Mike & Rich album turned 20 years old [Planet Mu Reissue]

[FilziSH]

Release date: June 24, 1996 - H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y

 

 

And here is a funny interview with them taken from MUZIK Magazine №15 August 1996

 

The odd couple

 

As individuals, MIKE PARADINAS and RICHARD JAMES record under a plethora of exotic names, the former most famously as µ-ziq, the latter as Aphex Twin. But together they're known as Mike & Rich, electronica's most bizarre duo

 

This month sees the release of Mike & Rich's much-delayed "Famous Knob Twiddlers" album. Issued by Richard James 'Rephlex imprint to coincide with the appearance of Mike Paradinas' new album as Jake Slazenger, it combines distorted beats with Seventies funk, avant-salsa, TV themes and plenty of easy listening.

"Famous Knob Twiddlers" is like a conversation between two old muckers. And abstract interaction stretching the realms of reality towards grey areas of common understanding, and off-kilter jam session betraying the duo's perverse sense of humour, it certainly puts the cat among the pigeons of the accepted shifts in electronica. To add to the confusion, Jake Slazenger's "Das Ist Ein Good Beat, Ja?" is a doozy as well.

In an attempt to capture their unique musical rapport, we decided to get them together over a bottle of vodka or three, present them with a few words and phrases, and let them wind their lateral way round the houses.

Here's what happened...

 

Are you taking the piss, lads?

Rich: "We have a laugh with our music, but that doesn't mean we're taking the piss."

Mike: "We definitely don't take the piss out of the people who buy our stuff. I think what you're getting at is how the music we're into, be it easy listening or funk, is often seen as joke music. But we actually like it. Apart from when the media try to sell it back to us as pseudo-trendy London music."

Rich: "So 'no' is the answer."

Mike: "Some easy listening stuff is excellent, though. Especially 'Moog Indigo'."

Rich: "Yeah, they want me to remix it along with James Lavelle."

Mike: "I'd agree to do it on the condition James Lavelle doesn't."

Rich: "Anyway, what's the point of making music if you can't have a laugh?"

Mike: "Yeah, remember those really boring kids who never had a laugh at school? They'd probably make really boring music. I often hear records and think, 'He must have been a boring fucker at school'."

Rich: "What's up with you, Mike? You didn't used to talk this much. I suppose the fame must have affected your personality."

Mike: "No, I was just always quiet with you because you try to play games with people's heads. You're like a bully. And what you do with bullies is ignore them so they go away."

Rich: "But it doesn't work. The bully ends up kicking the shit out of you even more. Or in my case, it makes me want to play more mind games with you."

 

Quality control - I don't care because you do

Rich: "I think your quality control is worse than mine."

Mike: "Bullshit! Mine might have been slack for 'In Pine Effect', but all the tracks I didn't like at the time are growing on me now. I can't understand why you think my crappiest tunes are the best ones. And you don't like my best stuff, so I can't win."

Rich: "I get my friends to select what goes on my albums because I'm not bothered about winning. I don't really care what gets released, I'm just interested in making the music in the first place. I make music for myself and I only sell it in order to make a living. I'm not even bothered if everybody hates it. I'm not like you. You get really worried about what people think of your music."

Mike: "I don't. Anyway. I thought 'Caustic Window', that track of yours on the UK advert for Nike, was crap."

Rich: "It was a worldwide advert actually, Mike!"

Mike: "Whatever, if I'd been choosing the tracks for you, that one wouldn't have made it. Which is why it doesn't always work getting people to select the tracks for your albums. Other people aren't always right."

Rich: "You're certainly not!"

 

Board games

Mike: "I like Connect 4 and Downfall. I bought them for my girlfriend, Jess, who's about to have a baby. I've got really good at them. I always win. Unless I'm playing Jess. Then I let her win."

Rich: "I once invented a war game with an incredibly boring friend of mine. We also had a customised version of Monopoly, with interest rates and mortgage rates to make it as complicated as we could."

Mike: "I had Monopoly when I was a kid, but it was all in Spanish."

Rich: "I used to make bombs as well. And start fires. I was into that risk factor."

Mike: "Mickey Mann from Pressure Of Speech is always playing Risk. He told me that he played you at chess and you pretended you couldn't play."

Rich: "That's true! I was tripping oh acid at the time. I beat him in the Arizona desert."

Mike: "I like games with knobs."

Rich: "Listen to Mr Impregnator! Actually, I've been thinking about calling an album 'There Goes My Knob'. I also like knobs, you see. I like to have all my favourite ones in front of me."

Mike: "I'm really not sure what you are talking about, Rich."

Rich: "I remember playing Orbital your stuff years ago... And look at you now. Just look at you. A heap of rotting shit. A pile of decomposing faeces..."

