Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 427
February 2, 2014
Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 12 (“White Blur 1”)
I am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a month after my book’s publication. More on my Aphex Twin book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com. The plan is to do this countdown in the reverse order, from last track to first. For reference, an early draft of the introduction is online, as is the book’s seven-chapter table of contents. The book’s publisher posted an interview with me when I was midway through the writing process.
There is some irony to doing this countdown since the book is already shipping to folks who pre-ordered it via an online retailer such as Amazon, but the official date stands, and that’s the target — the end date — of this countdown, February 13. And for what it’s worth, while the physical copies are mailing now from retailers, the Kindle version won’t turn on until February 13. Still, the digital version costs less.
As I’ve noted on Twitter, this track-a-day approach is exactly the opposite of the book’s approach, which is a collection of interrelated, reporting-based essays.
Doing this daily countdown project in advance of the Selected Ambient Works Volume II book’s release is — the presentation as serial blog posts with YouTube embeds aside — anything but casual.
Pretty much the last thing you want to do after a book is published is to revisit the subject in depth. The last thing you want to do is unearth things you wished you’d covered differently, or material that would have further strengthened your argument.
Yet here I go, listening daily to tracks as I did during the year of the book’s writing — well, slightly differently. During the writing process, I’d put a single track on repeat for the day; for this countdown, I’m listening back to confirm some thoughts, and to reconcile realizations I’ve had subsequent to the intial writing.
During that lengthy book-production period, no track was as central to my listening and thinking as the 11th/12th, depending on your edition: “White Blur I,” as it has come to be known. It played a central role in my initial proposal to the publisher (33 1/3, an imprint of Bloomsbury), and its importance didn’t diminish as the writing unfolded. The track more than any other on the album foresees the future rise of generative systems in electronic music. This is because it is built on that most ancient of automated instruments, the wind chime.
As I noted a few days ago, the three tracks that follow “White Blur 1″ on Selected Ambient Works Volume II can be said to tell, in compact form, the complete story of the album: “Blue Calx,” melody; “Parallel Stripes,” ambience; “Shiny Metal Rods,” minimalist beats. In that thinking, “White Blur 1″ would fall into the “Shiny Metal Rods” category — or between “Shiny Metal Rods” and “Parallel Stripes” — but because of the irregularity of the rhythmic material, it truly deserves a category of its own.
And recently over at the Disquiet Junto, the weekly open-call music-making series I run, we did a project informed by this track. It’s titled “Aeolian Metrics.”
And here it is reversed:
More on my Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Volume II book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com.
Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.
February 1, 2014
Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 13 (“Blue Calx”)
I am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a month after my book’s publication. More on my Aphex Twin book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com. The plan is to do this countdown in the reverse order, from last track to first. For reference, an early draft of the introduction is online, as is the book’s seven-chapter table of contents. The book’s publisher posted an interview with me when I was midway through the writing process.
There is some irony to doing this countdown since the book is already shipping to folks who pre-ordered it via an online retailer such as Amazon, but the official date stands, and that’s the target — the end date — of this countdown, February 13. And for what it’s worth, while the physical copies are mailing now from retailers, the Kindle version won’t turn on until February 13. Still, the digital version costs less.
As I’ve noted on Twitter, this track-a-day approach is exactly the opposite of the book’s approach, which is a collection of interrelated, reporting-based essays.
No new shots of the book in situ today, but this via the Twitter account of the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, branch of the Rough Trade record shop in response to a reader’s query as to whether it’ll be in stock. There is, it so happens, a small bit in the book about the Sire label’s corporate account at the original Rough Trade shop in London.
@psi yes we'll have it by next Friday
— Rough Trade NYC (@RoughTradeNYC) January 31, 2014
There’s a reason why the two “extra” tracks on Selected Ambient Works Volume II, “Hankie” and “Stone in Focus,” appear close to either end of the record, at positions 4 and 19. It’s so that in both their absence, “Blue Calx” remains in the center: either track 13 of 25 or track 12 of 23. (In the edition of the record with 24 tracks, it’s slightly off center, remaining at 13, with 12 tracks preceding and 11 after.) It’s both the center and the odd track out in various ways — the one with a title expressed in actual, you know, words, right there on the album sleeve; one of the few (“Lichen” is another) with a proper melody; the only to have appeared elsewhere prior to album release (on the 1992 compilation The Philosophy of Sound and Machine). There’s much on the track in the book so I won’t go into much detail here, except to note that the melody always, to me, brings to mind a muted edit, a melodic reduction, of “Auld Lang Syne.” Auld lang sine wave.
