That incredible work from @digiphex electronics on the Polyend Tracker: ua-cam.com/video/QVmGnTgyUCQ/v-deo.html Trevor Wishart's Audible Design PDF (we hugged Trevor's server to death, I'll upload a backup somewhere if I get permission to redistribute 😬): www.trevorwishart.co.uk/AUDIBLE_DESIGN.pdf A video of me making linear drum/glitchiness on an old workstation: ua-cam.com/video/kgGO8cxFB6g/v-deo.html Okay, big list of things to check out that were more or less ambiguously used. Not for the faint of heart. Please dive in! Old hard/software: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OctaMED www.muzines.co.uk/articles/digidesign-turbosynth/2295 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_Music_Machine en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum www.muzines.co.uk/articles/dr-ts-tiger-cub/451 www.muzines.co.uk/articles/c-lab-notator-logic/5491 www.vintagesynth.com/casio/FZ20M (for timestretches) sourceforge.net/projects/playerpro/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPIC Stuff we cannot find much about in 2024: PDS Soundview (mentioned here www.jstor.org/stable/3680904 ) Stuff you can easily run today: www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ www.composersdesktop.com/ www.ircam.fr/ supercollider.github.io/ uisoftware.com/metasynth/ www.iannix.org/en/ inagrm.com/en
This is amazing! Thank you! (edit: I still use my Atari ST with the Sonus sonic editor, and Masterpiece sequencer at times...Love this old school stuff!).
Awesome. This is a goldmine. I subscribed to your channel for some random non-music-creation videos the algorithm recommended.. and then saw your spotify self-publishing vids at exactly the time I needed them, and I've gradually learned that you have a deep backlog of experience that is so aligned with my ancient pre-MIDI and MIDI explorations. I wrote sound apps on my old 128k Mac, played with giant, wall-sized Moog synths, dove deep in reel-to-reel tape experimentation, got the first MIDI interface available for Mac and went crazy programming sequences ... which led to me designing the "Timeline" interface in AfterEffects (actually the "Sequencer" animation interface for Infii-D .. which was then ported to AfterEffects before Adobe bought CoSA)... then toured full time playing guitar and sax with a jam band, ...and on and on. Now I'm just noodling in Logic, trying to justify myself. This kind of video hits exactly how you intended it to. Thank you for continuing to post great content!! Keep it coming. :)
"...and I realized I can indeed do whatever I want..." I was in a metal band some 25 years ago. We weren't huge, but had some dedicated fans. To the point at least when we needed to replace our 2nd guitarist we found someone who already knew how to play the songs on the demo. Our drummer wrote all the music. One day he picked me up and he was listening to us in his car. "Isn't it weird listening to your own band?" "No. I made the songs I want to listen to. If anyone else wants to listen, that's cool." I realized then that making music to appeal to a certain group of people, be it club kids, or metalheads, hardcore kids, doesn't work. You've already set a limit for yourself, creatively speaking. Play what you want to hear, and the chances are there are other people who want to hear it also.
Absolutely love this! "If you build it they will come" comes to mind. Love artists in any form that divert from the beaten path. Absurdism/Abstractism creates a new path and thought pattern.
This right here. That's exactly why I make music, do arts and just exist. To make the things I wanna hear..speaking of which, do you have any copies of your demo around or (hopefully) transfered digitally?
Saw Aphex Twin twice ,late 80s/early 90's. Awesome experience. First gig, he literally laid down on the stage floor on his side. All the gear was laid out. He was playing Tetris on a computer the whole 2hr show. Sound was phenominal. Second gig he just walked off after 30min, whilst the sound kept going for another hour or so. Definitely no farks given by this dude.
@properjob79 his music is still very much alive and people are getting into it without even the recognition of how much talent it took... this music was way ahead of its time as a gen z person... denying people's enjoyment in music says more about you than the people who can find enjoyment in it
I grew up in Cornwall near Richard in the same era. It was a weird, dark, damp, grey place for much of the year. I get where his inspiration comes from. Love that some of the samples are just things like his mum moving a chair. Brings back evocative memories of youth. It's great to see someone from there inspiring with a global reach.
Aphex Twin is already beautiful but when you learn he made that name up as a kid in reaction to his actual brother that passed away, it becomes even more beautiful.
It wasn't his actual twin, it was his older brother that the parents were going to name "Richard". Then when he was stillborn, they gave the name "Richard" to their next born son.
7:35 Bucephalus was the name of Alexander the Great’s horse, who in the stories was wild and untamable, until Alexander came along and was able to tame him. I always interpreted the title to be “the taming of the bouncing ball”, in that he breaks down the sound of a bouncing ball and uses it to make a million other sounds to create music.
I just assumed he named it that because it's unique and alliterative but I prefer your interpretation. The fact that it's such a *specific and proper noun* adds more weight to your theory
I was at his 2008 Coachella set, and it changed my life. Then when he returned in 2019, I convinced a young man I was camping with to come with me to his set instead of Billie Eilish (a terrible conflict, to be fair). Afterwards we all sat in the grass in stunned, rapturous silence, not even talking. Eventually, he turned to me, and said something I'll never forget: "I didn't know music was allowed to sound like that".
I love your point about "something WE'VE lost" and it being patience. Recently, having last listened to a record nearly 40 years ago, I decided to capitalize on my 17yo son's sudden interest in vinyl and repaired my old Phillips turntable. Together we've started picking up the occasional new and old vinyl. The experience of sitting down and listening to an entire album from beginning to end was something neither of us had done in a long time and it was great. It's also a nice experience to just sit down with my son and enjoy something together in silence as we just listen.
Yes totally. When I was a lad a cd was like 14 quid which took a while to save for so we chose wisely and listened to all of an album multiple times. Obviously there were loads of records I wanted to hear but couldn't. Nowadays you can hear any album you want ever, for hardly any cash, but we've lost that patience and time with a single album
I got the 'I care because you do' Aphex Twin on vinyl and it grew to be my favorite pretty fast. Collapse EP is really great if your stereo has a powerful sub. The Come to daddy EP is a 45rpm so you can slow it down to hear the intricacies and flubby bass.
I hear the same sentiment a lot from older millennials and gen Xers. They get busy doing other things and forget how magical it is to discover new music. A trap I'm determined never to fall into myself. I average 50+ new albums every year so I should be safe for a while, it plays too big a role in my life to just disappear overnight.
Personally even with digital music, I listen to albums 95% of the time instead of playlists and single songs. I want the full experience of the album and if it’s not good enough to listen to all the songs, I don’t wanna hear any of it.
I cant believe I'm alive today to experience the confluence of two of the most important musical figures I had growing up. I dont play music, or even listen to very much of it. When I was growing up, my best friend Dylan exposed me to Aphex Twin. It was so unique, and helped me feel like I was connected to a wavelength not seen in my daily life. Inevitably i stumbled onto The Flashbulb, which I basically exclusively listened to for my entire late teens and early 20's. I even reached out to you by email back in 2004 and you were so polite and actually responded. Years later I discover you are doing UA-cam and making the exact type of content I love, and then go on to make this beautiful dive into Aphex. Thank you for this, and thank you to Richard D James for spawning this vein of reality that so many individuals are allowed to reside in.
I'm trying to recall which mailing list I was on with Ben Flashbulb - 20+ years ago. I remember him being earnest and very dedicated to music production. edit _ Maybe it was the Planet-mu message board actually
@@zampha2065 I am trying to remember a mailing list in the late 90's as well I think called, Skiimo? Or something this like. Could have been a "//" in there too. I remember they had very extensive IDM offerings of all levels. Any idea?
I love how low key Benn is about his accomplishments in this audiotube community. The fact that people are just now figuring out that he's The Flashbulb shows how much he hates creative hierarchy.
It was actually a DJ set, Rich was playing a track by 74185# called “R**** (Outro)” where you hear the sound of a person crying. ua-cam.com/video/YVewGTk3Cf0/v-deo.htmlsi=MDTA1jTL8Q8QcGLA
The first time I heard Aphex Twin I was around 12 years old living on a small reservation in Montana, half watching an interview with Johnny Depp on MTV and he mentioned he liked Aphex Twin. They then showed a 5 second clip of the Come to daddy video, my ears and head perked up. I had my Dad drive me 45 minutes to the nearest CD store and got the album. It was my introduction to electronic music and almost 30 years later Aphex Twin is still my favorite artist. Thank you for this video Benn. These are questions I have been wondering about the majority of my life.
Thanks for sharing, i had a similar experience but I often forget just how impactful it was for me. I was 14 at a friends house and he had just purchased Drukqs, he had a large sound system in his basement and I was over there with a few other friends. He put on track 2 (vordhosbn) and I was completely speechless and transfixed for 5 minutes straight, I'd never heard anything like that, it was life changing! Still my top artist.
Drukqs is a great album! Have you heard any of his stuff from his alternate aliases? Like AFX, Polygon Window, The Tuss, etc. Real great stuff there! I think UT1-Dot by Polygon Window played in the background in the intro scene of Blade lol
Same. Druqs was the first Aphex Twin album to ever really click with me and it clicked almost instantly. Venetian Snares is my favorite artist, so I always knew I should like Aphex Twin lol. That album was what finally did it for me.
I’m more of a programmer who loves music and I’m building a new, extremely experimental, daw thing. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine anyone using it especially if when you show people, they’ll say “just use Ableton.” It’s disheartening, but videos like this showing that some people care, keep me going.
at 20:37 you can see three things I sold to Richard. A quad controller and the 2 touchpads that were made by Josef Mundigl for his EMS Synth AKS in the 70's.
randomly got this video recommended, and finding out you're the guy who made Flashbulb is fuckin wild. I remember listening to Lucid Bass I the first time I got stoned and me and my friends were blown away, listening to it now still reminds me of that time. Glad to see you're doing good dude!
Aphex Twin and Squarepusher were the 2 artists that really captivated me in the late 90s. I think Aphex Twin is an artist that has a timeless quality. Back then I thought it was future music, but I think it just defied convention. I love when jazz musicians cover his work, and I'd love for his work to be part of the jazz canon. Cool video. Thank you.
Of Squarepusher's work, Hard Normal Daddy, Big Loada, and Budakhan Mindphone where the albums that I listened to the most. I do like the jazzy albums of Shobaleader One: d'Demonstrator (it's reminds me of Air a bit) and Just a Souvenir. I'm sure that I heard Mark Pritchard among the various Warp releases that I had heard, but I don't recall listening to Reload at all. I'll give it a go.