Mike: "Go on, go on. I've taken worse than that in my time!"

 

Babies

Mike "They smell nice. They've got little buttocks and little fingers."

Rich "I like the way they do your head in when they cry."

Mike "The way they get to you when they cry is a wonder of evolution. You simply can't ignore them."

 

"Vodka"

Mike: "It's the title of one of the tracks on 'Famous Knob Twiddlers'. We recorded it after drinking loads of vodka. Surprisingly enough."

Rich: "I can't remember. It was recorded five million years ago."

Mike: "It was actually recorded two years ago. We did it during the World Cup and I kept playing 'Johnny B Good' in the studio."

Rich: "You couldn't handle that vodka, could you? You kept falling asleep."

Mike: "I feel asleep during one mix and when I woke up you had knocked out two more which were total rubbish."

Rich: "I don't think we should work together again until the next World Cup, Mike. In fact, I don't want to work with you ever again..."

Mike: "Thanks!"

Rich: "I don't want to work with any electronic musicians for a while. But I'll definitely be keeping an eye on you. Did you know Mike's girlfriend has an Aphex Twin tattoo on her ankle?"

Mike: "It's only little."

Rich: "I was thinking about it the other day, wondering how you are going to explain it when your kid asks, 'What's that on mummy's leg?'."

 

Techno is in a state of stasis

Rich: "Electronic music is so easy to make. That's why there's so much shit around. I can't work out how it sells. I hate shit music. It really bugs me."

Mike: "Is that why you threw my album out?"

Rich: "I reckon this proposed government bill lo make clubs play a few minutes of chill-out music every hour will make going out more interesting. If people are monitoring what is played, DJs might work harder to add extra elements."

Mike: "Like playing sandpaper?"

Rich: "That was blown out of all proportion. I was just taking the piss out of the Disobey club. I honestly couldn't believe it when people thought I was serious. It's like when I played in New York and I finished my set using a food mixer. I threw it off a balcony and it hit some bloke on the head. He came up to me afterwards and asked me to sign bits of it so he could put them on his mantlepiece at home."

Mike: "I'm too mainstream to be asked to play Disobey."

Rich: "At the last Disobey, I got completely pissed and played some music I did when I was 1 3. The 20 people still left In the club were dancing to it and I was swinging across the rafters slagging off The KLF's Jimmy Cauty. I was going, 'Your tank's shit mate, it hasn't even got a gun'."

Mike: "So have you really got a tank, Richard? Be honest."

Rich: "Okay, it's an armoured car, but it's fucking cool. You can't drive a Sherman tank on the road, so I've got a Ferret. The only trouble is that it wouldn't stop someone taking me out with a bullet. That's a bit annoying."

Mike: "Do you think someone would try that?"

Rich: "Getting back to the point. I've decided I'm not going to play ambient stuff anymore. I'm into faster music now. I guess I've just run out of patience."

Mike: "I like folk music."

Rich: "I like 'Goldie Presents Folk'."

 

Pseudonyms - split personality or megalomania?

Rich: I'm not going to even think about that one. Can I have another triple, please?"

 

Theme tunes

Mike: "I'd really like to do a TV theme tune..."

Rich: "It's my ultimate ambition. Nobody has written a decent theme tune in about 15 years. I'd love to do one for a children's programme."

Mike: "Yeah, that would suit you."

Rich: "These days, they're just rubbish computer brass stabs."

Mike: "'Byker Grove' is a classic, though."

Rich: "I'd also love to work on a movie, perhaps with Mike Leigh or Stanley Kubrick, but I wouldn't want to do a major Hollywood production because they don't give a shit about their artists. It's the same with adverts. They're forever saying, 'Blah, blah, blah, will you alter this, alter that'. You do what they ask because you want the job, then they change their mind and realise you were right all along."

Mike: "That's showbiz. Rich."

Rich: "The adverts are the best things on TV. I get well into thinking about what they're trying to get across, but I wish the music wasn't always so stupidly warm and reassuring. Insurance adverts are the worst."

Mike: "I like adverts with old people sitting on sofas."

Rich: "If we did one for the Mike & Rich album, it would have to be like a cat food advert..."

Mike: "Yeah! I like cats. Cats and babies."

Rich: "The way you talk is ridiculous! You talk in clichés."

 

Crack

Rich: "Can you get it on the street corners where you live?"

Mike: "No."

Rich: "Did you know Luke Vibert smokes an ounce a week?"

Mike: "Allegedly! And he's a heroin dealer. Joke!"

Rich: "I thought you'd stopped drinking, Mike!"

 

"I would like some milk from the milkman's wife's tits"

Rich: "It's a lyric from 'Boy/Girl', the next Aphex Twin single. Someone told me I couldn't make a pop song and I said, 'Of course I fucking can'."