Here is the version recorded by the ensemble Alarm Will Sound, in an arrangement by Caleb Burhans, about whom there is much in the book:
Here it is reversed:
More on my Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Volume II book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com.
Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.
Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet
Classical Music Is Zombies because BBC notes its hostility to women ( http://t.co/0uuhaZfP8R) + Slate says it's dead (http://t.co/rI8hIU1WS4 ) ->
Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Vol II reverse-order daily track countdown: #20 (“Hexagon”) http://t.co/RhlaNho9Vq (w/ @vuzhmusic cameo) ->
Today's Aphex SAW2 countdown ("Hexagon," #20) includes 5 versions: original, slowed down, with live drums, reversed: http://t.co/jxFKG9gh6I ->
These news articles in which the accompanying photos are selfies of the victim or suspect. ->
So, they set their mixes of other people's music free for download, and yet not their own music. ->
"Shane Carruth hasn’t shared any public sounds. Follow Shane Carruth for updates of their new sounds." ->
According to the HBO app, all 4 Lethal Weapon movies are "action," and all all but the second are "comedy." ->
RIP, jazz saxophonist Arthur Doyle (69): http://t.co/DAweOKFbYc. Yes, the one namechecked by Sonic Youth on Sonic Nurse. ->
RT @Le_Berger: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS, but more for your participation really. Listen & read the guidelines…. http://t.co/CCSsVFsm3v ->
Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Vol II reverse-order daily track countdown: #19 (“Stone in Focus”) http://t.co/m1GDQuXkh1 ->
Today's Aphex SAW2 countdown ("Stone in Focus," #19) includes 4 versions: original, cover, slowed down, reversed: http://t.co/QOgDigoNIw ->
RT @333books: Marc Weidenbaum awaits the Feb 13 release of his Aphex Twin SAW2 book with a daily track-by-track analysis: http://t.co/02wo3… ->
"Anytime you feel the pain." The conference call's hold music is the Beatles' "Hey Jude." ->
"Mrs. Patmore is not what you'd call a futurist." ->
Something depressing—and telling—about my Wired magazine subscription triggering an email suggestion that I subscribe to a golf magazine. ->
low-flying jet + washing machine + wind chimes + school marching band's drum practice + car alarm … #whatdoyouhearnow? ->
A clarification about my Aphex Twin SAW2 track-by-track descriptive countdown: it's the opposite of my 33 1/3 book, which is themed essays. ->
33 tracks, with 6 or so hours to go, in #freebasel project honoring imprisoned Creative Commons software advocate: https://t.co/nCC6KscR3t ->
The URL inanimategif dot com is not taken. Just saying. ->
After listening to Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works V.II daily for year-plus, I took a few months off. Nice to revisit for the track posts. ->
Later today a SAW2 track post on #18 ("Windowsill"), perhaps the most X Files–y on an album released less than a year after X Files debuted. ->
Super cool. I'll include in tonight's daily SAW2 track countdown. RT @Schemawound: @disquiet Book Acquired. Congrats http://t.co/ijN0jEN8p6 in reply to Schemawound ->
Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Vol II reverse-order daily track countdown: #18 (“Windowsill”) http://t.co/PmltbOGNjZ @333books ->
Today's Aphex SAW2 countdown ("Windowsill," #18), 2 versions: original, reversed: http://t.co/PmltbOGNjZ + @schemawound proof-of-book shot ->
RIP, Pete Seeger (b. 1919). My three-year-old has had "If I Had a Hammer" on heavy rotation for months. ->
One more flower is gone. ->
Today's Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Vol. II track, working backward daily toward February 13, will be "Z Twig," the album's shortest. ->
Via LinkedIn email: "Congratulate [Person X] on the new job. [Person X] is now Composer/Performer/Bandleader at various." ->
New semester of my course on role of sound in the media landscape begins in 24 hours. Think I'll do more class-by-class blogging this time. ->
Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Vol II (for my @333books book) reverse-order daily track countdown: #17 (“Z Twig”) http://t.co/rX7i0wLlja ->
Tuesday noon siren in San Francisco: http://t.co/FrVmKgO1Mx ->
Hoping no one joins this conference call until after the Beatles "I Will" hold music ends. ->
An IFTTT so when I add a word to my Swype keyboard dictionary in Android the word is then posted to my Twitter account. ->
Yowza. "48 Fela Kuti albums have been uploaded to Bandcamp": http://t.co/Ky676DzCRB (via http://t.co/hpasyIDklH) ->
"Afrobeat made me realize how great a cowbell player can be." That's the wise @durkkooistra on Fela (over at http://t.co/6XQHhbKxyA). ->
Madlib releases more music than most people listen to. People who listen to Madlib listen to more than Madlib. What does Madlib listen to? ->
First sound class of the semester: an introduction to listening, everyday soundscapes, clairaudience, sonification. ->
