What's the best Aphex Twin album?

>>68387887

SAW II is the single best thing that he ever did.

If I were banished to a desert island or prison and I were given the choice of only five albums, possibly even one album, I would very probably take it with me.

>>68387964
this is the only right answer and will be the only right answer

>>68387964
yup

>>68387887
Hey what's your name

>>68388221
wow, these are some strong words.
I see I've stumbled upon a real, die-hard fan. I'll be sure to give the album a listen.
Thank you.

>>68388271
I'm Martin

>>68387964
I don't know about 10/10 but yea Drukqs is his best

I just wish I knew how to pronounce it

>>68388221
>SAW II is the single best thing that he ever did.
This

>>68388275

Strangely, I just baked another RDJ bread over here: >>68388153 :^)

The thing about SAW II is that it covers most of the basic human emotional states, staying inside its chosen tempo and cohesive logic. There is a track that is love itself (it's not Rhubarb, although that popular track is clearly among the "happy" tracks, suggesting a different mood), there's a track that I associate with nature, and of course there's multiple nervous selections, suggesting fear, foreboding, and there are hints of anger or cruelty in certain selections, though muted. There is also the neutral zen-of-contemplation that you get sometimes when studying, or wandering some huge library like Morgan Freeman in Se7en, only instead of Bach's Air you listen to this instead (Blue Calx).

And in terms of cultural impact, I've heard it everywhere, but people are totally unawares. It's been used in commercials, public radio bumps, a TV documentary about Amish life, a pretentious piece of installation art.

>>68388304
I pronounce it as 'druks', but some people think it's 'druk-queues'

Knowing Richard, the d is silent or some shit.

>>68387887
i'm with ya OP, mookid makes me wanna cry

>>68389697
mookid to alberto balsalm is bliiiiiss
Fenix Funk 5 is one of his most creative and dynamic and fundamentally lush af

>>68388297
HEY

>>68388221
SAW II is magical, once it clicks there is no escape. Somehow I draw parallels between it and Confield in that there's some mystery that is just out of reach all through. SAW II and Syro are the albums I haven't gotten bored of yet.

>>68390157
>Confield
I still don't get why people think this is Autechre's best album. I found it unmemorable when compared to nearly all of their other releases.

Next Heap With is top tier song.

>>68388407
i watched that amish doc in a college class lol. when the music started i though what the fuck am i really hearing aphex twin rn?

>>68390281
I don't think it's their best, I'd give that tag to Draft or Tri Rep. I also don't think it's too memorable, but there's something that tells me I missed something on the last listen and there's more to be discovered.

>>68387887
I'm gonna say DrukQs. It's somehow the most consistent despite being the second longest.

All of his other LPs seem to have gaping weak spots.

>>68390281
>>68390157
>>68390374
Confield is my personal favorite album ever. For me it's the pure brilliance of sound design and attention to detail, not to mention consistency, variation and emotion. IMO it competes with LP5 for most emotional work.

>>68390157
>>68390470

4chan users tend to like LP5. But for me, part of the reason why I like Confield is because it's such a great follow-up to what I personally regard as my least favorite Autechre album, which /is/ LP5. LP5 was like a slight regression for them, and rather boring throughout, but then they go crazy abstract and it works. They haven't gone back since; Confield was the real, meaningful departure of their sound, and to go full pretentious, it is the genuine starting point of "mature" Autechre. I know that fans know exactly what I'm talking about, even if the phrasing is pretentious.

Having said that, I don't think I've actually sat down and listened to Confield straight up in a few years. I'm going to put it on right now.

My favourite is RDJ personally.

>>68387887
imo the album has him at his best as well as his worst.

theres some genius tracks in there like mookid, alberto, ventolin, 1st and second track, but a lot of the more acid tracks in the middle feel pretty formulaic.

>>68388221
SAWII is his best and ICBYD is good worst

>>68390470
>gaping weak spots
what do you think the weak spot is of saw 1? i always saw that record as pretty much perfect

Does he have anything planned after Cheetah? Will he keep doing physical releases of Soundcloud stuff?

