These last few days I've been listening quite a lot to Aphex Twin's albums and EPs. The truth is that he's an artist I've always followed, and I've enjoyed going through his discography. I wanted to highlight a couple of ideas that have come to my mind during these listens.
First of all, something I really like about these albums is the apparent simplicity of the production of many (not all) tracks, compared to much of today's electronic music - I don't miss the lack of extreme compression with sidechain at all! There is a brainy choice and design of sounds, which are used in a fairly uniform and functional way. Many times they are small kits, which work very well together: bass, pad, lead and percussion. Some of the more primitive tracks follow a lot the “mute and unmute channels” scheme to define their structure. It's a very simple form of composition, with not a very good reputation, but I think there really is a place for it in electronic music.
Secondly, sometimes there is a brutal contrast between one track and another within the same album. There are some discs that are more uniform than others, but I think that nowadays few people take so many risks... It's something I value very positively.
It always inspires me to plug in my old machines and try to do something in the style... But I never get anything that cool, of course...
-Originally published in CoHost