I like Autechre better than Aphex or Squarepusher. Autechre is generally more listenable, and seemed to inspire Boards of Canada more, which are my favorite electronic musicians of all time.
I'm going to be honest. I grew up as a fan of The Orb, Orbital, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and even more underground early electronic music. I'm not trying to hate but I'm not too sure why Aphex Twin is being singled out by this video as being the single most influential artist to ever grace the electronic music scene. Even some of Prodigy and Chemical Brothers early stuff was more impactful than Aphex Twin.
Working in a music equipment shop in London around 2001, Richard D James walks in..... We have a brief and direct conversation about ADAT PCMCIA cards for his Sony Vaio laptop, as he wanted to output 8 channels of audio from it. I reccomend a certain product, and manage to slip in I had been learning how to play Avril 14th on piano which had just been released. Not sure what happened next, maybe because I recognised him, but he said quite frankly. "That's impossible" I said why? I was figuring it out, and... "because it's played on multiple pianos" and left. I was somewhat heartbroken, but in the years since, reflected on it as a musical hero giving a little insight to the complexity of his craft. It isn't as straightforward as I had assumed, though in that moment he made me want to give up entirely. He came across at the time, like his music, purposefully difficult..
I'm glad to read something more like this than all the gushing praise. Myself and a couple of friends once smoked a spliff with him and a couple of his mates after a 'secret' gig in Belfast, Northern Ireland at the end of the '90s, so around the same time. They were total dicks. Quite obnoxious, sarcastic and very sexist and condescending. Didn't like them. Everyone has bad days though, and I'm sure he's probably a much nicer person now.
Fun fact bucephalus or oxhead is a type of glass marble with a very fancy looking eye design inside of it that was originally manufactured over in parts of England from the 1700's-1800's.... You are pretty close on the marble bouncing on a glass table only it wasn't a glass table it was a 3 inch thick quartz countertop slab. Pretty easy to tell it wasn't being bounced on glass because the sound was so sharp and lacked any natural reverb, flat and blunt strike sounds in the raw audio part of the marble bouncing in the song.
Bro, I didnd't realize you're The Flashbulb. I saw you open for Dillinger Escape Plan at a show in Maryland many years ago where I believe we were in Virgin store and there was an escalator not far from the stage. Greg breathed fire and was fined heavily. I was pleasantly surprised by your set because I had no idea what to expect from you, but I was very familiar with Aphex-Twin, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares, and Kid-606, and our local boy Cex. Your performance was excellent. The entire night was one I'll literally never forget.
@@kylecalandrelle7209 I was right at the front with my gf when Greg breathed fire, and I can still remember the un-burnt mist landing on our faces. It was easily the most intense show I've ever been to, and I've been to a lot of them.
I had already heard stuff like Venetian Snares and Bong-Ra. But what really tipped me over the edge into loving distorted, hyper-edited breakbeats was the Flashbulb. He never toured with Dillinger here, but that was my favorite band, and it was through being name-dropped by Ben Weinman that I got into the Flashbulb. Now a good 20 years later, my favorite musician is Abelcain, Bloody Fist records defined more than a decade of my life, and the music I make myself is sort of a mix between that type of heavy breakcore and the noisy drone music of Roly Porter and Paul Jebanasam. The Dillinger Escape Plan taking the Flashbulb on tour completely changed my music taste.
Being a command line program means that you can script it. You can have it generate hundreds of thousands of random permutations by writing a script to do this for you
YES DUDE. the lawn wake series was my shit. also venetian snares, anything from dj shrapnel, some of emma essex's stuff... so many electronic artists i've been influenced by from stepmania online alone. ...i was/am pretty terrible at stepmania. :(
Over and over, across all the different interests I have, when I look at the geniuses and pioneers and ask, "how did they do that?" the answer is always the same: they did it the hard way.
I'm more and more convinced that, specifically when it comes to art, there's no hard or easy way, just your way, and that's the way that makes you enjoy the process. I always had this idea that I needed to make music to have others listen to it, but it meant practicing and learning stuff I actually didn't enjoy. Now I'm a terrible bass player who randomly plays some shit or creates some whacky patch on VCV Rack or Pure Data that would make anyone's ears bleed one every month or two, and I simply enjoy it
@@Sool101I could see it being "the hard way", in the sense that more went in to making the music what it is. It's the difference between a preset in a hardware synth and programming a synth to get your own sound. Or even using a less popular synth. Like using the Bass 1 preset on the DX7 VS the Bass 3 preset on the FB-01. Sure both are FM bass presets. But one is far more popular than the other. So the hard way is using less popular synths and crafting your own sound by programming synths and sampling real world sounds.
I’ve had the pleasure of watching him play a set live and it was absolutely brilliant, he mixed all night long by Lionel Richey with jungle breaks which I still can’t forget to this day! And played the entire set grinning at the audience with his eye level with the turntable needle…. Total legend. If you ever get the chance to watch him live, just do it.
Ooo man that's so awesome, that's a rarity for sure. I got to meet Dave Tipper once at a private party on artist Alex Grey's COSM house in New York. They even gave a LSD "talk" at the beginning of the show. One of the craziest things I've ever witnessed.
Jeez this video really is kyptonite for someone like me with ADHD with a mild interest (but no skills) in music production and tech tools. I've heard a little of Apex Twin's music, and get the reason for why he's so highly regarded and influential, but I never went out of my way to listen to it much. However, I haven't even finished the video yet and I already have like 10 more tabs open to deep dive which means 1 of 2 things. Either my entire morning is lost, or the next 2 months is lost. Thanks again YT recommendation algorithm! Regardless, great video, have my sub! Edit: Searched you up on Spotify and turned out I'd already liked a bunch of your songs. So was nice to meet the person behind the music I've been listening to.
Richard D. James is one of if not the most important musicians in the electronic genre. I can almost guarantee you if you asked ANY electronic music artist for a list of influences, Aphex Twin will be somewhere on their list.
Vordhosbn is a damn masterpiece. My friends and I primarily grew up on Metal but Vordhosbn was on all of our Mix CDs and Party playlists. Unreal composition.
I covered Vordhosbn, but with my Modular Synth - it took forever to program the drums but it was so much fun. You should check it out - ua-cam.com/video/IVB6Yuvtv54/v-deo.html
idk why but it makes me feel like I’m looking into a mirror and seeing a reflection from far in the future, it just has that sort of not really scary but unsettling feeling
I can’t recommend the DAW Renoise, (or any tracker, whether it’s software, or hardware {like the Polyend Tracker +. People have been saying “Oh, we want something _new and different_ … Polyend is serving up a meal, with the Tracker +} ) if you want to get a basic idea of how RDJ (no, not Robert Downey Junior) got those off kilter sounds, but the final process overall, that will forever be a mystery
@BennJordan I was controlling external midi instruments from OctaMED (tracker) on Amiga and then Windows from ~1990. it absolutely could have done all of RDJ album, including we worked out how to do 14-bit sound on the 8-bit Amiga audio (by modulating the 6-bit channel volume I'm realtime over the 8-bit samples = 14-bit)... it also was one of the first (first?) trackers to introduce channel mixing, giving 8 channels 14-bit full stereo panning from Amiga's 4 channel 8-bit hard L+R pan, together with detailed external midi instrument control.
Rhubarb is the single-greatest song ever composed in all of human history in my opinion. I have never experienced something so viscerally powerful in my entire life. Brings me to tears and puts me into a week-long depression every time I hear it. The fact that just a few synth chords repeating over and over again can create such an impact is a testament to Aphex Twin’s talent and music as a whole in general.
I was in Greece in 1999 when the full length music video for Windowlicker came on. I ran to the store the next day and hunted down the EP. It just blew my mind.
As an old Octamed (and it's earlier 4 track version) composer, I didn't know I was doing a lot of linear drum programming. Because half the channels were hard panned left and the other right I did occasionally layer drums to improve the stereo depth, but this would mean slipping a drum sound in between an instrument sound on another track. It also had quite excellent midi control and was the first thing I used to sequence outboard gear, using my Amiga as a sampler until I got an emu box. Even after I'd changed to a "more professional" sequencer I used the Amiga if I wanted that really crunchy sample sound and the kind of ideas that come from having 4 or 8 lanes of audio... Which I suppose is why I've always enjoyed Aphex, and why trackers in hardware form are on the rebound
Being a huge MOD fan in the 90s, when I was a lone computer nerd absorbing everything I could in my bedroom, has definitely influenced my musical tastes ever since.
OctaMED user here too but largely stuck to 4 channels of audio as 4 bit samples (when you opted on 8 channels) were just too damn noisy. I also started using Protracker as it had the option to mix 4 tracks into one and not sound like shit. So if you got your levels perfect, you could make 16 channel tracks. Hunt it out you're interested. I also used a program called Hunter III and you could load a game, reset the Amiga and then run Hunter III and scan chunks of the memory to steal samples from games. I used to grab all the samples from Bitmap Bros games. The tracker days were a fun time.
While only seen very briefly, the Amiga 1200 was spotted. but never mentioned. It's so often forgot how much of a pioneer this system was for the home user as a gateway to creating music and video production, and it came out in 1985! I think an entire scene in the UK came from it with Rave music, all due to that lovely crunchy 8bit sound!
As someone who grew up in the 80’s using cheap microphones, cassette players, borrowed stomp boxes, patch bays, sequencers, drum machines, monophonic Casio keyboards, Roland and AKAI samplers, along with the occasional shortwave radio… I approve this video. I’m also unabashedly thankful for Arturia and Sound Toys.
THANK YOU! I have been searching for the name of Upic for way over a decade. It was just mentioned in a newspaper article but I have never found that article again so i could not search the software by the people mentioned in the article. I am so relieved!
I often struggle with describing the style of a certain artist, but with Richard it is painfully easy. Difficult to listen to, but rewarding when you truly do.
Oh yes. Richard D James. I picked up my very first Aphex Twin album in I think 1993, Selected Ambient Works 85-92. Blew my fkn mind, then all his other stuff came, MUCH more chaotic and difficult to listen to, but ultimately a huge part of my university years, along with others like FSOL, just mind blowing and weirdly beautiful. Fascinating video, thanks! Syro did indeed feel very different, but I agree it's probably because the world has changed so much.
awww ye, Come to Daddy. on a peripherally related note - I'd love to hear you take a look at/talk about Venetian Snares' workflow too, very unique approach and software.
