aw man, you can't use today's behavioral standards to judge stuff people
did on the internet back before it was colonized by rapacious squares.
Online used to be a clear alternative to meatspace, not an extension of it,
and before scalable digital profiteering became the preferred path to
financial windfall in our culture, everybody online understood was a place
to escape from the strictures of IRL, not a newer and stronger means of
enforcing them.
obvs such threats would be a different story online today, but I think
we're all intelligent + ancient enough to understand that applying a
context-free condemnation of the past is a salve for your own feelings of
culpability, not a tool for bringing us closer to utopia...
On Fri, Jul 28, 2023 at 10:05 AM kent williams <chaircrusher@gmail.com>
wrote:
quoted 68 lines I could go through the whole litany of his assholishness - threatening
> I could go through the whole litany of his assholishness - threatening
> women with violent rape on bulletin boards in the 1990s "as a laugh,"
> his divorces, yadda yadda.
>
> I know people who know him, and my impression is that he's at turns a
> complete gentleman and a complete ass. It's best JUST to listen to the
> music.
>
> I love the work of Richard Wagner too, despite him being an
> antisemitic dog-kicker. In both cases I think they're neurodivergent
> weirdos who weren't properly socialized.
>
> On Fri, Jul 28, 2023 at 8:56 AM Rjyan Kidwell <cexwell@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Toxic sexist awot now?
> > What'd our mad Dicky boy say
> >
> > On Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 9:43 AM kent williams <chaircrusher@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> It's so weird to still be buying new Aphex Twin music, but I can't help
> it.
> >>
> >> It's important to realize that if he's working in the studio, he's not
> >> being a toxic sexist conspiracy theory crank. The more music he
> >> releases, and the less he speaks in public, the better.
> >>
> >> Oh, you want to know what I think of the music? It's more of his
> >> obsessive drum programming and melancholy chord sequences. "Blackbox
> >> Life Recorder 21f" at the beginning has a weird scraping sound that if
> >> I'm not mistaken is a filtered version of the chair squeak from
> >> Alberto Balsam.
> >>
> >> It isn't as elaborate a harmonic composition as Alberto Balsam, but it
> >> is a catchy beat with that vaguely sad harmonic lushness.
> >>
> >> zin2 test5 sounds like a continuation of Life recorder, with a similar
> >> chord progression, but the beat is more persistent, really a 140bpm
> >> breakbeat, but hand made (as opposed to sampled and chopped), sounding
> >> like he might be back programming his 30 year old Roland R8.
> >>
> >> "in a room7 F760" is more weepy chords and subtle acid bass with
> >> beats. It's odd that he's essentially made a 160bpm breakbeat track,
> >> with the shape of a Drum & Bass tune, but with a vibe that's miles
> >> away. There's a whole aesthetic world in the choice of swing
> >> strength. He's gone past the customary 5% swing of house music, into
> >> something that actually recalls the swinginess of 1960s cocktail jazz.
> >> His touch is light, in contrast with the bombast and drama that drive
> >> the top drum and bass tracks.
> >>
> >> "Blackbox Life Recorder 22 (Parallax Mix)" really only shares drum
> >> sounds and swing quantization strength with the first version.
> >> Imagine an ambient piece from SAW II being disrupted by a deeply swung
> >> TR606 beat.
> >>
> >> Overall impression: I really enjoy these tunes, but its clear that
> >> whatever rabbit holes Aphex Twin has been down in the last 30 years,
> >> he's still fixated on the sounds and vibes he constructed in the early
> >> 90s. This isn't a bad thing, but you can no longer expect anything
> >> shockingly new from him. Instead, he's focused on refining and
> >> extending that legacy.
> >>
> >> If you want the new new you can look elsewhere, but if you want to be
> >> both lulled and disturbed by familiar things made strange again, this
> >> is a great release.
> >>
> >> https://bleep.com/aphex-twin--blackbox-life-recorder-21f
>