Mike: "Do you know your milkman's wife, then?"

Rich: "I'm not saying. Have you tasted Jess' milk?"

Mike: "This is an important subject to me at the moment. I've been breast-feeding from Jess and it's a tough thing to do. I have a lot of respect for women who breast-feed."

Rich: "Are you embarrassed?"

Mike: "Not at all. But do you know your milkman's wife?"

Rich: "I'm still not saying."

 

Rephlex Records

Mike: "You don't do any promotion for the label. It's crap."

Rich: "What do you expect? We're just a couple of boys from Cornwall. We don't know how to run a label."

Mike: "Is that why people don't know 'Bluff Limbo' has been re-released? And why you've sat on my best stuff?"

Rich: "We are waiting for Virgin to put money into promoting your next µ-ziq album before we release the older stuff."

Mike: "Crap."

Rich: "You're being so selfish. It's too expensive to promote it by ourselves."

Mike: "Rephlex is a good label, but it could be a lot better."

Rich: "Look, things are moving now and we've got some excellent stuff coming up, so we might sell more records. But there's no ideology behind Rephlex. We don't sit down and say we should release this or that record because it's expected of us."

Mike: "But you never release anything! Not on time, anyway."

Rich: "Hey, this Is all getting a bit like real life now."

Mike: "Bollocks. I'm having a baby! That's real fucking life, mate!"

 

AND so we leave them bickering like a pair of gadgies hell-bent on out-doing and out-insulting each other. It's probably a friendship thing.

 

Mike & Rich's 'Famous Knob Twiddlers' collaboration and Jake Slazenger's 'Das Ist Ein Groovy Beat, Ja?' are out now on Rephlex and Warp, respectively. Aphex Twin's 'Boy/ Girl' single follows on Warp on July 25

[psn]

Brexit Knob Twiddlers.

[Kennylogg Bubblebath]

This interview is new to me. Good find!

 

Also HBD2EKT

[Ivan Ooze]

one of the best album covers ever and a great album to put on when you are playing a game with friends, happy birthday mike and rich

[Hugh Mughnus]

Hope it gets a re-release with some bonus tracks or something. Mike posted that pic on his FB feed awhile back.

 

It's one of my favorite records, period.

 

Fingers crossed.

Edited June 24, 2016 by StephenG

[Entorwellian]

One of my top 15 favourite albums.

 

Funniest thing is that it's objectively not that good. It doesn't suck but there is one really good track and the rest are just "what the fuck?"

But it kind of reminds me of Nirvana when Smells like Teen Spirit came out: one good track with a bunch of "what the fuck?" but it came out at the right time that made it stand out from everything else. It did a good job capturing the the mood and insanity of being on drugs. The novelty hasn't worn off on it. It's the Ween of IDM.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Entorwellian

[Hugh Mughnus]

One of my top 15 favourite albums.

 

Funniest thing is that it's objectively not that good. It doesn't suck but there is one really good track and the rest are just "what the fuck?"

But it kind of reminds me of Nirvana when Smells like Teen Spirit came out: one good track with a bunch of "what the fuck?" but it came out at the right time that made it stand out from everything else. It did a good job capturing the the mood and insanity of being on drugs. The novelty hasn't worn off on it. It's the Ween of IDM.

which one is your "really good track"?

 

 

lol I think there's more than one! Mr Frosty probably is my favorite though.

[FilziSH]

someone can put birthday cake in PhotoShop instead Downfall game :D

Edited June 24, 2016 by FilziSH

[Goiter Sanchez]

*Waits for Bambi to post*

[pizza]

excellent interview

[nyr22]

One of my top 15 favourite albums.

 

Funniest thing is that it's objectively not that good. It doesn't suck but there is one really good track and the rest are just "what the fuck?"

But it kind of reminds me of Nirvana when Smells like Teen Spirit came out: one good track with a bunch of "what the fuck?" but it came out at the right time that made it stand out from everything else. It did a good job capturing the the mood and insanity of being on drugs. The novelty hasn't worn off on it. It's the Ween of IDM.

So many good tracks on Nevermind, you may need to check it out again

[doorjamb]

Truly one of my most cherished albums. Rolling, krauty, messy, carefree, burp samples... plus the spine looks great alongside Kerrier District 1

Edited June 24, 2016 by doorjamb

[Entorwellian]

 

One of my top 15 favourite albums.

 

Funniest thing is that it's objectively not that good. It doesn't suck but there is one really good track and the rest are just "what the fuck?"

But it kind of reminds me of Nirvana when Smells like Teen Spirit came out: one good track with a bunch of "what the fuck?" but it came out at the right time that made it stand out from everything else. It did a good job capturing the the mood and insanity of being on drugs. The novelty hasn't worn off on it. It's the Ween of IDM.

which one is your "really good track"?

