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i tried to find this cd everywhere to no avail, yes i love ebay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Modern day classical music, a bloke messing around with electronics in the seclusion of the Cornish countryside, a genius, a man with ideas above his station so off his trolley he drives his own personal tank around the land surrounding Twin Towers. Take your pick, really. Richard D James ( aka Aphex Twin ) early in his career produced a bunch of Techno ( check out the superlative "Didgeridoo" ) as well as a bunch of what can only be classified as 'ambient' music. Now mention ambient and people will spring up 'A-Ha! Brian Eno!' and the conversation surrounding the relative merits or otherwise of Aphex Twin will get lost in a tribute to the balding professor of rock music that is Brian Eno. Fact is this music owes absolutely nothing to the music of Brian Eno. Richard D James as I mentioned earlier was very much in seclusion growing up in the Cornish countryside. Whilst that doesn't mean it's impossible he listened to Brian Eno non-stop through his childhood, it does added to the fact the music of Brian Eno has NEVER been mentioned by Richard himself render any attempts to marginalise or lessen the impact of the very singular music of the Aphex Twin less of an issue altogether. A complete misunderstanding in fact. Ok, so ambient wasn't invented by the Aphex Twin. But ambient is only the half of it, anyway. A certain something is happening here. Ambient is a stripping away of everything to leave the bare essentials, often a single melody line with 'atmospheric' new age sound effects over the top. That isn't at all what is happening here. Lets take opener "Xtal" as an example. Little electronic shuffling cymbal sounds, a melody line, a soft bass beat - sampled heavenly female 'da da, do da' ethereal vocal sounds. The main melody line continues, a second appears underneath. In effect you get two ambient songs layered over the top of one another. Other melody lines appear. Second song "Tha" stretches a single beat and rhythm over nine minutes and layers variations over that beat. "Pulsewidth" sounds truly otherworldly, a sound that could only have been achieved by the Aphex Twin. Why? He build all of his own instrumentation. There is little technological or 'cold' sound here as a result. "Pulsewidth" in particular sounds very human, very analogue, and not at all 'digital'. I won't go through all of the pieces on this album. They are in places difficult to grasp and pin down, difficult to hold onto if always beautiful. There is a sense of the music shifting and changing, floating off altogether. We do get "Green Calx" with a mess of electronic noises over a strong melody line and the beautiful one minute long "i" which points the way towards this records follow-up set. Every single piece here is melody based rather than based just upon its feel or atmosphere. Yeah, this is ambient music, I mean, it can't easily be classified as anything else. But, as I've said, there is much else going on here. A startling entry in the mind and music of Richard D James as well as a highly recommended work in its own right.Read full review
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