Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II (15 page)

The subsequent self-titled full-length
Richard D. James Album
is beat-driven too, even more than had been
… I Care Because You Do
. The orchestration mode of “Next Heap With” reappears here in the form of “Goon Gumpas,” but it is more playful Sergei Prokofiev than it is mournful Olivier Messiaen. Some melodic material, however, connects it back to
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
—the gentle development of the record’s blippy closing track, “Logan Rock Witch,” in particular, has roots in the
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
explorations. In all, though, the pronounced rhythmic element makes this firmly foreground listening.

Drukqs
, released a half decade later, in 2001, has its share of gentle moments. The album is thick with short pieces, short like an Anton Webern work or a Dos bass figure or one of those rampant miniatures postulated by John Zorn’s Naked City. As a result, even the most rhythmically trenchant material has a cavalier quality, and even the most resolutely melodic, like the widely celebrated “Avril 14th” (re-arranged by Alarm Will Sound, sampled by Kanye West, used as score by Sofia Coppola in her 2006 film
Marie Antoinette
), have a casual, cast-aside sensibility. The lovely “Avril 14th” can be heard as a fulfillment of the melodic aspiration of
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
’s “Blue Calx.” Tonally, there are extended, gauzy moments here as well, more so than on the other full albums that followed
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
. The solo piano of “Strotha Tynhe” is warped, oddly so, the tones not fading out as they might from a traditional piano, but seemingly melting, like a light flange. Similar approaches are heard elsewhere on the record, such as on the elegiac “Petiatil Cx Htdui.” Sometimes, as in “Beskhu3epnm,” the piano merges with a more overly percussive element—the piano itself, of course, being a percussion instrument, albeit a firmly tuned and intricately engineered one. The melodically remote “Btoum-Roumada” has the flavor of carillon bells ringing out in a lo-fi virtual town plaza. The use on occasion of a rudimentary piano, what sounds like a toy piano, such as on “Ruglen Holon,” brings to mind John Cage’s work for that instrument, while the cherished simplicity of the melodic material suggests the work of a composer whom Cage famously championed, Erik Satie, whose
musique d’ameublement
—or furniture music—is among the philosophical cornerstones of ambient. Thus, even when
Drukqs
is not ambient in affect, it is in its underlying source material.

Again, this record does not exist. There has been no
Selected Ambient Works Volume III
any more than there was a
Volume I
. If anything, the music that succeeded
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
functions in tandem with the music that preceded
Volume II
, notably the single “On,” to emphasize what a thorough outlier the record in question is. While threads of
Volume II
can be found in much of Aphex Twin’s other music—and in the music associated with his numerous heteronyms, or aliases—he never revisited that approach with the sense of immersion, of dedication, that he did on this album.

And that is just to focus on the full-length releases. Since 1994 there has been a stream of singles and EPs, albeit a dwindling one. There is always word of an imminent flood, between news accounts of occasional live performances and film licensings of his existing catalog. Many individuals with whom I communicated in the research and writing of this book spoke, instinctually, in the past tense when they talked about Aphex Twin. But as of the year that marks the 20th anniversary of
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
, Aphex Twin—Richard D. James—is still only 43 years old. Perhaps, for all we know, he is releasing music under as-yet undisclosed pseudonyms. Perhaps there is already new music out there, in the ether.

A Somewhat Handy Guide to the Album’s Tracks

This book owes a debt of thanks to many people, which is to say that I do. Listing them is personally troubling for me because I fear I will in the process leave out some people entirely by accident. But not listing people is not a solution. It is an avoidance strategy. So, I will list them here, and hope that anyone I forgot will forgive my oversight, and will allow me to lay some blame on the exhausted, if not quite lucid dreaming, state in which I completed this book’s manuscript.