I remember listening to ambient works part 1 and 2 and then playing them simultaneously and going okay this is how it's supposed to be played. What a genius
Most lowkey flex ever... "I toured with Dillinger Escape Plan..." Wow. Calculating Infinity is one of my all-time favorite records of any genre, and Chris Pennie is a GOD. The drumming on track 4 " *#.. " sounds to me like he was trying to get that Aphex Twin (or Flashbulb apparently?!?! so cool dude) drum feel using delay and his monster chops. GREAT video Benn.
Back in sophomore year of high school around 2004-2005 I was listening to The Flashbulb, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Authecre, Kid606, Cardopusher, Enduser, Sabrepluse, Maladroit & Venetian Snares learning about experimental electronic and breakcore stuff at that time was just epic! Thanks Benn!!!
What a gem, this video answers questions I've had since the early 2000's. Thank you so much for sharing this amazing information about such a singular mind like Richard's, and for free!
Hey Benn, I went to one of yours and Richard's shows at the Abbey Pub way back in '03 or '04. It was great! Your mom was running your merch table and she was seriously so cool! It was really clear how much she supports you and she was so happy to hype you and your music up! I bought the latest Flashbulb CD from her. I can't remember the name of the album but it was great! I'm so happy that you're making these videos in modern day, pulling back a little bit of the curtain behind the magic of the music. My friends and I would always speculate about how you all achieved such unique sounds and we all tried to recreate them in in pirated copies of Reason and FLStudio. Ha! You're the man
I had no idea that "The Flashbulb: of my childhood has an active UA-cam Channel. I am incredibly happy to see you break down Aphex Twin and I'm so thankful for the music that you and Richard provided. I'm glad you braved the waters of sharing your work. My love of Electronica heavily features you and Richard's work throughout my life. Thank you. I'm not at all surprised that you're well-spoken and obsessive. Now I'm going to go listen to Undiscovered Colors for the umpteenth time.
not only is this video absolutely incredible but im overjoyed to see it spread SO much SO fast. just... wow. thank you so much for putting together this incredible resource/ love letter
I used an old skool software program called 'Fasttracker' back in the 90's and spent hundreds of hours making my own Jungle tracks which I was super proud of. But when I heard Aphex Twin it really put into perspective how basic and mediocre my production work was. He was on a different level creatively.
I kinda want to challenge the notion that Aphex Twin was inaccessible. I loved the whole "Come To Daddy" EP on first listen and it's not just because I'm a weirdo. It got heavy play on MTV. A lot of his stuff was strange, but equally a lot was popular.
That was a glorious 24 minute exposé of my life long obsession; I've daily'd RDJ since I bought the remix single of "On" back in '93 (Warp Records, WAP 39 CDR). I still can't make music like him for toffee (been trying since my first listen to that CD), his mindset, his creativity and his absolute disregard of creative limitation will likely never be replicated.
My first introduction to aphex twin was Selected Ambient Works II. While it was quite haunting, I'd grown up listening to my mom's new age music so it became my go to bedtime music. Only sometime later did I discover his beat oriented stuff, with analogue bubble bath. Maybe the ambient stuff had primed me, but I took to it right away. This was a time where the rules and templates for electronic music were still evolving and so it just seemed like another direction it could go, one that was clever and playful and intricate. Of course there are intentionally obnoxious tracks like ventolin, but I've never felt like RDJ has intentionally wanted to alienate his audience. I also liked early autechre but I find their current work unlistenable masturbatory trash that people subject themselves to out of misplaced nostalgia or to reward themselves for having such refined avant garden taste to tolerate
Thanks so much for doing this video! You really touched on so many things! I miss the days of old of making the Journey and to tracking down the latest from the Master and fully experiencing it over and over again after bringing it home and sharing it with friends! You're absolutely right that people have lost a lot over the years when it comes to patience. I've been an avid listener and experiencer of Mr. James since around 1997 and have had the pleasure of seeing and hearing him live. He truly is out of this World! Thanks again and keep doing what you do!
Not sure if it was in this video or a related one, but the term “Sweat Equity” was used and I feel it fits that perfectly. Having put in the work and sweated your way to earning the money to purchase an album, which you more than likely had to journey to somewhere to buy, you had put in some Sweat Equity and the Music tasted all the better
Got to see Aphex Twin at the Metro in Chicago in about 1997/1998 alongside Sneaker Pimps. Never actually saw him though, he was hidden behind a wall of equipment and dancers wearing primary colored bear costumes. One of the wildest nights of my life.
Thank you for another interesting, and informative video. As a remark (14:25), trackers in 1995 were quite capable of using 16 bit samples, either through software mixing (with various interpolation techniques) or using hardware like the Gravis Ultrasound. (Both FastTracker 2 and Impulse Tracker were out already)
I think that Aphex Twin's strategy with a lot of this stuff would be to set the DAT running and then just F around for hours. Then listen back to the DAT and sample the best bits and chain them together.
I fell on that rabbit hole 7 years ago exploring sound design on my computer, its been fun but a lot less music has been made. Weird you didnt mentioned Cecilia, I was pretty sure he used some. Thanks Richard for pushing me into a world of sounds and inpiring me into music production.
7:50 a little more about Bucephalus Bouncing Ball is that it was a response track to Autechre's Drane (and after Bucephalus, Autechre made Drane2), where Autechre first used that exponentional delay thingy but in the synth of that song and not with a percussive sample (in Drane2 it was applied to a lot of percussion tho)
@@eadweard. eventually I found it on a R&S. I lived out in the sticks so pretty hard to get to the good record shops in the large cities. This was way before the internet took off too
"PRAAT" simply means "talk" in Dutch and is also pronounced the way Dutch people would. It was developed by two guys at the university of Amsterdam. Great video on these various pieces of software!
Do you know of any specific use cases where it may be useful for music production or composition? I've seen it a few times, but wouldn't know where to start when applying it to that. Although I have heard that you can use it that way, people are less than forthcoming when it comes to the specifics of that useage.
@@adamsmith7058 I think it is initially aimed at things such as speech synthesis and voice manipulation. But... if you are looking for another tool to manipulate sound in general, I am sure you can do that too and it seems like RDJ used it for that. It is always fun to simply mess around with software and use it in ways it is not meant to be used. At this point in time, however, there are also lots of other pieces of software that can do similar things. But this software is free and the latest version seems to give you a lot more options than it initially had.
@@adamsmith7058 Search for .praat scripts. Or try to learn to create them. With these you are able to create interface items (buttons, check boxes..) that tie into the praat environment as well. I once found a script that was able to transform spoken words (or any sound) into sine waves. Using this, you were able to choose which formants to synthesise, remove warble and more. The output speech was stripped of consonants: weird speech you could hardly recognize. Makes for a nice effect I guess. However, I wouldn't choose praat scripts for music composition.
Was blown away hearing Didgeridoo when released in 1992. True to form, it was apparently made with no didgeridoo samples, but days spent chopping & processing analog synth sounds. Finally got to see Aphex Twin live in 2023. Mind blowing 🙂
Was waiting for the SuperCollider mention! Very good video, honestly I wouldn't mind to see another video like this but focusing on some more of those "algorithmic composition" methods and languages such as SuperCollider, Csound, FAUST, etc
Hey! Watch it there, buddy. It's always time for the perc-u-lator! Just because we were enjoying relatively straightforward 4/4 dance music at Medusa's (on Sheffield idk about the later suburban version), doesn't mean that a lot of us weren't also interested in a huge range of music - punk, jazz, industrial, and on and on including more experimental stuff. (As I'm sure you know) your embarrassment was in your own head. I'm glad you saw that it shouldn't be a barrier to creating and sharing what you love creating. It's fantastic that James blew minds and kicked open a lot of doors, but so did Kraftwerk literally decades earlier (we wouldn't have had 80s dance music without them) and plenty of people were constantly expanding the bounds in between.
At the end you mention Percolator by Cajmere in a slightly disparaging way, I played it to some gen z'ers recently and they actually thought it was a really abstract compared to the heavily produced ultra high fidelity sounds (yet somehow only using the same handful of keys and progressions, but that's another rant) they hear these days. Listening to a lot of early house and especially Dance Mania releases there's definitely a lot of experimentation and progression from that scene. It may not be as deliberately cerebral and boundary eschewing as stuff as Aphex Twin or others of that era but then again a lot of early Warp releases were bleep tracks which were in turn inspired by early ghetto house so it just seems different corners of the same cloth.
Ventolin (Video Edit) was my first Aphex Twin track from a random batch of songs I found when downloading stuff way back. I immediately went out and bought Drukqs (Avril 14th makes me cry every time I hear it and I can't do anything but focus on Vordhosbn when it's on) and ... I Care Because You Do and fell head over heels for electronic music and experimental.
i like the sense and moderate intensity of your humor. also, as an audio software developer, I really enjoyed the video. you're absolutely right about the way we've lost our focus while listening to music. thanks!
Didgeridoo completely changed my view on sound when I found out he didn’t sample a didgeridoo but instead worked for months to create the sounds from literally nothing.
Whaaaaaaat, i had no idea the dude behind the Flashbulb had a youtube! I love Flexing Habitual one of my biggest influnces, great album, thanks for being up here and covering one of your own influences! Cheers.
My dude. I watched this really insightful, completely on point video about my adhd meds… and the next thing I know I’m having my mind exploded with the answers to music questions that have been burning a hole in the back of my brain for two decades. Thanks.
Thanks for this one, Benn! Aphex was very influential in my teen years and listened to his work constantly. They --along with bleeploads of chiptune-- helped me trough a rough period and made me dance in the living room, forgetting about everything. It was meditative.
Great video.. how about Liam Howlett of Prodigy? of all in 90s electronic focused music, I don't think there was anyone more influential as he was as he literally redefined and kickstarted various electronic music scenes and influenced so many other electronic music artists and even non-electronic music artists and bands thanks to their willingness to step outside the confines of the electronic music scene and into the rock scene. If anyone deserves a video exploring their music, equipment and software used equally to Richard James, it's Liam Howlett, especially if you consider aphex twin genre crossover track, Come to Daddy, was sort of a response to The Prodigy's move into more harder/darker music during their cross-genre foray into the hard rock scene with The Fat of The Land.. and undoubtedly other tracks influenced over the decades.
Been a fan of your music for a while and never knew that you are also a talented youtuber! The programs you show in the video really give some great insight into RDJ's creative process. Really shows how ahead of his time he was and still is.
