RE: Aphex Twin / AFX - The PIONEER of INTELLIGENT DANCE MUSIC & INSPIRATION to Many Artists!
Nice profile qsound. I am a big fan of Aphex Twin. I have always found his music to be quite different than his contemporaries in the depth of complexity. An example of this is "Flim." On the surface the song sound quite simple - drums, piano, synth, and that's about it. But it is deceiving.
Harmonically the song has a beautiful chord progression. Simple, but ambiguous. It makes me think of music of Ravel (String quartet for example) where the progressions sound catchy at first, but after listening 10 times it means something different to the listener.
Rhythmically Flim is manic with the drums contrasting wildly with the other textures.
Production is DEEP and typical for Aphex Twin. There is so much going on with his choice of sounds then the treatment of each. This is my most important point in this response, qsound. Aphex Twin has such a comfort level with the tech that he can build a soundscape the same way a master violinist can produce the most subtle sound with the violin. This is why he is so different than other musicians in the genre. EVERY NOTE seems to be considered with no room for filler. I imagine that he thinkings of what he wants then instinctively make it happen using the complex rats nest of modual, digital, acoustic, psychokinetic-voodoo.
TRY THIS, play Flim and try to find a note, or sound, or treatment that you think you could remove to IMPROVE the piece. I doubt any of us could :) Beethoven's music is like this - no bad notes.
Anyway, sorry for the rambling. Thanks for posting and keep up the good work.
Following you and looking forward to more.
Cheers,
BuckyDurddle
What a great response! I'm not a music producer so I'm not gone play around with taking out sounds :) Every heard of Ricardo Villalobos? I have the same feel with his productions, He uses modular system and a friend told me while he was in his studio, everywhere sounds coming out and Ricardo simple re-plugging some cables and at some point hit the record button and while continuing his cable arrangements, after an hour, track done. And them the difficult part, to get a cit out of ot to fit a vinyl record.
Thanks QS. No, I have not heard of Ricardo Villalobos, but I will certainly check it out. I have seen some musicians like Richardo in action and it is amazing. Cables everywhere and amazing music coming out of the speakers. I do some work in this field when I wear my musician hat :) and it all sounds consistently horrible :)
When I wrote the earlier post I pulled out my little analogue synth to make some Aphex Twin-like sounds. Here she is....
GREAT little instrument and for $40 on EBay. Sweet deal to get someone into analogue synthesis.
Keep up the good work
Cheers,
@buckydurddle
How cool! :) You trying to get me into starting making music? Non of my friends could, I prefer supporting them when they play in a club or on a festival and when I can, to do some dancing :) NJOY playing with the little and share with us what you were able to create. Love to hear :)
Cheers my friend