Electronic Music 411 - twenty years of aphex

04/12/08 + jarvis

it dawned on me today that our dear mr. james has a discography spanning over 20 years. that does a few things for me:

*makes me feel old
*impresses me
*makes me glad that much of that work still sounds fresh
*makes me wonder where it'll lead to

the thought interested me because so many of our EM influences have died over the last few years and i don't feel like there are many contemporaries that i personally feel influenced by. what are our musical successors going to be influenced by in 20 years? will it even matter by then?

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04/12/08 + monkvolcano

apex who??

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04/12/08 + clawback

i think he does techno for kids with saggy pants

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04/12/08 + nagrom

I still think that Aphex, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, Venetian Snares, Autechre, and now Clark (Warp + 1 outsider) are the benevolent oligarchy of IDM. Untouchable.

Everything else is banal, or noise.

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04/12/08 + electrodan

tops, nags, for using the first $3 word of the day. (oligarchy)

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04/12/08 + monty

yeah whatever
it all sounds like car advert music to me now.

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04/12/08 + ignatius

nagrom said: "I still think that Aphex, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, Venetian Snares, Autechre, and now Clark (Warp + 1 outsider) are the benevolent oligarchy of IDM. Untouchable.

Everything else is banal, or noise."

bah. there's plenty of great music out there. yeah sure, the artists you mention have quite a body of work of some distinction (opinions vary of course and i'm not sure clark falls into the same group though body riddle is amazing) whatever. i mean... o9, phoenecia, plastikman, funckarma (and their 50 aliases), jega, deru, MR76ix, luke vibert, einoma, richard devine, etc etc... plus, i have 100's of records many by people who's names i can't recall that are all kick ass... to say it's all just pablum or noise is ridiculous.

i agree w/you that aphex, autehcre, squarepusher have a very definite sonic fingerprint or personality or voice or whatever you wanna call it.. to their music and that's something rare and special... but i just can't agree w/you about everything else being noise or pablum.

more to the point i'm sure i don't care actually since really it all comes down to opinion.

is pablum a $3 word?

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04/12/08 + ignatius

monty said: "yeah whatever
it all sounds like car advert music to me now."

well, i think richard devine and jega are scoring all the car ads. so that could be why.

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04/12/08 + RogerRoger

To me this only proves:
He was true to his word that music is his life
If he never puts out another release and just sells off his personal back catalogue 12 tracks at a time, many would be happy to get it.

But taking the first of those two to heart, it's more likely we could get another 20 years of new music and innovation from him.

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04/12/08 + sweettrip

nagrom said: "I still think that Aphex, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, Venetian Snares, Autechre, and now Clark (Warp + 1 outsider) are the benevolent oligarchy of IDM. Untouchable.

Everything else is banal, or noise."

mouse on mars?
ceephax?
the black dog?

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04/12/08 + jkn

20 years... very cool. I like the first 10 better, but that's just me. Benevolent Oligarchy of IDM sounds like a social club.

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04/12/08 + djugel

BoC and Venetian Snares are not in the same league as aphex... squarepusher and Ae too..

Black Dog on the other hand..

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04/12/08 + tylth

james god of electgronic musci

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edited: Apr 12 2008 + djugel

I think why he is my favorite ... is because nothing of his sounds like "the future" to me. Which is usually why I don't like most EM today.. because it sounds like man... and not the otherworldy like aphex does. Ancient. and also he doesn't sound "retro-presumptuous" like BoC.

still bored by Drukqs though.. dances around the point too often. and those piano pieces blow... it was finding that Santa isn't real. I just block it out.

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04/12/08 + tylth

vodhosbn is superb

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