I got to "see" him live at a massive rave in the Bakersfield California area (I KNOW) in the late 90s. He didn't come onto stage, he stayed behind the screen the entire time and instead three guys in large Dead Head Bears costumes came onto stage and "moshed". It was AMAZING.
This is absolutely nuts. I favourited this video just based on the title and then a few minutes in I realise the very erudite UA-camr im watching is The Flashbulb, one of my favourite musicians ever. Best subscribe ever.
Okay... So you are absolutely correct that Aphex Twins is a genius and everything you say about him is all a huge understatement, that's all true. But The Flashbulb music is some of the most beautiful electronic compositions ever fucking created. Don't ever sell yourself short. You don't have the popularity of Aphex Twins, but you are absolutely as creative and make just as great of music as anyone. You are, imo, the most underrated and underappreciated artist I know.
I don't think he was selling himself short, he was just making a point about how culturally significant Aphex Twin is, and that we won't ever be able to hit that moment of innovation because it has already been done. That doesn't mean that our own music can't innovate in another way, just that we can't be HIM.
there is nothing genius about AT. he was influenced by the dance music of his day and other more 'academic' electronic music. he had the drive to put it together and his noisey version of said styles is probably just down to lack of studio procuction knowhow...i hate fanbois. i like AT mostly the stuff from first half of the 90s.
Very very few people from our times deserve a hagiography. Aphex Twin is one of those very few, and you absolutely nailed it, Benn. Much thanks. There is no limit to the respect I have, and you show, for this fantastic artist. Much thanks.
That's right, I don't compose music now, but I used to compose music using software that was intentionally difficult to use. Everything has become a little too convenient these days.
The track at/around 16:20 SLAPS! keep making "shitty" Flynn tracks! Love this video! Didn't hear any mention of AudioMulch yet. Try messing with that relic
Thanks for figuring this stuff out and recording it for posterity. As someone who tries to make music like that, it's very humbling and awe-inspiring that Richard made much better music than I have, despite having extremely limited tools and very little help.
2:17 I had the pleasure of hearing Windowlicker (the song) for the first time while tripping. I understood it right away. 🤣 I've always had an interest in Aphex and his process. I love this video, so thank you!
Dr. T's came up with a one of a kind software suite in the 90s. One of the programs belonging to that suite is the mentioned Tiger Cub. I know that one as a GUI for the completely text based Keyboard Controlled Sequencer which was the first MIDI sequencer I ever used. 'keyboard controlled' meant, that you could setup a bunch of sequences and assign qwerty keys to each of them. Each sequence was then played on pressing the assigned key, either immediately or quantized to a sixteenth, a beat, a measure, 8 measures or whatever. But what really set it apart was that a sequence could not only contain MIDI events but so called meta events, meaning triggers for other or even the same sequence. So you could trigger sequences that triggered sequences and so on and that with exactly the timing you intended. Extremely complex stuff if you were willing to put the time and effort in.
I've heard that Dr T can be a pretty deep program, with all sort of compositional possibilities with capabilities in midi that can be more advanced than even more contemporary daws.
Emile Tobenfeld was Dr. T. There are some findable articles in the vintage computing resources. Dr. T's T.I.G.E.R. for Atari ST The Interactive Graphic EditoR and T.I.G.E.R Cub.
I used Dr. T's Keyboard Controlled Sequencer on my Commodore 64 and it could perform some musical MIDI acrobatics on the fly by pressing keys. It could flip and mirror Bach cantatas and spit out some cool variations. Pity the sound generation on the C64 was nostalgic at best.
@@slackmaster666 I've got an old PC that with Windows XP, which I'm told is better as far as Atari emulation using Steem is concerned. I'll see if I can get anywhere with that and keep you posted if I do. Routing midi via LAN and controlling VSTs on my main machine should be quite easy if it works. Wish me luck:)
Wendy Carlos' influence is vastly overrated as well as Aphex Twin's. Now his influence is pretty much non-existant. In my opinion the most influencial modern musician is Thomas Bangalter, since he brought sidechain from radios to music production. In my opinion Aphex Twin's style of merging random sounds with autistic drums, that nobody uses anymore is uncomparable to the technique used always in every genre.
@@Guy-iv2hw "autistic drums" Wow, a real christgau in the making. Never forget the time buddy rich screamed incoherently on caravan and shit himself laughing
@@Guy-iv2hw to put in simple words, the feeling he evokes while also being so technical is almost unmatched to this day, i do understand you may not like his music but denying his contribution in music and the fact that inspired quite a few musical styles is just you being deaf on purpose (no offense) :)
Back in 2000 I spent a couple of hours with RDJ in Porthleven. Back then I was an amateur photographer selling a decent number of images because this was long before the days of cameras in mobile phones and when only perhaps 1 in 30 people owned a digital camera. Back then, people used to look at my photos and say “wow - you must have a good camera!” I used to smile and say “yeah, and Picasso used to have a decent paint brush”. They never intended to denigrate my role in the process but they did usually chuckle when they realized that there’s a lot more to art than the tools used in its creation.
That incredible work from @digiphex electronics on the Polyend Tracker: ua-cam.com/video/QVmGnTgyUCQ/v-deo.html
Trevor Wishart's Audible Design PDF (we hugged Trevor's server to death, I'll upload a backup somewhere if I get permission to redistribute 😬): www.trevorwishart.co.uk/AUDIBLE_DESIGN.pdf
A video of me making linear drum/glitchiness on an old workstation: ua-cam.com/video/kgGO8cxFB6g/v-deo.html
Okay, big list of things to check out that were more or less ambiguously used. Not for the faint of heart. Please dive in!
Old hard/software:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OctaMED
www.muzines.co.uk/articles/digidesign-turbosynth/2295
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_Music_Machine
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum
www.muzines.co.uk/articles/dr-ts-tiger-cub/451
www.muzines.co.uk/articles/c-lab-notator-logic/5491
www.vintagesynth.com/casio/FZ20M (for timestretches)
sourceforge.net/projects/playerpro/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPIC
Stuff we cannot find much about in 2024:
PDS Soundview (mentioned here www.jstor.org/stable/3680904 )
Stuff you can easily run today:
www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/
www.composersdesktop.com/
www.ircam.fr/
supercollider.github.io/
uisoftware.com/metasynth/
www.iannix.org/en/
inagrm.com/en
THANK U SO MUCH
This is amazing! Thank you! (edit: I still use my Atari ST with the Sonus sonic editor, and Masterpiece sequencer at times...Love this old school stuff!).
At least you didn't make a video about boards of contrived
cant seem to find a link for the first software you used. -- EDIT : found it, im blind, sorry
Awesome. This is a goldmine. I subscribed to your channel for some random non-music-creation videos the algorithm recommended.. and then saw your spotify self-publishing vids at exactly the time I needed them, and I've gradually learned that you have a deep backlog of experience that is so aligned with my ancient pre-MIDI and MIDI explorations. I wrote sound apps on my old 128k Mac, played with giant, wall-sized Moog synths, dove deep in reel-to-reel tape experimentation, got the first MIDI interface available for Mac and went crazy programming sequences ... which led to me designing the "Timeline" interface in AfterEffects (actually the "Sequencer" animation interface for Infii-D .. which was then ported to AfterEffects before Adobe bought CoSA)... then toured full time playing guitar and sax with a jam band, ...and on and on. Now I'm just noodling in Logic, trying to justify myself. This kind of video hits exactly how you intended it to. Thank you for continuing to post great content!! Keep it coming. :)
Brian Eno once said: "A way of doing something original is by trying something so painstaking that nobody else has ever bothered with it.."
That's the way magic works. To accomplish the unthinkable.
He did learn to program the DX7
@@MrCucumber416 Touché..!!
Very well said, no shortcuts ever led to good art
Like the guy that makes art in Excel because he didn't want to spend money on art supplies.
"...and I realized I can indeed do whatever I want..."
I was in a metal band some 25 years ago. We weren't huge, but had some dedicated fans. To the point at least when we needed to replace our 2nd guitarist we found someone who already knew how to play the songs on the demo. Our drummer wrote all the music. One day he picked me up and he was listening to us in his car. "Isn't it weird listening to your own band?"
"No. I made the songs I want to listen to. If anyone else wants to listen, that's cool."
I realized then that making music to appeal to a certain group of people, be it club kids, or metalheads, hardcore kids, doesn't work. You've already set a limit for yourself, creatively speaking. Play what you want to hear, and the chances are there are other people who want to hear it also.
Absolutely love this! "If you build it they will come" comes to mind. Love artists in any form that divert from the beaten path. Absurdism/Abstractism creates a new path and thought pattern.
This right here. That's exactly why I make music, do arts and just exist. To make the things I wanna hear..speaking of which, do you have any copies of your demo around or (hopefully) transfered digitally?
Musicians in pursuit of success often forget that success will come when they just focus on what makes them want to make music in the first place.
@@buckycore Not readily available. I am fairly certain I have them on an old laptop
five star fuckin take
Saw Aphex Twin twice ,late 80s/early 90's. Awesome experience.
First gig, he literally laid down on the stage floor on his side. All the gear was laid out. He was playing Tetris on a computer the whole 2hr show. Sound was phenominal. Second gig he just walked off after 30min, whilst the sound kept going for another hour or so.
Definitely no farks given by this dude.
basically it was crap hyped up...nobody sits down and listens to his albums its a 5 minute recap of the past and move on.the end
@@properjob79 no, i do actually
@@properjob79 The fuck you talking about I've listened to the whole albums for years lmao
@@xyanide1986not all about you mr
@properjob79 his music is still very much alive and people are getting into it without even the recognition of how much talent it took... this music was way ahead of its time as a gen z person... denying people's enjoyment in music says more about you than the people who can find enjoyment in it
Ah the Aphex Twins, great band
hahaha!! ricky & the aphex twins. sweet, sweet violators of souls.
@@doctorauxiliary"sweet violators of the soul" sick band name
Almost as good as The Daft Punks!
Aphex Twin, Richard D James he's one person. Don't think you can class him as a band I would word it more he's an artist and amazing one at that.
No he is in a band with his dead twin @spaceiswater6539
I grew up in Cornwall near Richard in the same era. It was a weird, dark, damp, grey place for much of the year. I get where his inspiration comes from. Love that some of the samples are just things like his mum moving a chair. Brings back evocative memories of youth. It's great to see someone from there inspiring with a global reach.