 

 

lol I think there's more than one! Mr Frosty probably is my favorite though.

 

That's the one. Vodka and Jellyfish are pretty good too.

[flim]

 

One of my top 15 favourite albums.

 

Funniest thing is that it's objectively not that good. It doesn't suck but there is one really good track and the rest are just "what the fuck?"

But it kind of reminds me of Nirvana when Smells like Teen Spirit came out: one good track with a bunch of "what the fuck?" but it came out at the right time that made it stand out from everything else. It did a good job capturing the the mood and insanity of being on drugs. The novelty hasn't worn off on it. It's the Ween of IDM.

which one is your "really good track"?

 

 

lol I think there's more than one! Mr Frosty probably is my favorite though.

 

 

Mr. Frosty and Winner Takes All are the only tracks I really love on this record. Eggy Toast is okay. I just never fell in love with M&R. I do like it, but I don't even remember the last time I listened to it or had a desire to listen to it.

[hello spiral]

No love for Reg and Beady Eyes?

[Trilobot]

^ Don't worry I like Reg. It's too silly to ignore in my opinion, good stuff. Yayayayayayababaaa

[Guest bitroast]

No love for Reg and Beady Eyes?

 

i love ... rpeg ??? does that count :^)

[hello spiral]

Yes. Yes it does.

[Rubin Farr]

because vodka.

[FilziSH]

Rich: "I like 'Goldie Presents Folk'."

Rich: "That's true! I was tripping oh acid at the time. I beat him in the Arizona desert."

Rich: "Listen to Mr Impregnator! Actually, I've been thinking about calling an album 'There Goes My Knob'. I also like knobs, you see. I like to have all my favourite ones in front of me."

I have 3 question, what is: 'Goldie Presents Folk', Arizona desert and Mr Impregnator?

[FilziSH]

Why I haven't created vote for the best track, when I opened the topic? Anyway my fav is the last one BuBuBuBa - chill, cosmic, psychedelic

[NI64]

That whole middle section of Reg (at like 2:53) is super lush. I love the piano

[Bechuga]

 

Rich: "I like 'Goldie Presents Folk'."

Rich: "That's true! I was tripping oh acid at the time. I beat him in the Arizona desert."

Rich: "Listen to Mr Impregnator! Actually, I've been thinking about calling an album 'There Goes My Knob'. I also like knobs, you see. I like to have all my favourite ones in front of me."

I have 3 question, what is: 'Goldie Presents Folk', Arizona desert and Mr Impregnator?

 

'Goldie Presents Folk' is fake and likely taking the piss out of musician curated albums. 'Jeff Mills Presents The Best Techno Ever' etc. The idea is that Goldie presenting an album of folk music is contrary to his image, thus amusing. Goldie is not in fact gold.

 

The Arizona desert is a desert in Arizona. The location likely does not factor into the game of chess itself.

 

Mr. Impregnator is a man who has impregnated a woman. In the interview, Mike's then girlfriend was soon to give birth, so Mike P is the Mr. Impregnator in question. Aphex stating 'Listen to Mr Impregnator' is not a musical recommendation, unless you've never heard of µ-ziq. So you should go listen to him.

 

Also, a knob is also slang for a penis. Aphex is talking about his penis in a humourous manner.

Edited June 25, 2016 by Bechuga

[FilziSH]

to Bechuga

 

very informative, thanks :)

[Hugh Mughnus]

 

 

Rich: "I like 'Goldie Presents Folk'."

Rich: "That's true! I was tripping oh acid at the time. I beat him in the Arizona desert."

Rich: "Listen to Mr Impregnator! Actually, I've been thinking about calling an album 'There Goes My Knob'. I also like knobs, you see. I like to have all my favourite ones in front of me."

I have 3 question, what is: 'Goldie Presents Folk', Arizona desert and Mr Impregnator?

 

'Goldie Presents Folk' is fake and likely taking the piss out of musician curated albums. 'Jeff Mills Presents The Best Techno Ever' etc. The idea is that Goldie presenting an album of folk music is contrary to his image, thus amusing. Goldie is not in fact gold.

 

The Arizona desert is a desert in Arizona. The location likely does not factor into the game of chess itself.

 

Mr. Impregnator is a man who has impregnated a woman. In the interview, Mike's then girlfriend was soon to give birth, so Mike P is the Mr. Impregnator in question. Aphex stating 'Listen to Mr Impregnator' is not a musical recommendation, unless you've never heard of µ-ziq. So you should go listen to him.

 

Also, a knob is also slang for a penis. Aphex is talking about his penis in a humourous manner.

 

<3