>>68390576
Chiastic Slide is really where they departed from the 90's sound, but I see where you're coming from. LP5 is incoherent and messy and feels like outtakes from previous albums. It isn't and doesn't feel like anything. That said, the highlights like Rae and Acroyear are amazing parts of their discography.

>>68390157
Holy fuck I love Confield and SAWII so much

I've cried to both, and to this day those albums are the only two that have made me cry from pure majesty rather than feels

>>68390689
This. LP5 has some great tunes on it but it's the only album besides Incunabula that doesn't feel cohesive.

>>68390662
Yeah same. I feel like the only reason you wouldn't regard it as a 10/10 is if you personally just don't like ambient techno.

SAW2 10
SAW1 10
Drukqs strong 9
Syro light to solid 9
RDJA strong 8
ICBYD solid 6

>>68390679

He has a second wife (that means an ex-wife too) and two kids; shit's expensive.

My personal theory about his recent spate of output is that partly he genuinely likes putting stuff out again, but partly he also has to pay the bills and he's got a name he can trade on and he knows it, so why not.

Initially I wasn't too impressed but Deejay Selek has been growing on me a bit.

>>68390811
Deejay Selek is great imo, not feeling Cheetah but hopefully it will grow on me

>>68390746
Incunabula makes sense because it was within the AI series. To me Oversteps is the worst in terms of flow.

>>68390830
Cheetah gets good once you compare it side by side to Syro. The first four tracks are marvelous in detail when you recognize the tone he was aiming for.

>>68390840
I used to think that it just makes sense to my brain now.

And I'm aware of that, I kind of give Incunabula a pass but it's clearly their worst album.

>>68390576
This is a quality post, although I love LP5.

I feel there are two 'eras' to Autechre's work, and 5 'periods.'

Incunabula - Tri Reptae: Their melodic stuff, kinda going for the "scene" at the time.

Envane - LP5: The crazy ass percussion and beats period, where melody is dissolving.

Confield - Untilted: The 'difficult' period. Their strangest and most abstract work came out of here, and they kinda fell off the radar.

Quaristice material: They released a shitton of stuff here, and it all feels way different than anything before or after. (Quaristice.Quadrange.ep is my favorite of the bunch)

Oversteps - Elseq: Less polished than what came before it, but also some of their most interesting content.

>>68387887
I love it. SAW Vol. 1, Drukqs, and I Care are my favorites from him.

>>68390790
To me several of the tracks on saw1 sound dated. and after starting the album with xtal, everything else feels like a disappointment. Tha is the second best track as well imp, so it just feels pretty frontloaded and drags on in the second half

>>68391004
There's a certain mood needed to enjoy the album, and it doesn't help that it's an hour and 14 minutes. I don't think it drags on to the second half: WATMM, Schottkey 7th Path and Actium are all exceptional even today.

>>68390898

Two very helpful realizations about the duo: they very, very regularly put out one album and one EP about every 2-3 years, and this has been their M.O. of release scheduling throughout their career. It is feasible to map EPs to albums in various ways, but because this is not always a 1-1 correspondence, that fact too makes for interesting discussion among fans who are familiar with the catalogue (us).

Sometimes the comparisons are dumb-obvious by dint of the cover art, or associated visuals. Exai clearly has for its sonic and art-companion L-Event, for exmple. However Envane is kinda-melodic-yet crunchier in much the same way as Chiastic Slide, and they share like design (fun fact: the cover of Envane depicts Fallingwater, a hint of literal representation on an Autechre release's cover which is scarcely seen outside of Amber).

Even the release names tend sometimes to have express or vague hints about their numeric scheme.

Incunabula- "First book"

Tri-Repetae (tri being three)

[the fan-adopted convention of LP5]

Draft 7.30,

Exai, XI, eleven.

But even this numbering scheme is problematized somewhat depending on what early releases you choose to regard as "official Autechre albums/EPs as-such", or not. My personal EP ordering has gone:

Basscad EP
Anti
Garbage
Anvil Vapre (could the lower case l of "Anvil" next to the V of Vapre be a four? I am probably reaching.)
Envane (in V? Suggestive of the number five?)
Cichlisuite (suggestive of the number six?)
EP7
...
Move of Ten (this makes sense if you count from EP7, Gantz Graf, the quadrange EP, which I tend to forget about never having listened to it (I like to have physical copies of my Ae) and then this).