Guy waking around with absolutely massive three-ring binder labeled Foundations of Commerce and Management. ->
Good day in sound class. Great students, mix of BA and MFA. Talked about Fringe credits + Kit Kat commercials. Did two listening exercises. ->
Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Vol II (@333books) reverse-order daily track countdown: #16 (“Grey Stripe”) http://t.co/PmltbOGNjZ ->
Today's Aphex SAW2 countdown ("Grey Strip," #16), 2 versions: original, reversed: http://t.co/QlKMMMaN2G ->
Proud of past week's @djunto: 36 ancient-city soundscapes draw attention to plight of jailed coder Bassel Khartabil: http://t.co/ikhpwYIzkr ->
The most telling thing about that "Academia Explained: Muppets" thing that's circulating is it leaves out adjuncts. ->
RT @compactrobot: why is there no Aphex Twin Unicode charatcer? ->
Working on trimming chapters of my Aphex Twin SAW2 book for reading events. Suddenly the idea of the "radio" edit makes sense. ->
Guy who wrote new 33 1/3 book on Dilla's Donuts (no offense to rest of my cohort, but that's the one I'm most excited about) is @333donuts. ->
For this week's @djunto project, we'll insert musical objects into an urban soundscape. ->
This week's @djunto inspired by the visual art of @wcraghead. ->
This week's Disquiet Junto project involves inserting musical objects into an urban soundscape: http://t.co/z6Q2ki6xoy ->
Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Vol II (@333books) reverse-order daily track countdown: #15 (“Shiny Metal Rods”) http://t.co/ShlQSKSdNz. ->
33 1/3 announced a new call for books. Several records once contracted are now open: London Calling, Enter the Wu (36 Chambers), Biophilia. ->
Instructions for new round of 33 1/3 pitches here: http://t.co/IdEl9cgQNm. This is the series my Aphex Twin SAW 2 book is in. ->
The day is young but I'm pretty sure nothing for me is gonna beat watching someone purchase a single donut with a credit card. ->
My memory of watching Space: 1999 upon its release was that its closest competitor was reruns of Star Trek. ->
Oh, cool. Batman Vs. Superman is really a sequel to The Social Network, not to Man of Steel. ->
Aside from watching Helix, the day is over. So, yes, nothing today beat witnessing someone purchase a single donut with a credit card. ->
Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Vol II (@333books) reverse-order daily track countdown: #14 (“Parallel Stripes”) http://t.co/W4pi1KfAgJ ->
3 consecutive tracks (“Blue Calx,” melody; “Parallel Stripes,” ambience; “Shiny Metal Rods,” minimalist beats) tell the SAW2 album's story. ->
January 31, 2014
Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 14 (“Parallel Stripes”)
I am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a month after my book’s publication. More on my Aphex Twin book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com. The plan is to do this countdown in the reverse order, from last track to first. For reference, an early draft of the introduction is online, as is the book’s seven-chapter table of contents. The book’s publisher posted an interview with me when I was midway through the writing process.
There is some irony to doing this countdown since the book is already shipping to folks who pre-ordered it via an online retailer such as Amazon, but the official date stands, and that’s the target — the end date — of this countdown, February 13. And for what it’s worth, while the physical copies are mailing now from retailers, the Kindle version won’t turn on until February 13. Still, the digital version costs less.
As I’ve noted on Twitter, this track-a-day approach is exactly the opposite of the book’s approach, which is a collection of interrelated, reporting-based essays.
And it’s great to see it showing up in people’s homes:
.@disquiet's new book on SAWII is amazing. If you're an Aphex Twin fan you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy! pic.twitter.com/oLuPL2gKrO
— Jordan Bartee (@jpbartee) January 31, 2014
As mentioned yesterday, the most intense, beat-driven track on the album is arguably “Shiny Metal Rods,” and one should be sensitive to the plight of an individual who listens to the preceding track, “Parallel Stripes,” cozies up to the warm embrace of the speakers (or, forbid such a thing, turns up the headphones) during its lulling static-as-substance ambience, and then is hit with the intensity of “Shiny Metal Rods.” As I write in the book, this track is sine wave as form, and the wave emerges out of roughness, out of a “burr of static,” as I put it, that is the equivalent of a fried radio signal. The track just prior to this is, in essence, the album’s single, and also its literal centerpiece (track 13 of 25), “Blue Calx.” Combined, “Blue Calx” (melody), “Parallel Stripes” (pure ambience), and “Shiny Metal Rods” (minimalist beats) in just three consecutive tracks tell the story of this album. More on “Blue Calx” tomorrow.