He lives in Constantine now, I lived in Gweek and used to see him in the pub there. Very nice dude, incredibly down to earth
Lol like most places in England then
@@JtotheMeezy He better be, he gets a whole of credit for stuff other people came up with
@@jonny__bnah Cornwall is next level weird, but pretty nice in the summer
@@tictacterminatorinfo pls
Aphex Twin is already beautiful but when you learn he made that name up as a kid in reaction to his actual brother that passed away, it becomes even more beautiful.
It wasn't his actual twin, it was his older brother that the parents were going to name "Richard". Then when he was stillborn, they gave the name "Richard" to their next born son.
Aphex Twin could release Windowlicker today and it'd still be 10 years ahead of the times.
Not really
@@neila6340 lmao you're wrong, name me 3 producers who have come close to creating anything like Windowlicker since it's release (you can't)
@@neila6340eh i see it
@@neila6340 really
Today's music industry couldn't handle Windowlicker
7:35 Bucephalus was the name of Alexander the Great’s horse, who in the stories was wild and untamable, until Alexander came along and was able to tame him. I always interpreted the title to be “the taming of the bouncing ball”, in that he breaks down the sound of a bouncing ball and uses it to make a million other sounds to create music.
I just assumed he named it that because it's unique and alliterative but I prefer your interpretation. The fact that it's such a *specific and proper noun* adds more weight to your theory
Also for a man who named a project the tuss, that phallus word play probably made him laugh
Bucephalus is also an old iOS app that plays samples with balls bouncing on the screen borders.
Yes, he broke that horse in and conquered the world Richard did.
@@SchemaMusicalis Bucephalus is like 15 years older than that iOS app.
I was at his 2008 Coachella set, and it changed my life. Then when he returned in 2019, I convinced a young man I was camping with to come with me to his set instead of Billie Eilish (a terrible conflict, to be fair). Afterwards we all sat in the grass in stunned, rapturous silence, not even talking. Eventually, he turned to me, and said something I'll never forget:
"I didn't know music was allowed to sound like that".
I love your point about "something WE'VE lost" and it being patience. Recently, having last listened to a record nearly 40 years ago, I decided to capitalize on my 17yo son's sudden interest in vinyl and repaired my old Phillips turntable. Together we've started picking up the occasional new and old vinyl. The experience of sitting down and listening to an entire album from beginning to end was something neither of us had done in a long time and it was great. It's also a nice experience to just sit down with my son and enjoy something together in silence as we just listen.
Yes totally. When I was a lad a cd was like 14 quid which took a while to save for so we chose wisely and listened to all of an album multiple times. Obviously there were loads of records I wanted to hear but couldn't. Nowadays you can hear any album you want ever, for hardly any cash, but we've lost that patience and time with a single album
What I really enjoy are alot of the higher quality 180g reissues and remasters as well. Some of them sound reallllllly nice.
I got the 'I care because you do' Aphex Twin on vinyl and it grew to be my favorite pretty fast.
Collapse EP is really great if your stereo has a powerful sub.
The Come to daddy EP is a 45rpm so you can slow it down to hear the intricacies and flubby bass.
I hear the same sentiment a lot from older millennials and gen Xers. They get busy doing other things and forget how magical it is to discover new music. A trap I'm determined never to fall into myself. I average 50+ new albums every year so I should be safe for a while, it plays too big a role in my life to just disappear overnight.
Personally even with digital music, I listen to albums 95% of the time instead of playlists and single songs. I want the full experience of the album and if it’s not good enough to listen to all the songs, I don’t wanna hear any of it.
I cant believe I'm alive today to experience the confluence of two of the most important musical figures I had growing up. I dont play music, or even listen to very much of it. When I was growing up, my best friend Dylan exposed me to Aphex Twin. It was so unique, and helped me feel like I was connected to a wavelength not seen in my daily life. Inevitably i stumbled onto The Flashbulb, which I basically exclusively listened to for my entire late teens and early 20's. I even reached out to you by email back in 2004 and you were so polite and actually responded. Years later I discover you are doing UA-cam and making the exact type of content I love, and then go on to make this beautiful dive into Aphex. Thank you for this, and thank you to Richard D James for spawning this vein of reality that so many individuals are allowed to reside in.
I'm legit blushing! Thank you!
@@BennJordan you deserve it. Many have been following you since the WATMM days that I let go of a while back.
I'm trying to recall which mailing list I was on with Ben Flashbulb - 20+ years ago. I remember him being earnest and very dedicated to music production. edit _ Maybe it was the Planet-mu message board actually
@@zampha2065 I am trying to remember a mailing list in the late 90's as well I think called, Skiimo? Or something this like. Could have been a "//" in there too. I remember they had very extensive IDM offerings of all levels. Any idea?
I love how low key Benn is about his accomplishments in this audiotube community. The fact that people are just now figuring out that he's The Flashbulb shows how much he hates creative hierarchy.
Casually saying “when I was on tour with The Dillinger Escape Plan” is such a flex
I saw Dillinger play at like a 100 person show. It was epic.
DEP might be the wackiest show I've ever seen. A metal show with the spirit of a punk show riot. I loved it.
why is it a flex
Seriously.
@@joshkatsikis9138because they're a good band
"my soul was violated" she understands the goal of these sounds
i love how she's just credited as "UA-camr"
It was actually a DJ set, Rich was playing a track by 74185# called “R**** (Outro)” where you hear the sound of a person crying.
ua-cam.com/video/YVewGTk3Cf0/v-deo.htmlsi=MDTA1jTL8Q8QcGLA
Yep. Musical witchcraft. iykyk
Well, he did want and eat souls so 🤷♂️
@@abundantharmony 👀
The first time I heard Aphex Twin I was around 12 years old living on a small reservation in Montana, half watching an interview with Johnny Depp on MTV and he mentioned he liked Aphex Twin. They then showed a 5 second clip of the Come to daddy video, my ears and head perked up. I had my Dad drive me 45 minutes to the nearest CD store and got the album. It was my introduction to electronic music and almost 30 years later Aphex Twin is still my favorite artist. Thank you for this video Benn. These are questions I have been wondering about the majority of my life.
That is astonishingly sophisticated for a 12 year old.
Haha you’re awesome
From Montana and first discovered Mr. Twin myself around that age. Much love cheers.
That Come To Daddy had me fucked up when I was a kid. That and Rubber Johnny. I was a trance boi and that sorta IDM was too abrasive lol
Thanks for sharing, i had a similar experience but I often forget just how impactful it was for me. I was 14 at a friends house and he had just purchased Drukqs, he had a large sound system in his basement and I was over there with a few other friends. He put on track 2 (vordhosbn) and I was completely speechless and transfixed for 5 minutes straight, I'd never heard anything like that, it was life changing! Still my top artist.
Druqs remains one of my all time fav albums. This was incredibly enjoyable!
Drukqs is a great album! Have you heard any of his stuff from his alternate aliases? Like AFX, Polygon Window, The Tuss, etc. Real great stuff there! I think UT1-Dot by Polygon Window played in the background in the intro scene of Blade lol
Holy fuck I love you tantacrul
Same. Druqs was the first Aphex Twin album to ever really click with me and it clicked almost instantly. Venetian Snares is my favorite artist, so I always knew I should like Aphex Twin lol. That album was what finally did it for me.
I’m more of a programmer who loves music and I’m building a new, extremely experimental, daw thing. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine anyone using it especially if when you show people, they’ll say “just use Ableton.” It’s disheartening, but videos like this showing that some people care, keep me going.
Buying Massive changed my life, I'd be happy to try something new. What are you making?
if you ever need someone to demo it, i'm also a programmer/composer and i'd love to check it out!
I've been producing music more than a decade, i'd love to demo your daw
You're showing the wrong people lol. Do you have a demo?
i want demo too
at 20:37 you can see three things I sold to Richard. A quad controller and the 2 touchpads that were made by Josef Mundigl for his EMS Synth AKS in the 70's.
Woah! David Morley! Respect
that's fucking rad.
Yeb !
@@tyromelive2851 👮
Awesome!!
randomly got this video recommended, and finding out you're the guy who made Flashbulb is fuckin wild. I remember listening to Lucid Bass I the first time I got stoned and me and my friends were blown away, listening to it now still reminds me of that time. Glad to see you're doing good dude!
I seen a bunch of this dude's videos and i had no fuckin idea he was the flashbulb guy, that's insane
Aphex Twin and Squarepusher were the 2 artists that really captivated me in the late 90s. I think Aphex Twin is an artist that has a timeless quality. Back then I thought it was future music, but I think it just defied convention. I love when jazz musicians cover his work, and I'd love for his work to be part of the jazz canon.
Cool video. Thank you.
Never expected Squarepusher's sound to become so dull over the years. I truly miss Hard Normal Daddy. That was his Come To Daddy.
Of Squarepusher's work, Hard Normal Daddy, Big Loada, and Budakhan Mindphone where the albums that I listened to the most. I do like the jazzy albums of Shobaleader One: d'Demonstrator (it's reminds me of Air a bit) and Just a Souvenir. I'm sure that I heard Mark Pritchard among the various Warp releases that I had heard, but I don't recall listening to Reload at all. I'll give it a go.
I like Autechre better than Aphex or Squarepusher. Autechre is generally more listenable, and seemed to inspire Boards of Canada more, which are my favorite electronic musicians of all time.
I'm going to be honest. I grew up as a fan of The Orb, Orbital, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and even more underground early electronic music. I'm not trying to hate but I'm not too sure why Aphex Twin is being singled out by this video as being the single most influential artist to ever grace the electronic music scene. Even some of Prodigy and Chemical Brothers early stuff was more impactful than Aphex Twin.
Working in a music equipment shop in London around 2001, Richard D James walks in.....
We have a brief and direct conversation about ADAT PCMCIA cards for his Sony Vaio laptop, as he wanted to output 8 channels of audio from it. I reccomend a certain product, and manage to slip in I had been learning how to play Avril 14th on piano which had just been released.
Not sure what happened next, maybe because I recognised him, but he said quite frankly. "That's impossible" I said why? I was figuring it out, and... "because it's played on multiple pianos" and left.
I was somewhat heartbroken, but in the years since, reflected on it as a musical hero giving a little insight to the complexity of his craft. It isn't as straightforward as I had assumed, though in that moment he made me want to give up entirely.
He came across at the time, like his music, purposefully difficult..
