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Music CD - Aphex Twin: Richard D. James Album
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Music CD: Richard D. James Album
Artist: Aphex Twin
List Price: $11.98
Our Price: $7.93
Your Save: $ 4.05 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Rhino / Wea
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Tracks:
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1. 4
2. Cornish Acid
3. Peek 824545201
4. Fingerbib
5. Corn Mouth
6. To Cure A Weakling Child
7. Goon Gumpos
8. Yellow Cal X
9. Girl/Boy Song
10. Log N Rock Witch
11. Milkman
12. Inkey $
13. Girl/Boy (18 Pound Snore Rush Mix)
14. Beetles
15. Girl/Boy (Redruth Mix)
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0075596201025
Label: Rhino / Wea
Manufacturer: Rhino / Wea
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Rhino / Wea
Release Date: 1997-01-28
Studio: Rhino / Wea
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Engulfing ... but in a good way
Comment: I have the European version of the album so I will be reviewing based on the first 10 tracks.
Intense, fierce, engaging. I really like this album. 4 kicks off the whole album with such a fever pitch that it commands your attention. You may ask why only 4 stars? I'll give you 2 answers, Peek 824545201 and Logon Rock Witch. They have got to be 2 of my least favorite tracks from AT. It's a shame because the remaining tracks are insanely good. Since I have the European release, I too have a gripe about it's length. This could have been an EP as it clocks in at barely 30 minutes.
Standouts: 4, Fingerbib and Yellow Calx.
Enjoy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Perverse Migraines
Comment: Huge berserk burning compositions employ the shock motif. Their overwhelming physical awkwardness exhausts the listener. Strange fusions of mechanical electronic crankshaft rhythms come across as illiterate pompus headaches. James' role as "genius loci" is based upon his staggering musical vulgarity.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 4 and 1/2 stars.
Comment: weird and wonderful stuff in the shiny metal of this disc. it's an electronic spazz-out tempered with lush ambient carpeting for your ears to walk on. at times it feels as if you are inside a musical pinball machine and brain is being used for the pinball. if lewis carroll had dreamed music instead of lunatic books it might have sounded like this. your aural center becomes the rabbitt hole, and it's fun falling down and down. definitely headphone music. doesn't work quite as well being tossed to you from speakers. yes, headphones required. and i recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Terrifying album!!!!!!!!!
Comment: Yeah, if you look at the cover and judge the album by it. Why am I telling you this? No Clue.
Aphex Twin will prove to you that electronic music is a worthy genre, _______ close minded rock fans. Just for the record, Richard D. James himself dosen't really like rock and roll (Radiohead asked for him to tour with him, he said no because he dosen't like them! HA!). He probalaley thinks the same way about your music that you electronic haters think about his music. How's that for a slap in the face?
None of the songs miss the mark on this album, and there isn't a dull moment. Like DJ Shadow, Aphex Twin melds an image of his music, whether it's the image of a creepy old witch or the polar opposites of a boy and a girl. The beats are pulversing and tasty (yeah, stupid), and the melodies he puts over it are contrasted nicely. A good example would be Girl/Boy song. Aphex Twin dosen't set his machines on auto-pilot. Those who hate europop's _______, simple beats will dig the beats on here. Words can't describe it as well as sound samples (hint hint).
Technical mumbjo-jumbo aside, how do all these great concepts make great music?
Well, I said it before, but the images I can get from this album are outstanding. Take, for example, Loon Rock Witch. A creepy bell chimes in the backround, weird, up and down sounds. With a combination of different things, James totally can conjure up and image of a creepy, sinister witch, standing on a rock in Portland, on a dark stormy, rainy night, looking at the sleeping village. Beetles has already been said by the amazon reviewer, but imagine somebody frying beetles with a magnifying glass. THe other images aren't as easy to figure out, but then again, it may just be telling you to figure them out yourself. Only Richard will truly know the reason why he created the songs, even if if was to entertain us and get us listening. Could be disturbing things as well, heck, just look at the cover.
The bonus tracks actually are just tacked on, but they aren't bad, in fact, they are quite good, but they can't compare to tracks 1-10, which are the main tracks originally released. For people wanting to buy this album, don't be fooled, this album isn't that disturbing. Don't judge a book by it's cover...
9.5/10
Customer Rating:
Summary: insane
Comment: This guy is insane and awsome. The music is polished, yet insane. Crazy insane!
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Editorial Reviews:
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If techno ever does become the sound of young America, don't expect Richard James to be its poster boy, deserving though he may be. A native of Cornwall, England, James is obsessed with the mechanics of music making: As a kid, he took apart and reassembled the living room piano. Under the names Aphex Twin, Polygon Window, AFX, and other aliases too numerous to mention, he showed that he could make entire tracks with the sounds produced by tapping on a Coke can. Like the indie rockers of yore, he revels in his marginality because of the creative freedom it gives him. His full-length U.S. debut, Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994), includes some of the most serene sounds this side of the Orb, but his favorite hobby is the not-at-all-blissful pastime of driving a Daimler Ferret Mark 3 tank through his parents' backyard. None of his recordings have captured the competing impulses to lull you to sleep and blast out your eardrums as well as Richard D. James, his third and best album. As the title indicates, James has turned inward for inspiration, painting aural pictures of real and imagined scenes from his west country childhood. "Goongumpas" is a fanciful, playful tune that wouldn't sound out of place on the soundtrack to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. As his adventures with the family upright indicate, James was a bit of a devil even as a child. "Beetles" is the sound of a boy frying bugs on the sidewalk with a magnifying glass, and "To Cure a Weakling Child" shows flashes of the sort of sadism found only on preschool playgrounds. If you still doubt that young Richard developed early on, the romantic Nino Rota-style strings on "Girl/Boy Song" are just made for passionate seductions, and the tune appears in three mixes, each one hot and hornier than the one before. The raucous undercurrents of even his calmest tunes and the sources of many of his most common sounds are what link James to the rock tradition. With Richard D. James, the artist solidifies his position as an electronic music mastermind who has earned a spot beside such well-respected innovators--whether or not he's destined for stardom. --Jim Derogatis
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