And here it is reversed:
More on my Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Volume II book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com.
Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.
January 30, 2014
Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 15 (“Shiny Metal Rods”)
I am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a month after my book’s publication. More on my Aphex Twin book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com. The plan is to do this countdown in the reverse order, from last track to first. For reference, an early draft of the introduction is online, as is the book’s seven-chapter table of contents. The book’s publisher posted an interview with me when I was midway through the writing process.
There is some irony to doing this countdown since the book is already shipping to folks who pre-ordered it via an online retailer such as Amazon, but the official date stands, and that’s the target — the end date — of this countdown, February 13. And for what it’s worth, while the physical copies are mailing now from retailers, the Kindle version won’t turn on until February 13. Still, the digital version costs less.
As I’ve noted on Twitter, this track-a-day approach is exactly the opposite of the book’s approach, which is a collection of interrelated, reporting-based essays.
And it’s great to see it showing up in people’s homes:
“Shiny Metal Rods” is another track I explore in some detail in the book (chapter two: “Background Beats”), so I won’t belabor the point here except to say: if there is any track that gives lie to the oft-repeated idea that this album is “beatless,” it is “Shiny Metal Rods.”
The track is little more than beats — hard, driving, slow, steady beats that could be from a bootleg of a Consolidated or Meat Beat Manifesto concert.
And pity the poor listener who nuzzled up to the stereo’s speakers — or maxed out the headphones — during the album’s prior track, “Parallel Stripes,” more on which tomorrow.
And here it is reversed:
More on my Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Volume II book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com.
Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.
Disquiet Junto Project 0109: Craghead Sketch
Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate.
This project was published in the evening, California time, on Thursday, January 30, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, February 3, 2014, as the deadline.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0109: Craghead Sketch
For this week’s project, we’ll insert musical objects into an urban soundscape.
The steps are as follows:
Step 1: Download the field recording of a walk through New York City at this URL:
https://soundcloud.com/craghead/sound...
Step 2: Listen to the track and note moments when space allows for the insertion of a musical object. Try to locate at least one space every 30 or 45 seconds.
Step 3: In each of those spots, layer in a unique musical object (e.g., a tone, a riff, a beat, some combination thereof). Each musical object should be self-contained (i.e., not overlap with each other).
Background: The project is derived from the drawings of the very talented illustrator Warren Craghead, himself a Junto member and participant. Among Craghead’s artistic practice is the act of leaving Post-its and other small drawings in public places. This project is an attempt to find a musical equivalent of his art. Examples of Craghead’s work can be seen in this recent post:
http://disquiet.com/2014/01/17/gestur...
And on his own website:
Deadline: Monday, February 3, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: Your finished work should be 3:36 in length — same as the source material.
Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0109-cragheadsketch” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
Download: It is preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track, be sure to include this information:
More on this 109th Disquiet Junto project (“Insert musical objects into an urban soundscape.”) at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/01/30/disqui...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Image from Warren Craghead’s website:
January 29, 2014
Rainy Day IDM
Yesterday’s featured track took the chitinous sound of insects as the inspiration for its beats. Today’s track likewise takes nature as its point of origin, but more along the lines of the Aphex Twin song mentioned earlier. In the Aphex Twin piece, “Grey Stripe” off Selected Ambient Works Volume II, the audio is more sound than music — that is, along a continuum of conventional understandings of those terms. “A Hard Rain” by Eric Kuehnl begins in similar territory, as the title suggests. The rapid rainfall is a flurry of pinprick static. Then, 20 seconds or so in, just as the rain has taken on the sense of white noise, a rubbery, fanciful beat, reminiscent of ancient IDM, kicks in. Its frenetic energy and burbling, brittle acoustics build on the natural rhythms of the rain, which seem to continue to linger in the background.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/erickuehnl, where there is more from Kuehnl, who is based in Berkeley, California.
Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 16 (“Grey Stripe”)
I am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a month after my book’s publication. More on my Aphex Twin book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com. The plan is to do this countdown in the reverse order, from last track to first. For reference, an early draft of the introduction is online, as is the book’s seven-chapter table of contents. The book’s publisher posted an interview with me when I was midway through the writing process.
There is some irony to doing this countdown since the book is already shipping to folks who pre-ordered it via an online retailer such as Amazon, but the official date stands, and that’s the target — the end date — of this countdown, February 13. And for what it’s worth, while the physical copies are mailing now from retailers, the Kindle version won’t turn on until February 13. Still, the digital version costs less.