I'm glad to read something more like this than all the gushing praise. Myself and a couple of friends once smoked a spliff with him and a couple of his mates after a 'secret' gig in Belfast, Northern Ireland at the end of the '90s, so around the same time. They were total dicks. Quite obnoxious, sarcastic and very sexist and condescending. Didn't like them. Everyone has bad days though, and I'm sure he's probably a much nicer person now.
Wouldn’t have been in Tottenham Court Road by chance?
Avril 14 can definitely be played by 1 person.
@@sophiophile maybe he meant it has sounds mixed in from different pianos i guess. I should listen to it again ...
@@benfinesilver2250 Turnkey, Charing Cross Road,
Fun fact bucephalus or oxhead is a type of glass marble with a very fancy looking eye design inside of it that was originally manufactured over in parts of England from the 1700's-1800's.... You are pretty close on the marble bouncing on a glass table only it wasn't a glass table it was a 3 inch thick quartz countertop slab. Pretty easy to tell it wasn't being bounced on glass because the sound was so sharp and lacked any natural reverb, flat and blunt strike sounds in the raw audio part of the marble bouncing in the song.
Ohhhh that finally makes sense! I only knew Bucephalus as Alexander the Great's horse. Thought it was just suitably random... 🐴🐎
Bro, I didnd't realize you're The Flashbulb. I saw you open for Dillinger Escape Plan at a show in Maryland many years ago where I believe we were in Virgin store and there was an escalator not far from the stage.
Greg breathed fire and was fined heavily.
I was pleasantly surprised by your set because I had no idea what to expect from you, but I was very familiar with Aphex-Twin, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares, and Kid-606, and our local boy Cex.
Your performance was excellent.
The entire night was one I'll literally never forget.
I saw him with Dillinger in MD back then as well. Last show of the miss machine tour. They broke everything. lol. I’ll never forget that concert
Whoa, IIII am jealous
@@kylecalandrelle7209 I was right at the front with my gf when Greg breathed fire, and I can still remember the un-burnt mist landing on our faces.
It was easily the most intense show I've ever been to, and I've been to a lot of them.
@@drownthepoorI always say DEP are the heaviest bands out there, metal bands could only dream to be that heavy
I had already heard stuff like Venetian Snares and Bong-Ra. But what really tipped me over the edge into loving distorted, hyper-edited breakbeats was the Flashbulb. He never toured with Dillinger here, but that was my favorite band, and it was through being name-dropped by Ben Weinman that I got into the Flashbulb. Now a good 20 years later, my favorite musician is Abelcain, Bloody Fist records defined more than a decade of my life, and the music I make myself is sort of a mix between that type of heavy breakcore and the noisy drone music of Roly Porter and Paul Jebanasam. The Dillinger Escape Plan taking the Flashbulb on tour completely changed my music taste.
Being a command line program means that you can script it. You can have it generate hundreds of thousands of random permutations by writing a script to do this for you
*@ECHO OFF*
*REM* Your comment brought back a lot of great (and painful) memories of batch scripting 🙃
Thank God ChatGPT can write your batch files for you
@@baronvonbeandip I'd install node, typescript, or python. Windows most likely still supports cscript as well.
@@baronvonbeandip just have it create the whole music for you and you can be as unimaginative and bland as everybody else using chatgpt.
@@dascandy If you don´t know what a script does in this process you should just be quiet. Keep AI hate for yourself.
My friend who died young introduced me to AT. When I need to recalibrate, I put on the ambient stuff; #3, then the tears flow.
my condolences
You, Venetian Snares, and Aphex Twin were bangers on Stepmania Online back when I was playing it. Props.
Funk and James are my two favorites artists. Nice.
I still play some The Flashbulb songs whenever I boot up Stepmania/Etterna. /Stepdude
YES DUDE. the lawn wake series was my shit. also venetian snares, anything from dj shrapnel, some of emma essex's stuff... so many electronic artists i've been influenced by from stepmania online alone.
...i was/am pretty terrible at stepmania. :(
Over and over, across all the different interests I have, when I look at the geniuses and pioneers and ask, "how did they do that?" the answer is always the same: they did it the hard way.
Idk. If you live and breathe whatever it is that you are doing, it is not the hard way. It's your way.
I'm more and more convinced that, specifically when it comes to art, there's no hard or easy way, just your way, and that's the way that makes you enjoy the process.
I always had this idea that I needed to make music to have others listen to it, but it meant practicing and learning stuff I actually didn't enjoy. Now I'm a terrible bass player who randomly plays some shit or creates some whacky patch on VCV Rack or Pure Data that would make anyone's ears bleed one every month or two, and I simply enjoy it
The secret to being a prolific and happy artist is to love your process.
@@Sool101I could see it being "the hard way", in the sense that more went in to making the music what it is. It's the difference between a preset in a hardware synth and programming a synth to get your own sound. Or even using a less popular synth. Like using the Bass 1 preset on the DX7 VS the Bass 3 preset on the FB-01. Sure both are FM bass presets. But one is far more popular than the other. So the hard way is using less popular synths and crafting your own sound by programming synths and sampling real world sounds.
Well said
I’ve had the pleasure of watching him play a set live and it was absolutely brilliant, he mixed all night long by Lionel Richey with jungle breaks which I still can’t forget to this day! And played the entire set grinning at the audience with his eye level with the turntable needle…. Total legend. If you ever get the chance to watch him live, just do it.
17:54 „I had the pleasure of chatting with Richard for quite a bit“ 🤯🤯🤯
Just dropping that statement into the video, all casual like 🤷♂
Ooo man that's so awesome, that's a rarity for sure.
I got to meet Dave Tipper once at a private party on artist Alex Grey's COSM house in New York. They even gave a LSD "talk" at the beginning of the show. One of the craziest things I've ever witnessed.
That's wild
Listening to him pay tribute to James’ great work, he deserves to have spoken to the master
BUT.. the most important question is: Did Benn ask RDJ just exactly HOW to pronounce "Drukqs"?
Jeez this video really is kyptonite for someone like me with ADHD with a mild interest (but no skills) in music production and tech tools. I've heard a little of Apex Twin's music, and get the reason for why he's so highly regarded and influential, but I never went out of my way to listen to it much. However, I haven't even finished the video yet and I already have like 10 more tabs open to deep dive which means 1 of 2 things. Either my entire morning is lost, or the next 2 months is lost. Thanks again YT recommendation algorithm!
Regardless, great video, have my sub!
Edit: Searched you up on Spotify and turned out I'd already liked a bunch of your songs. So was nice to meet the person behind the music I've been listening to.
Ageispolis is my fav..checkout the selected ambient works albums top notch
Richard D. James is one of if not the most important musicians in the electronic genre. I can almost guarantee you if you asked ANY electronic music artist for a list of influences, Aphex Twin will be somewhere on their list.
basically the Black Sabbath of electronic
Vordhosbn is a damn masterpiece. My friends and I primarily grew up on Metal but Vordhosbn was on all of our Mix CDs and Party playlists. Unreal composition.
I covered Vordhosbn, but with my Modular Synth - it took forever to program the drums but it was so much fun. You should check it out - ua-cam.com/video/IVB6Yuvtv54/v-deo.html
Haha! Same.
Half my youth was beer and metal
The other half was "VORDHOSBN HAS OVER THREE THOUSAND DRUM SAMPLES!!"
idk why but it makes me feel like I’m looking into a mirror and seeing a reflection from far in the future, it just has that sort of not really scary but unsettling feeling
I can’t recommend the DAW Renoise, (or any tracker, whether it’s software, or hardware {like the Polyend Tracker +. People have been saying “Oh, we want something _new and different_ … Polyend is serving up a meal, with the Tracker +} ) if you want to get a basic idea of how RDJ (no, not Robert Downey Junior) got those off kilter sounds, but the final process overall, that will forever be a mystery
@BennJordan I was controlling external midi instruments from OctaMED (tracker) on Amiga and then Windows from ~1990. it absolutely could have done all of RDJ album, including we worked out how to do 14-bit sound on the 8-bit Amiga audio (by modulating the 6-bit channel volume I'm realtime over the 8-bit samples = 14-bit)... it also was one of the first (first?) trackers to introduce channel mixing, giving 8 channels 14-bit full stereo panning from Amiga's 4 channel 8-bit hard L+R pan, together with detailed external midi instrument control.
yep
Rhubarb is the single-greatest song ever composed in all of human history in my opinion.
I have never experienced something so viscerally powerful in my entire life. Brings me to tears and puts me into a week-long depression every time I hear it.
The fact that just a few synth chords repeating over and over again can create such an impact is a testament to Aphex Twin’s talent and music as a whole in general.
There are songs that instantly and forevermore hit different. That's one of very few imo.
lmfao what's wrong with you
@@koma7252you got a mirror?
same
I was in Greece in 1999 when the full length music video for Windowlicker came on. I ran to the store the next day and hunted down the EP. It just blew my mind.
As an old Octamed (and it's earlier 4 track version) composer, I didn't know I was doing a lot of linear drum programming. Because half the channels were hard panned left and the other right I did occasionally layer drums to improve the stereo depth, but this would mean slipping a drum sound in between an instrument sound on another track.
It also had quite excellent midi control and was the first thing I used to sequence outboard gear, using my Amiga as a sampler until I got an emu box. Even after I'd changed to a "more professional" sequencer I used the Amiga if I wanted that really crunchy sample sound and the kind of ideas that come from having 4 or 8 lanes of audio... Which I suppose is why I've always enjoyed Aphex, and why trackers in hardware form are on the rebound
I’d not clocked that aesthetic and why it appealed to me until now, I honestly thought it was just nostalgic musical dna...all makes sense now
Being a huge MOD fan in the 90s, when I was a lone computer nerd absorbing everything I could in my bedroom, has definitely influenced my musical tastes ever since.
OctaMED user here too but largely stuck to 4 channels of audio as 4 bit samples (when you opted on 8 channels) were just too damn noisy.
I also started using Protracker as it had the option to mix 4 tracks into one and not sound like shit. So if you got your levels perfect, you could make 16 channel tracks.
Hunt it out you're interested. I also used a program called Hunter III and you could load a game, reset the Amiga and then run Hunter III and scan chunks of the memory to steal samples from games. I used to grab all the samples from Bitmap Bros games.
The tracker days were a fun time.
While only seen very briefly, the Amiga 1200 was spotted. but never mentioned. It's so often forgot how much of a pioneer this system was for the home user as a gateway to creating music and video production, and it came out in 1985!
I think an entire scene in the UK came from it with Rave music, all due to that lovely crunchy 8bit sound!
