Aphex Twin Overview

Like many electronica artists, Richard D. James chose a handle for his recordings because he believes the music is more important than the man behind it. But why "Aphex Twin?" Music buffs can chew on several clues: Aphex is the name... [more]

Like many electronica artists, Richard D. James chose a handle for his recordings because he believes the music is more important than the man behind it. But why "Aphex Twin?" Music buffs can chew on several clues: Aphex is the name of a company that makes high-end audio products frequently used by James, and is also a registered trademark of Aphex Systems. Depending on which source you ask, the "Twin" could either be: Tom Middleton, James' early recording partner who shares his birthday; his dead brother who was also named Richard; or simply a cool-sounding word. James was born August 18, 1971 in Cornwall, England, to parents who met while working together in a mental hospital. According to James, his father sometimes gave LSD to patients and even took it a few times himself. Whether such a hallucinogenic history set the stage for the younger James' own surreal, intellectual musical meanderings remains open to interpretation. His first recordings were made in his early teens using cheap equipment that his parents furnished and electronics of his own devising. Quite often he would harvest the shells of old equipment but replace the circuitry with his own inventions. Initially, James didn't use computers for recording because he felt that they weren't powerful enough for his own purposes. Instead, he would modify traditional instruments -- he stretched the strings and flattened the hammers on an old piano -- so that he could record new and different sounds. These days, James does his recording, mixing, and sequencing on a Macintosh using Pro Tools and ReCycle, popular commercial programs for home-recording and mastering. From such humble beginnings have spewed forth a kind of "thinking man's" electronic music -- moody drones and techno-blips that are both hard to follow and intensely immersive. Though he's recorded under many different aliases and alongside many of his peers, in the past few years the name Aphex Twin has become recognizable in wider and wider musical circles. This mercurial artist has even gone so far as to release an Aphex Twin album entitled "Richard D. James." Other names that have fronted the mad genius of James include: Polygon Window, the Dice Man, Blue Calx, Power-Pill, Q-Chastic, AFX, Caustic Window, and GAK. James has also recorded for dozens of small record companies as a solo artist and as a remixer-for-hire. In this capacity, he has done hundreds of remixes that twist and shape other artists' songs to the sound of Aphex Twin's signature style of lightning-fast snare riffs, layers of noise, eclectic samples, backwards tracks, and plenty of tape and drum loops. He's worked alongside a diverse group of artists such as Beck, Philip Glass, Curve, Jesus Jones, Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, and, of course, many of his contemporaries in the electronica scene. Like many pioneers, James now spends his time recording his own music, playing an occasional DJ set, and running his own record label, Rephlex. As he continues to break new ground in the design of sound and texture, he's being recruited to compose movie soundtracks (including tracks in "Blade" and "Pi") and popular dance mixes. Most recently, some of his songs have been used in television commercials, which just goes to show that even the most underground musical revolution will eventually leak into the pop culture of the wallet-holding masses. [show less]