As I’ve noted on Twitter, this track-a-day approach is exactly the opposite of the book’s approach, which is a collection of interrelated, reporting-based essays.
And it’s great to see it showing up in people’s homes:
Got my copy of the 33 1/3 Aphex Twin book by @disquiet! pic.twitter.com/LqCbSvWN1j
— Kyle Machulis (@qDot) January 30, 2014
score. @disquiet pic.twitter.com/tOGkj6hnmE
— §VN HAMM3R (@SunHammer) January 29, 2014
If there are some tracks on Selected Ambient Works Volume II that are true to received wisdom about the album, that lack a proper beat, that lack the serial impact of something one might characterize as percussion, then track 16 (aka “Grey Stripe”), all four minutes and three quarters of it, might best stand for them. It sounds less like something readily recognizable as music, less even like ambient music, and more like a thunderstorm, a hurricane perhaps, as experienced from deep inside a building on a high floor, where the impact of the muffle is mirrored between how it sounds and how the building sways. This could be foley material lifted from a filing cabinet in the archives at Warner Bros. pictures — or perhaps, better yet, Hammer or Universal, sounds not from a stormy voyage out in the ocean, but from something in the territory of pulpy horror. It is an open-maw whorl of fierce, slow-moving wind.
And here it is reversed:
More on my Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Volume II book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com.
Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.
January 28, 2014
Insects as Role Models
Insectoid activity is a common source of raw material and inspiration for electronic music, notably in the form of cicada whirring. For Dave Keifer, who goes by Cagey House, it’s a particularly feral, anxious kind of pest motion that provides a role model. His “January Insects” sounds like a nature film in time-lapse, fast-forward mode, a cacophony on the order of Conlon Nancarrow’s most outlandish player-piano work, with the whiz-bang joy of a Carl Stalling invention.
Track posted for free download at soundcloud.com/acts-of-silence. Found via the always excellent actsofsilence.com. Get the full set for free download at archive.org. More from the releasing netlabel at mavrecords.webs.com.
Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 17 (“Z Twig”)
I am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a month after my book’s publication. More on my Aphex Twin book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com. The plan is to do this countdown in the reverse order, from last track to first. For reference, an early draft of the introduction is online, as is the book’s seven-chapter table of contents. The book’s publisher posted an interview with me when I was midway through the writing process.
There is some irony to doing this countdown since the book is already shipping to folks who pre-ordered it via an online retailer such as Amazon, but the official date stands, and that’s the target — the end date — of this countdown, February 13. And for what it’s worth, while the physical copies are mailing now from retailers, the Kindle version won’t turn on until February 13. Still, the digital version costs less.
As I’ve noted on Twitter, this track-a-day approach is exactly the opposite of the book’s approach, which is a collection of interrelated, reporting-based essays.
At just over two minutes in length, the track “Z Twig” is the shortest on the album. Its brevity is balanced by good cheer. It is arguably the album’s most upbeat, quite far from the nervous-making ambiguousness that haunts much of the record.
There are undercurrents of tension, though. To begin with, there’s the very start of it: a blood-in-the-ear throb that quick subsides as the blippy grid of beats kicks in. There’s another round of dark tones that appears around three quarters of a minute in, when the beats — this is a track conceived almost entirely as a series of overlaid beats — momentarily play in harmonic dissonance with all those around them. This beat in question, lower and darker than the others, which tend between blissfully alert and vibrantly eager, moves a partial step away from the others, and the result is that sonic moiré that occurs when near likes come in close proximity. It’s the audio equivalent of an out-of-register print job, like when the Sunday comics are poorly reproduced and one or more of the layers of color evidence a small but noticeable shift.
Ultimately, “Z Twig” is a series of beats that intersect in two ways: there is the rhythm of the initial beats themselves, and the echo effect, borrowed from dub music, which sends out waves of vapor-trail rhythmic sequences that then all in turn interact with each other, ripples in a ghost pool where none of the expanding patterns actually affect each other directly, just are heard in context of each other.
Here is a reworked version by Wisp, who uploaded a handful of these to the Internet and was later signed to Rephlex, Aphex Twin’s own record label. More on Wisp in the book:
This is an extended version, edited together by a listener for the original wasn’t sufficient (“This has long been one of my favorite RDJ songs, but I always found myself wanting more. This is my attempt at fixing this problem. I am by no means a professional editor and this version is not perfect or seamless.”):
And here it is reversed:
More on my Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Volume II book at amazon.com and Bloomsbury.com.
Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.