As someone who grew up in the 80’s using cheap microphones, cassette players, borrowed stomp boxes, patch bays, sequencers, drum machines, monophonic Casio keyboards, Roland and AKAI samplers, along with the occasional shortwave radio… I approve this video. I’m also unabashedly thankful for Arturia and Sound Toys.
THANK YOU! I have been searching for the name of Upic for way over a decade. It was just mentioned in a newspaper article but I have never found that article again so i could not search the software by the people mentioned in the article.
I am so relieved!
Lol awesome
Happy for you man
I often struggle with describing the style of a certain artist, but with Richard it is painfully easy.
Difficult to listen to, but rewarding when you truly do.
*IT'S TIME FOR THE PERCOLATOR*
assuming you know that was Cajmere / GreenV obv xx
🕺🕺
vwheoowheeeeew
The last time I heard that was in a viral video. Of some girl trying to twerk on a glass table and breaking literally everything.
yes
The Flashbulb doing a video essay on Aphex Twin brings me such joy
Because of his head shape and size?
@@--___--dno he makes music under the name flashbulb
@@--___--d LOL
I saw him live in Ireland. Yes, I was working as a security guard, threw my vest, and went to an absolutely out of body experience.
Oh yes. Richard D James. I picked up my very first Aphex Twin album in I think 1993, Selected Ambient Works 85-92. Blew my fkn mind, then all his other stuff came, MUCH more chaotic and difficult to listen to, but ultimately a huge part of my university years, along with others like FSOL, just mind blowing and weirdly beautiful. Fascinating video, thanks! Syro did indeed feel very different, but I agree it's probably because the world has changed so much.
awww ye, Come to Daddy. on a peripherally related note - I'd love to hear you take a look at/talk about Venetian Snares' workflow too, very unique approach and software.
snares has alot of modular synths his setup is wild
his channel is called vsnares he has videos of it
He could spend a million years doing videos on all the second-rate electronic musicians who were basically emulating Aphex Twin, and still are
@@davidemelia6296 You haven't listened to much vsnares if you think all he does is emulate RDJ.
I remember listening to ambient works part 1 and 2 and then playing them simultaneously and going okay this is how it's supposed to be played. What a genius
Most lowkey flex ever... "I toured with Dillinger Escape Plan..." Wow. Calculating Infinity is one of my all-time favorite records of any genre, and Chris Pennie is a GOD. The drumming on track 4 " *#.. " sounds to me like he was trying to get that Aphex Twin (or Flashbulb apparently?!?! so cool dude) drum feel using delay and his monster chops. GREAT video Benn.
Back in sophomore year of high school around 2004-2005 I was listening to The Flashbulb, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Authecre, Kid606, Cardopusher, Enduser, Sabrepluse, Maladroit & Venetian Snares learning about experimental electronic and breakcore stuff at that time was just epic! Thanks Benn!!!
What a gem, this video answers questions I've had since the early 2000's. Thank you so much for sharing this amazing information about such a singular mind like Richard's, and for free!
Hey Benn, I went to one of yours and Richard's shows at the Abbey Pub way back in '03 or '04. It was great! Your mom was running your merch table and she was seriously so cool! It was really clear how much she supports you and she was so happy to hype you and your music up! I bought the latest Flashbulb CD from her. I can't remember the name of the album but it was great! I'm so happy that you're making these videos in modern day, pulling back a little bit of the curtain behind the magic of the music. My friends and I would always speculate about how you all achieved such unique sounds and we all tried to recreate them in in pirated copies of Reason and FLStudio. Ha! You're the man
loved this video ! you should make one about Venetian Snares and/or Squarepusher !!!
Seconding this.
I was thinking of Squarepusher too.
This is amazing research. I'm absolutely fascinated by early music software. Aphex Twin is one of those genius of geniuses.
I had no idea that "The Flashbulb: of my childhood has an active UA-cam Channel. I am incredibly happy to see you break down Aphex Twin and I'm so thankful for the music that you and Richard provided. I'm glad you braved the waters of sharing your work. My love of Electronica heavily features you and Richard's work throughout my life. Thank you. I'm not at all surprised that you're well-spoken and obsessive. Now I'm going to go listen to Undiscovered Colors for the umpteenth time.
not only is this video absolutely incredible but im overjoyed to see it spread SO much SO fast. just... wow. thank you so much for putting together this incredible resource/ love letter
I used an old skool software program called 'Fasttracker' back in the 90's and spent hundreds of hours making my own Jungle tracks which I was super proud of.
But when I heard Aphex Twin it really put into perspective how basic and mediocre my production work was. He was on a different level creatively.
I kinda want to challenge the notion that Aphex Twin was inaccessible. I loved the whole "Come To Daddy" EP on first listen and it's not just because I'm a weirdo. It got heavy play on MTV. A lot of his stuff was strange, but equally a lot was popular.
if it was completely indecipherable we wouldn't be talking about it. also windowlicker is one of his most accessible tracks.
@@mdihero Hell it was literally in Grandma's Boy
@@Superabound2 you'd like it if you had robot ears
I think the 90s was the perfect time for weird stuff on MTV such as Primus. There was an appetite for weirdness
@@ovld2023 I think dark/disturbing sounds are a little easier to make in this style
That was a glorious 24 minute exposé of my life long obsession; I've daily'd RDJ since I bought the remix single of "On" back in '93 (Warp Records, WAP 39 CDR). I still can't make music like him for toffee (been trying since my first listen to that CD), his mindset, his creativity and his absolute disregard of creative limitation will likely never be replicated.
This might actually be my favourite video on UA-cam this entire year. Fantastic content!
My first introduction to aphex twin was Selected Ambient Works II. While it was quite haunting, I'd grown up listening to my mom's new age music so it became my go to bedtime music. Only sometime later did I discover his beat oriented stuff, with analogue bubble bath. Maybe the ambient stuff had primed me, but I took to it right away. This was a time where the rules and templates for electronic music were still evolving and so it just seemed like another direction it could go, one that was clever and playful and intricate.
Of course there are intentionally obnoxious tracks like ventolin, but I've never felt like RDJ has intentionally wanted to alienate his audience.
I also liked early autechre but I find their current work unlistenable masturbatory trash that people subject themselves to out of misplaced nostalgia or to reward themselves for having such refined avant garden taste to tolerate
ALSO check out Aphex Twin's Samplebrain - it's a sample mashing software that can make some wild ass sounds, designed by aphex twin himself
Hell yeah, getting a newer computer that allows to be used with. Older computers (pre 2020) can’t handle the processing
Thanks so much for doing this video! You really touched on so many things! I miss the days of old of making the Journey and to tracking down the latest from the Master and fully experiencing it over and over again after bringing it home and sharing it with friends! You're absolutely right that people have lost a lot over the years when it comes to patience. I've been an avid listener and experiencer of Mr. James since around 1997 and have had the pleasure of seeing and hearing him live. He truly is out of this World! Thanks again and keep doing what you do!
Not sure if it was in this video or a related one, but the term “Sweat Equity” was used and I feel it fits that perfectly. Having put in the work and sweated your way to earning the money to purchase an album, which you more than likely had to journey to somewhere to buy, you had put in some Sweat Equity and the Music tasted all the better
RDJ and Chris Cunningham both blew my mind in the 90s. Excellent video.
"You've got so many machines, Richard!"
"I haven't got that many"
Give us a snare rush!
Classic! 😂
Oooh that’s a nasty sound
😂🤣😂🤣👍👍👍👍
Got to see Aphex Twin at the Metro in Chicago in about 1997/1998 alongside Sneaker Pimps. Never actually saw him though, he was hidden behind a wall of equipment and dancers wearing primary colored bear costumes. One of the wildest nights of my life.
My favourite Aphex Twin song is 54 cymru beats.
I don't know why I needed to share that, but now you know.
mines probably saint michaels mount and the tuss' h949
allthough i really like 54 Cymru Beats also, I would probably say Girl/Boy Song is my favorite
@@FPSzkyya death fuck is rly fire
Richard's piano ballad songs are so underrated ( except avril 14th )
54 cymru ending is the funniest moment in his music...pushed me to start using renoise
Thank you for another interesting, and informative video. As a remark (14:25), trackers in 1995 were quite capable of using 16 bit samples, either through software mixing (with various interpolation techniques) or using hardware like the Gravis Ultrasound. (Both FastTracker 2 and Impulse Tracker were out already)
I think that Aphex Twin's strategy with a lot of this stuff would be to set the DAT running and then just F around for hours. Then listen back to the DAT and sample the best bits and chain them together.
Interesting
quite probably
I fell on that rabbit hole 7 years ago exploring sound design on my computer, its been fun but a lot less music has been made. Weird you didnt mentioned Cecilia, I was pretty sure he used some. Thanks Richard for pushing me into a world of sounds and inpiring me into music production.
Yep, Cecilia is deffo worth a look and a mention.
7:50 a little more about Bucephalus Bouncing Ball is that it was a response track to Autechre's Drane (and after Bucephalus, Autechre made Drane2), where Autechre first used that exponentional delay thingy but in the synth of that song and not with a percussive sample (in Drane2 it was applied to a lot of percussion tho)
Diane 2’s a monster.
@@churlishbeardo Drane2 is a transcendental track
Excellent work here. Enjoyed this immensely, thank you for expounding on the software and the background history involved.
I heard Digeridoo back at an illegal outdoor rave back in 92 and was hooked from then on. Genius doesn’t sum him up enough
The illegal aspect only hightens the authticity of the the experience.
@@eadweard. it was the only way to hear cutting edge music back then unless you owned a record store
@@Kung_Fu_Jesus Couldn't you buy it from said record store?
@@eadweard. eventually I found it on a R&S. I lived out in the sticks so pretty hard to get to the good record shops in the large cities. This was way before the internet took off too
"PRAAT" simply means "talk" in Dutch and is also pronounced the way Dutch people would. It was developed by two guys at the university of Amsterdam.
Great video on these various pieces of software!
We used this program when I was studying linguistics, it was great
Do you know of any specific use cases where it may be useful for music production or composition? I've seen it a few times, but wouldn't know where to start when applying it to that. Although I have heard that you can use it that way, people are less than forthcoming when it comes to the specifics of that useage.
@@adamsmith7058 I think it is initially aimed at things such as speech synthesis and voice manipulation. But... if you are looking for another tool to manipulate sound in general, I am sure you can do that too and it seems like RDJ used it for that. It is always fun to simply mess around with software and use it in ways it is not meant to be used. At this point in time, however, there are also lots of other pieces of software that can do similar things. But this software is free and the latest version seems to give you a lot more options than it initially had.
