Comment by BLKNSLVR
1 day ago
The depth of knowledge of Richard James surprises me every time I come across articles about him.
No wonder Aphex Twin's music stands out the way it does. He's always a fair way ahead of the curve.
1 day ago
The depth of knowledge of Richard James surprises me every time I come across articles about him.
No wonder Aphex Twin's music stands out the way it does. He's always a fair way ahead of the curve.
> It’s very simple, but do you want your music to be based on an international standard or on what you think sounds right to you? [...] I’m very glad I trusted my instincts. Listening to that other voice is THE most important thing in creativity, whether you’re an engineer or a musician.
To me, RDJs music always stood out as having uncanny, unique melodies and harmonies. As a teenager I fantasized about him being some sort of benevolent alien music shaman, beaming melodies onto our planet.
Stuff on SAW II where you can't figure out if you're hearing single notes or mutating chords and everything is near-synaesthetic bliss. The wistful otherness of 'Italic Eyeball'. Whatever 'fingerbib', ICBYD, and things on Melodies from Mars are doing was very formative to my 16 year old brain.
It's clear that whatever he does, he channels some unique creative juices.
>>>As a teenager I fantasized about him being some sort of benevolent alien music shaman, beaming melodies onto our planet.
Fantasized? Facts are facts but I admire your humility.
From my phone to Desktop to remote NUCs, his noises pervade them all. And indelibly in my mind.
I think there's still a strong case that he ain't human.
I knew it
He is indeed a very technical and nerdy person. For example, he was an early adopter of the SuperCollider audio programming language.
Fun trivia: he was trolling the SuperCollider mailing list under the alias "eric hard jams" which is an anagram of Richard [D.] James. Some of his messages were truely horrendous and he got kicked out eventually. He is quite a character...
I should clarify that it hasn't been 100% confirmed that "eric_hard_jams" was really him, but many people on the list thought so, including James McCartney himself:
https://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n226
JMC and RDJ know each personally and hung out together. Here's a picture of the two together: https://www.reddit.com/r/aphextwin/comments/6oheli/screen_ra...
It's worth little coming from some random HN guy, but I can confirm eric_hard_jams was Richard D James. We used to hang around similar circles online, and there were a couple meetups. There were a bunch of other Rephlex and Rephlex-adjacent musicians using pseudonyms, as well.
Richard was sort of annoying at times, in the way someone on the spectrum can be. A bit of a troll with poor timing, and poor social skills, but a good, kind lad who spent his time doing things completely orthogonal to anyone else and that made him quite interesting.
I lost touch with him in around 2000-2001. He kinda went dark in those circles. I don't know what he's up to these days, probably raising a family like me.
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That audiosynth link is a fine thread for anyone lamenting the loss of civility on the modern internet.
Was it confirmed that eric hard jams was actually him?
How strange it is that we so easily forgive bad behavior from people we love.
>How strange it is that we so easily forgive bad behavior from people we love.
That's part of what loving someone means. It's easy to love someone convenient who never does anything to bother or hurt you.
Besides, he was trolling. It's not like it's a big deal. If you were on a mailing list or usenet group or forum in the 80s and 90s everybody did that, and few if any had an issue with it, we could take it!
We not only forgive but tolerate 100000x worse stuff everyday that directly fucks our lives that we could prioritize not tolerating.
It's not in vogue these days, but rather than forgiving, we can compartmentalise and rationalise.
Being a bad person in one domain doesn't mean that someone can't generate value in another.
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It hasn't been confirmed 100% but I remember reading a post by James McCartney (author of SuperCollider) himself, going something like "Shut the fuck up, Richard!". Since they both knew each other personally, I assume that JMC thought that "eric hard jams" was indeed Richard James.
It’s strange but common. I love the music of Miles Davis and consider him a genius. I also give him a pretty poor review in terms of his behavior as a human being.
People are complex.
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He (presumably) trolled a mailing list for a short period of time in the early 2000s. If that's the worst thing he's done, there's not much to forgive.
I mean, I haven't even seen any of the messages. Just a one sentence accusation and no proof that it was actually him. Jumping to the decision that there's anything to forgive would be weird based on this.
Even if it was true, who cares? I like the guy's music, it's had a strong influence on me at various times in my life. But I have never had a strong opinion of whether I like him, and I still don't. Why would I?
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If you look in the right places, you'll find some meetup photos that essentially confirm it.
>Was it confirmed that eric hard jams was actually him?
Nope. By then RDJ (the actual person) was of course known for using anagrams so it would be an obvious thing to do for any troll.
This is probably the best thing I’ve ever read on Hacker News .. seriously, honestly.
I mean, wtf, the mailing lists are astonishing if you think about them .. like, how UUCP and mailman and qmail/sendmail used to be all you need to get access to the archives …
The fact that we can still access and search these archives 20-30 years later is really amazing. It gives you a glimpse into a different time period. That's why mailing lists and forums are so important! Fortunately, SuperCollider still has a quite active forum (https://scsynth.org/). It makes me sad that so much communication has moved to proprietory platforms like FB groups or Discord servers, most of which will be forever lost in time.
Has anyone used SuperCollider or computer music framework to make anything resembling a pop song?