Foremost, to Melinda, my wife, whom I met at a party the year that
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
was released (our first concert together, however, was Slayer), and to Clementine, who turned two years old the month I received the contract for this book and three shortly before the manuscript was complete, and who has gotten me (somewhat) enthusiastic about “songs” again, though I fear her habit of dancing to the sounds of refrigerators and rain is all my fault. I thanked the two of them on the “for” page, but no one is going to fault me for doing it twice. And to my beloved late grand-mother, Mathilde Arnberg, who told me the only reason I wrote about music was because my father hated noise. And to my father, Joel Weidenbaum, and my mother, Harriet Weidenbaum, who have lovingly endured my predilection for repetitious sound from an early age, even if they requested that I turn down that drone-rock antecedent, the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” which, closing as it did the first side of the album
Abbey Road
during the days of vinyl hegemony, suggested that the song might, indeed, loop in a locked groove forever (as I would later learn, that song in fact marked the end of the Beatles). And to the 400-plus, and growing, active members of the Disquiet Junto group (housed on
SoundCloud.com
), who helped me explore some of the ideas in this book through sound when words were not fully satisfying my imagination. And to Eric Engelhardt, who taught me so much about loving music (more than I ever had the chance to tell him) and who died way too young.

To the able folks at Bloomsbury: Ally Jane Grossan, David Barker, Kaitlin Fontana, and Mara Berkoff. I’m guessing there are more than four people at Bloomsbury, but those are the ones with whom I interacted. Many years ago I proposed a very different 33 1/3 book, on the debut Latin Playboys album, which per chance came out the same year as Aphex Twin’s
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
, 1994, and I sure am glad my application worked out this time around. It is an honor to be part of this series. And thanks to Brian Scott of Boon Design for assistance with the book’s sole chart, among many other things. And to everyone at Fakenham Prepress Solutions.

And to this long list of people who helped in various ways, by submitting to interviews, tracking down research, fielding peculiar queries, capturing region-specific screenshots, introducing me to people to introduce me to people (repeat for desired duration), leavening our conversations with advice, and just being incredibly supportive. In alphabetical order: David Albertson, Rebecca A. Allahyari, Paul Ashby, Rachelle Atrakzi, Jim Baltutis, Brian Behlendorf, Alexandra Beller, Bill Bentley, Deb Bernadini, Brian Biggs, Dr. Hilde Binford, Dr. José Blanco, Susan Blue, Caleb Burhans, Christine Colbert, Jorge Colombo, Evan Cooper, Maxwell August Croy, Anthony D’Amico, Erik Davis, Geeta Dayal, James Devane, Tom Devlin, Sabrina Doyle, Greg Eden, Gavin Edwards, Kelle England, Sharon Eyal, Mike Farrace, Dan Fence, Andrew Flanders, Clive Gabriel, Jonathan Griffin, Jackson Griffith, Brian S. Gross, Lynda Hansen, Paul Harrington, Erik Hillard, Karl Hyde, Andrew Jaffe, Michael Jarrett, David Katznelson, Jason Kincade, Howie Klein, Dr. Donald Kraybill, Max La Rivière-Hedrick, Robert Levine, Ori Lichtik, Cameron Maddux, Dan Marks, Thomas May, Jordan Melamed, Daniel Miller (the one I went to junior high with), Jane Milligan, Michelle Milligan, Risa Morley-Medina, Alan Parry, Markus Popp (Oval), Keren Poznansky, James Preston, Katherine Profeta, Chris John Power, C. Reider, Luke Richards, Jess Rotter, Paolo Salvagione, Eric Searleman, Seefeel, Rob Sheffield, Molly Sheridan, Dan Silver, Wendy Smith, Russ Solomon, Seymour Stein, Jeffrey Stock, Robert M. Thomas (Dizzy Banjo), Jason Verlinde, Lucy Walker, Rob Walker, Sean Williams, and Jay Wilson.

The quotes from interviews I conducted with Aphex Twin (a.k.a. Richard D. James) and Luke Vibert (then better known as Wagon Christ) appeared in different form in articles I wrote for
Pulse!
magazine after I was an editor there. Of the other publications mentioned in this book, I have written for one,
NewMusicBox.org
, which I note here only in the interest of full disclosure.

Annotations and supplements to this book appear at
http://disquiet.com/saw2for33third
.