@@adamsmith7058 Search for .praat scripts. Or try to learn to create them. With these you are able to create interface items (buttons, check boxes..) that tie into the praat environment as well. I once found a script that was able to transform spoken words (or any sound) into sine waves. Using this, you were able to choose which formants to synthesise, remove warble and more. The output speech was stripped of consonants: weird speech you could hardly recognize. Makes for a nice effect I guess. However, I wouldn't choose praat scripts for music composition.
Was blown away hearing Didgeridoo when released in 1992. True to form, it was apparently made with no didgeridoo samples, but days spent chopping & processing analog synth sounds. Finally got to see Aphex Twin live in 2023. Mind blowing 🙂
Was waiting for the SuperCollider mention! Very good video, honestly I wouldn't mind to see another video like this but focusing on some more of those "algorithmic composition" methods and languages such as SuperCollider, Csound, FAUST, etc
pure data, i know it isn't super cool nerdy lines of code stuff, but i love it nonetheless
@@zhou_sei pure data seems really interesting too, i wanna start looking into it soon I think
Hey! Watch it there, buddy. It's always time for the perc-u-lator! Just because we were enjoying relatively straightforward 4/4 dance music at Medusa's (on Sheffield idk about the later suburban version), doesn't mean that a lot of us weren't also interested in a huge range of music - punk, jazz, industrial, and on and on including more experimental stuff. (As I'm sure you know) your embarrassment was in your own head. I'm glad you saw that it shouldn't be a barrier to creating and sharing what you love creating. It's fantastic that James blew minds and kicked open a lot of doors, but so did Kraftwerk literally decades earlier (we wouldn't have had 80s dance music without them) and plenty of people were constantly expanding the bounds in between.
At the end you mention Percolator by Cajmere in a slightly disparaging way, I played it to some gen z'ers recently and they actually thought it was a really abstract compared to the heavily produced ultra high fidelity sounds (yet somehow only using the same handful of keys and progressions, but that's another rant) they hear these days. Listening to a lot of early house and especially Dance Mania releases there's definitely a lot of experimentation and progression from that scene. It may not be as deliberately cerebral and boundary eschewing as stuff as Aphex Twin or others of that era but then again a lot of early Warp releases were bleep tracks which were in turn inspired by early ghetto house so it just seems different corners of the same cloth.
Ventolin (Video Edit) was my first Aphex Twin track from a random batch of songs I found when downloading stuff way back. I immediately went out and bought Drukqs (Avril 14th makes me cry every time I hear it and I can't do anything but focus on Vordhosbn when it's on) and ... I Care Because You Do and fell head over heels for electronic music and experimental.
i like the sense and moderate intensity of your humor. also, as an audio software developer, I really enjoyed the video.
you're absolutely right about the way we've lost our focus while listening to music.
thanks!
Didgeridoo completely changed my view on sound when I found out he didn’t sample a didgeridoo but instead worked for months to create the sounds from literally nothing.
this is such a great video, i've struggled for years to effectively find VST's and tools for experimental sound design.
Whaaaaaaat, i had no idea the dude behind the Flashbulb had a youtube! I love Flexing Habitual one of my biggest influnces, great album, thanks for being up here and covering one of your own influences! Cheers.
My dude. I watched this really insightful, completely on point video about my adhd meds… and the next thing I know I’m having my mind exploded with the answers to music questions that have been burning a hole in the back of my brain for two decades. Thanks.
Thanks for this one, Benn!
Aphex was very influential in my teen years and listened to his work constantly.
They --along with bleeploads of chiptune-- helped me trough a rough period and made me dance in the living room, forgetting about everything. It was meditative.
Ah cool story, I like the image of a person going through a hard time dancing it away in their living room
*He, not "they"
@@SamAndrew27 they, as in him and many others like him.
No one else would make the videos you make. Thank you for this!
Great video.. how about Liam Howlett of Prodigy? of all in 90s electronic focused music, I don't think there was anyone more influential as he was as he literally redefined and kickstarted various electronic music scenes and influenced so many other electronic music artists and even non-electronic music artists and bands thanks to their willingness to step outside the confines of the electronic music scene and into the rock scene.
If anyone deserves a video exploring their music, equipment and software used equally to Richard James, it's Liam Howlett, especially if you consider aphex twin genre crossover track, Come to Daddy, was sort of a response to The Prodigy's move into more harder/darker music during their cross-genre foray into the hard rock scene with The Fat of The Land.. and undoubtedly other tracks influenced over the decades.
Been a fan of your music for a while and never knew that you are also a talented youtuber! The programs you show in the video really give some great insight into RDJ's creative process. Really shows how ahead of his time he was and still is.
I got to "see" him live at a massive rave in the Bakersfield California area (I KNOW) in the late 90s. He didn't come onto stage, he stayed behind the screen the entire time and instead three guys in large Dead Head Bears costumes came onto stage and "moshed". It was AMAZING.
Hell yea
This is absolutely nuts. I favourited this video just based on the title and then a few minutes in I realise the very erudite UA-camr im watching is The Flashbulb, one of my favourite musicians ever. Best subscribe ever.
Okay... So you are absolutely correct that Aphex Twins is a genius and everything you say about him is all a huge understatement, that's all true. But The Flashbulb music is some of the most beautiful electronic compositions ever fucking created. Don't ever sell yourself short. You don't have the popularity of Aphex Twins, but you are absolutely as creative and make just as great of music as anyone. You are, imo, the most underrated and underappreciated artist I know.
I don't think he was selling himself short, he was just making a point about how culturally significant Aphex Twin is, and that we won't ever be able to hit that moment of innovation because it has already been done. That doesn't mean that our own music can't innovate in another way, just that we can't be HIM.
there is nothing genius about AT. he was influenced by the dance music of his day and other more 'academic' electronic music. he had the drive to put it together and his noisey version of said styles is probably just down to lack of studio procuction knowhow...i hate fanbois. i like AT mostly the stuff from first half of the 90s.
@@JimmyHandtrixx
who hurt you?
Very very few people from our times deserve a hagiography. Aphex Twin is one of those very few, and you absolutely nailed it, Benn. Much thanks. There is no limit to the respect I have, and you show, for this fantastic artist. Much thanks.
That's right, I don't compose music now, but I used to compose music using software that was intentionally difficult to use.
Everything has become a little too convenient these days.
Benn, I’ve waiting my whole life for this video. I’m sure we all have. Thank you!
The track at/around 16:20 SLAPS! keep making "shitty" Flynn tracks! Love this video! Didn't hear any mention of AudioMulch yet. Try messing with that relic
Thanks for figuring this stuff out and recording it for posterity. As someone who tries to make music like that, it's very humbling and awe-inspiring that Richard made much better music than I have, despite having extremely limited tools and very little help.
I’m sorry did Benn just say he toured with Dillinger Escape Plan???? My worlds collide!!
I’m a big fan of your music from years ago (and aphex too)! Really cool to see you making videos like this
2:17 I had the pleasure of hearing Windowlicker (the song) for the first time while tripping. I understood it right away. 🤣 I've always had an interest in Aphex and his process. I love this video, so thank you!
Dr. T's came up with a one of a kind software suite in the 90s. One of the programs belonging to that suite is the mentioned Tiger Cub. I know that one as a GUI for the completely text based Keyboard Controlled Sequencer which was the first MIDI sequencer I ever used. 'keyboard controlled' meant, that you could setup a bunch of sequences and assign qwerty keys to each of them. Each sequence was then played on pressing the assigned key, either immediately or quantized to a sixteenth, a beat, a measure, 8 measures or whatever.
But what really set it apart was that a sequence could not only contain MIDI events but so called meta events, meaning triggers for other or even the same sequence. So you could trigger sequences that triggered sequences and so on and that with exactly the timing you intended. Extremely complex stuff if you were willing to put the time and effort in.
I've heard that Dr T can be a pretty deep program, with all sort of compositional possibilities with capabilities in midi that can be more advanced than even more contemporary daws.
Emile Tobenfeld was Dr. T. There are some findable articles in the vintage computing resources. Dr. T's T.I.G.E.R. for Atari ST The Interactive Graphic EditoR and T.I.G.E.R Cub.
I used Dr. T's Keyboard Controlled Sequencer on my Commodore 64 and it could perform some musical MIDI acrobatics on the fly by pressing keys. It could flip and mirror Bach cantatas and spit out some cool variations. Pity the sound generation on the C64 was nostalgic at best.
@@adamsmith7058 I can attest to this. I'd love to be able to hook it up to todays synths and plugins...
@@slackmaster666 I've got an old PC that with Windows XP, which I'm told is better as far as Atari emulation using Steem is concerned. I'll see if I can get anywhere with that and keep you posted if I do. Routing midi via LAN and controlling VSTs on my main machine should be quite easy if it works. Wish me luck:)
Aphex Twin is a modern day Wendy Carlos. On the bleeding edge of stitching technology and music together.
Wendy Carlos' influence is vastly overrated as well as Aphex Twin's. Now his influence is pretty much non-existant. In my opinion the most influencial modern musician is Thomas Bangalter, since he brought sidechain from radios to music production. In my opinion Aphex Twin's style of merging random sounds with autistic drums, that nobody uses anymore is uncomparable to the technique used always in every genre.
@@Guy-iv2hw Yes for Carlos, the rest i guess it's clickbait, or at least i hope so.
@@unified_method Why? Did Aphex Twin introduce something more revolutionary to music production than sidechain?
@@Guy-iv2hw "autistic drums" Wow, a real christgau in the making. Never forget the time buddy rich screamed incoherently on caravan and shit himself laughing
@@Guy-iv2hw to put in simple words, the feeling he evokes while also being so technical is almost unmatched to this day, i do understand you may not like his music but denying his contribution in music and the fact that inspired quite a few musical styles is just you being deaf on purpose (no offense) :)
Back in 2000 I spent a couple of hours with RDJ in Porthleven. Back then I was an amateur photographer selling a decent number of images because this was long before the days of cameras in mobile phones and when only perhaps 1 in 30 people owned a digital camera. Back then, people used to look at my photos and say “wow - you must have a good camera!” I used to smile and say “yeah, and Picasso used to have a decent paint brush”. They never intended to denigrate my role in the process but they did usually chuckle when they realized that there’s a lot more to art than the tools used in its creation.