Look at how easily a producer can make a pop song in Ableton https://youtube.com/watch?v=F5CPQ8LU36w
SuperCollider would be the wrong tool for the job.
Ableton is like the modern day guitar.
SuperCollider and music programming languages are like the modern day bass clarinet.
There isn't much bass clarinet in modern pop music either. Part of what defines pop music is the familiarity of the sound and popular expectation of what music is supposed to be.
Why would anyone use SuperCollider or a computer music framework to make something resembling a pop song?
Ableton includes a fairly comprehensive SDK called Max for Live, it's been used in a handful of popular tracks before.
Pure algomusic/tracker setups are usually a poor fit for pop music, though. DAWs have indispensable tools for vocal processing that you cannot forego most of the time.
Yeah BT lol.
Can you link to the horrendous messages or summarize them?
http://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n223
http://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n224
http://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n225
http://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n226
http://www.audiosynth.com/files/sc-users-archive/v01.n227
(note I am not personally claiming this is RDJ)
“Ooh look, a girl on the sc list. Let’s rape her”
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A different opinion about their music is that it all seems rather ostentatious in an aural sense, and leaves a doubt if some of the praise being heaped on it is 'perfomative'.
People would say the same thing about Glass or Reich. People would say the same thing about Messiaen or Ligeti. People would say the same thing about Schoenberg or Webern.
If your expectation of good food is In-N-Out Burger, you might think praise of a three star Michelin restaurant is performative too.
I am not even much a fan of Richard but he is absolutely one of the greatest musical geniuses of the past 50 years bar none.
Avril 14th is my favorite. Clearly Satie influenced but maybe even a little sweeter than Satie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxTdTaNIUxo
Also consider Satie himself is exactly the type of musician people would have said praising is performative at the time. He wasn't taken seriously as a real musician much at all in his life.
I love 'Avril 14th', I had not connected it before to Satie (who I've only just heard of, my poor musical background knowledge). I see the similarities in the balance of sweetness and dissonance (I suppose).
A friend told me a story about Satie, that they found two pianos in his appartement, one stacked on the other, with unpaid bills tossed on the top. Seems very RDJ-like (or v.v.).
Uhm. If I understand correctly, you are saying that some people are pretending to like his music because it is over the top and showy rather than actually good or enjoyable?
While it is possible these fake enjoyers exist, I'm fairly certain a lot of fans of Mr Twin's work like it in a straightforward sense of most music appreciation.
Personally, 'Vordhosbn', 'Windowlicker', 'Rhubarb'... etc are all great tracks. Are there some that I don't get on with? Sure, of course. However I can speak for myself when saying I'm not listening to the music performatively. At least, not much!
Even some AFX fans have the opinion that the stuff on Drukqs is "style over substance".
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I'm an example, in fact I've loved his music since the 90s and never played it for friends because I always assumed they wouldn't like it. And I'm definitely not being performative for myself. It was a bit surprising to me that his music became kind of legendary recently.
We need to put his music in the right historical context. In the time his early works were released he was truly different. I don't like his music, but I appreciate it, artistically. I like his art, I guess.
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> their music
Richard and James Aphex; the Aphex twins. :P
> leaves a doubt if some of the praise being heaped on it is 'perfomative'.
This sounds rather like someone that doesn't like art in general complaining about those that do. I've heard many people complain about "modern art" in the same way.
I think it's a valid enough opinion but I still like Aphex Twin's music for the same reasons I like Eno's.
"I don't like it, therefore everyone else who likes it must be only pretending"
Agreed, been this way for 30 years, and significant amount of effort by him and warp have been adding to cult of his mystique(actually many electronic music artists in the 90s/early 2000s). He is one of the last popular electronic musicians younger generations of "#DAWLESS" guys like now because he kept up that mystique which is basically impossible to have now in the current social media era.
I remember buying some of his tapes and cd's from Amoeba music in 1999 and the feeling they gave me. I often wonder what its like to been born in 2010 and never experiencing this.
> I often wonder what its like to been born in 2010 and never experiencing this.
It’s always amusing to see these cycles continue. If his music is indeed as good as you claim it will still be listened to - just as so much of the best music of the last 75 years is. People have been lamenting the loss of the thing they felt was their transformative experince, and each generation keeps finding a new generation defining experience
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Eh, Aphex fans and IDM more broadly has always been pretentious AF. I think there's a kayfabe effect going on where both the artists and the fans lean so far into the earnestness of it all that it surely has to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I suspect that's part of the appeal for some folks, the delight in being obtuse.
It doesn't bother me too much. Many indie scenes have this sort of self-consciously avant garde sub-movement - theater, dance, fashion, games...
While I find 99% of braindance to be aggressively unlistenable and/or thoroughly tedious, the 1% that isn't tends to be truly great. Imo the best thing that ever happened to this genre was digital record stores, because casual fans can skip over all the limited edition vinyls and albums full of abstract noodling and just pick up the bangers.
Yes, not to long ago I was looking into the Easter egg in Windowlicker, amazing. https://eeggs.com/items/34824.html
Wow, eeggs.com. Haven't thought about that site in years (maybe even decades).