But what about L-event, which must be "12"? Has Cavity Job been ret-conned back in, or am I missing something? I know the cavity job single was reproduced in an EP box set which, since I own pretty much all of them, I had no need to look into.

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I will repoast my little colleggtion since the other thread is gone. :^D

>>68390281
Confield is God damn amazing. It definitely takes longer than the others album for it to really sink in. But once it does.. Oh it's pure bliss

>>68391246
>L-Event
>must be 12
it's literally Eleven-t

>>68391332
Honestly nice collection of aphex twins there.

>>68391332
What's the record on the right?

>>68393546

The record at right is a 2XLP of the so-called "Caustic Window LP". It is a bootleg version of the Caustic Window LP, an ultra-rare pressing (in its original incarnation) which has the following provenance: RDJ recorded it at some point during his great prolific period from 1991-95 I guess, and let it sit as just a few test pressings. Years later RDJ was a hot ticket and people loved his music so the creator of Minecraft decided to splurge like 46K on buying a single copy. The matter was arranged so that portions of the proceeds went to worthy charities, RDJ and associates, and some middlemen (WATMM I think and other fans) who busied themselves about producing acceptable bootlegs under certain auspices, or blessings maybe.

This copy is like two platters of piss-peach vinyl, and there is like no identifying information short of the runout grooves which generally match the rephelx info. Everything I've checked tells me it's a faithful reproduction, it's just that as a bootleg, the mix is of low volume, the one big nuisance.

The album itself is quite nice tbqh, and good "period" Richard.

Fun fact: at the end, there's two phone prank tracks one of which involves Mike Paradinas. RDJ hacks people's phones together and then fucks with them, kek

85-92 ofc

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His magnum opus

>>68395796
Rushup I Bank 12 is honestly one of the most genius tracks he's made, The Tuss was definitely one of his best monikers in terms of releases, despite having little in the names' discography. Alspacka is another favorite of mine.

>>68395796
Goodbye Rute makes me cry dude, the feels in that track is insane. Fairly simple melody, but just so much melancholy and sadness there, the weird acid splunges and toms just add some real interesting sound design. Super underrated track imo.

>>68395954
I agree

Rushup I Bank 12
Crying In Your Face
MARCHROMT30a Edit 2b 96

some of my favourites of all time

>>68398220
Speaking of Analord, I'd say top 3 tracks are FenixFunk, Cilonen and I'm Self Employed. Still though, Lisbon Acid and Mydoom are on that same level. So many good tracks in that series, mindblowing how you can sit down at a some modular gear and harness that level of emotion.

>>68398686
I'm a lifer for PWSteal.Ldpinch.D

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>>68395796
I beat myself up every time I see this shit. I never bought it, now it's out of fucking print AND it's expensive

>>68390157
>>68390281
>>68390374
>>68390470
with wich album should I start to get into Autechre?

I agree, it's his best album

https://soundcloud.com/user18081971

Windowlicker gets too much attention because it had a music video but it does sum up what I like about RDJ. His humor makes it into a bunch of his tracks and that's what gives them personality. It's fun music, not at all pretentious like the term IDM implies.

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The pads in Love 7 just get better each listen. Didn't really like it at first but honestly the vocal samples + the pads are fucking sublime. Rich just effortlessly makes the exact music I want to hear it's insane. Deffo a grower.

>>68398863
Tri Repetae
Then Confield
Maybe LP5 between the other two
Then listen to the period you liked the most

>>68390281
Listen to it again.

>>68398863
Incanubula, Amber and Tri Repetae

>>68398863
Tri rep - LP5 - Quaristice - Untilted - Confield

Or, you know, just jump into Exai, Draft and Elseq like I did.

>>68388221
Except for Rhubarb and Stone in Focus, SAW II is mediocre and boring.

>>68398686
why not Crying In Your Face?

I love your choices though

>>68400376
>Lichen
>Hexagon

>mediocre

>>68391332

very nice senpai