside-aphex-twin-syro-nyc-listening-party

Thanks for that. It's a good review of the event, and I made a cameo in it. I'm the tard with the chops from Florida.

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apriorion Mentor

apriorion

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occasional lighting/strobes and unproportionate green outlined Aphex logo from time to time laser projected behind the booth.

 

Sounds wicked

 

iCwh9ip7u4gPB.jpg

 

loooool

 

 

NICE

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axi0n Newbie

axi0n

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Drunken Cubs fans kept walking by, asking why everyone was standing in line outside the Metro/Smartbar. When asked at one point, a person behind me told the person inquiring that he and his friends just really liked standing in lines. That there was no event. It was pretty amusing.

 

At one point somebody behind me responded to one of them that it was the bathroom line.

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J3FF3R00 Grand Master

J3FF3R00

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No security or frisking, but people voluntarily lined up to hand their phones over in the wardrobe. The phones were put in Syro shopping bags with a sticker in it. Goodies to be picked up after the session. .

Fuck. I wish we got special bags w/ stickers in LA. We all put our phones in sandwich bags and got a middle finger on the way out.

:(

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