yeah well i confess to being biased because aphex twin is basically my own personal musical god. i mean, shit.... i'm pretty sure he saw what the KLF did before him and said "you know, what if there was actual musical genius added to that kind of image?" and next thing you know the guy's taking the piss out of the press in the 90s showing off his scout tank (tho in fairness i believe that KLF had an actual tank with speakers blaring music/propaganda/etc), talking about submarines, and of course building up his legend (i got sound on a zx-81 sinclair when i was just a bored kid!) and so on and so forth.
but then the funny thing happened.... it turns out that the legends were true and he was indeed a "regular guy" who was "just like us" in that he had a soul, and when he had those two big chris-cunningham directed videos hit in 97 and 98 respectively, man, with the
come to daddy video MTV had that show on circa 97 called "twelve angry viewers" where they'd pit videos "against each other" in a popularity contest and aphex's CTD video won for a week straight and was retired as a champion. and squarepusher was dropping hard normal daddy and big loada and
he got a cunningham video too and it seemed like my favorite music was poised and positioned to pimpslap the prodigy / crystal method / etc out of the way and have their moment in the pop spotlight.
but then that aforementioned funny thing happened.... aphex dropped the windowlicker single /
video and then he promptly disappeared for 3.5 years until he came out with drukqs, a LP extended to 2xLP with a bunch of piano tracks (one famously sampled by kanye, oh and the album was 2xLP to fulfill the 2 albums remaining on his warp records contract, so he could release future stuff on his own label rephlex) and the electronic shit was fucking amazing..... but then he disappeared again. slagged off a bunch of old str8forward-electronic-tracks circa 04/05 as the "analord" series, and since then he's been having fun with the pseudonym game releasing stuff that isn't formally him but is totally him, like the tuss and steinvord and whatnot. he seems content to stay out of the spotlight nad make his ~50-100k+/year via royalties and high placement near the top of a bunch of european/asian/australian festivals, playing his pre-fabbed livesets from a laptop with a light show.... and thus the legacy of leaving the party fashionably early is maintained, tho if he ever releases another album it'll have all of us hardcore marks guaranteed and you know the press would lap it all up, with pitchfork ready to give it a 5.2 or whatever they gave drukQs because just releasing "more" brilliant music doesn't meet up to their hipster credentials of completely reinventing himself with each release like he did in the 90s.
so yeah, i mean, when radiohead cited him as an influence and andre3000 came out saying he digs afx and SP, let alone future mrs. cross amber tamblyn, it was like !!!! and give some deference cuz man, you know, seeing album covers from the late 90s where aphex had to do the jay-z pyramid thingy over one eye on the cover..... you can see how a real guy with a soul wouldn't want any part of the dog and pony show that is pop music, and while during the 98-01 dry spell i was kind of crestfallen that my favorite music never rose up and got the formal props that it deserved as being a fad/moment in pop music/culture, i totally understand it now and it only goes to cement by belief that i did a spot-on job of picking a musical hero.... cuz while i reckon any sort of celebrity/musician hero worship is fundamentally borne from a bit of folly, shit, my guy didnt hang out at the party way too long and make an ass of himself, which most 90s-heroes-of-ours often do.
c'est la vie. i'm glad he got the acknowledgement from radiohead and others, cuz in the wake of that corgan interview (which happened, tho i dont remember exactly when/where. i was big on electronic music msgboards around the early 00s so i remember it clear as day being just as outraged then as i am willing to laugh at billy now) i was just incredulous as there had to be some sort of recognition of this brilliant music that i unequivocally and inexorably love more than most, and well, to hear that my favorite genre of music was in its infacy til the unequivocal genius of billy corgan got to it.... ha.
and now, well, as friends who "sold out" and went hipster/indie-rock/gay (really) have told me over the years, my aphexian love is just "nostalgia" and even when i'd play him a mighty new ceephax acid crew liveset/song it'd just be brushed off as "nostalgia" cuz you know nothing is more original and future than going out and grabbing a guitar and laying down an effeminate riff and whining about your feelings. WHERE WE'RE GOING WE DON'T NEED.... CHORDS. * delorean zaps off to the future *
anyways, this has been weird semi-tangential hero worship with sini.... so thanks to the ~10 brave souls who read that, and the ~3 brave souls who clicked on a video. in the immortal words of marty mcfly: "you might not be ready for that.... but your kids will love it!" or as my friend would have insisted, "your kids loved it in the late 90s"
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Curious Hair wrote:
Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?