Richard D James, The Aphex Twin (Weird Dutch Dalek voice)
Your latest album, I sense its another compilation, like your other albums, have you ever just thought about recording an album and ignoring like older tracks and stuff?
Errm yeah but then all the sort of stuff I do recently is, I think it would be pointless to put it out cos its errm I dunno, its a bit too…. I Don’t want to say far ahead of it’s time, but I just don’t think its the right time to put it out and I’d rather put out older stuff.
Do you think people still have trouble coming to terms with your older stuff? In fact a lot of people don’t seem to really understand it.
Errm well, that album seems to be about right really
The new one?
Hmm (yes)
Is the title a bit tongue in cheek?
I’ll leave that up to you to decide. (chuckles)
A huh, well maybe I’ll come back to that later! (laughs). I’ve heard from other people; people who know you, they claim that some of your best stuff is still unreleased, would you say that?
Errm yeah probably.
So why don’t you release it?
Well the thing is I don’t really, erm, like I only make/release records to make a living, its not any sort of statement of these are all the amazing tracks I’ve just been doing, or anything like that. I just release things which I see people buying basically. You know, and that’s it, I probably don’t put out the best tracks, because the best tracks are probably tracks that I don’t reckon the public are ready for yet.
I’ve seen you mention that you’ve had a couple of top 40 hits before, I mean you’ve been very coy about what they are, why is that?
As Aphex Twin?
No under other names, I’m assuming
Oh right, sorry, I just didn’t want to say because it’s quite good fun people not knowing what it is because I did it in such a way that only all my closest friends know and I’m quite chuffed with the fact that I’ve been able to keep it a secret, which is actually very difficult to do.
So you’re not willing to share that with me?
Ahh no no, cos it took a lot of thought to work it all out, so it sort of would put it all to waste really.
But why, are you not proud of them? or are there other reasons?
I am, I am proud of it, cos I mean, it would spoil it basically.
Is it your own little personal joke then?, I mean you seem to play with the music industry a lot.
Sort of, I mean I do it a lot less than people think, I get accused of lying a lot which I don’t, I mean I do to a certain extent, but not as much as people seem to think.
Are you very conscious of your own image?
What? to myself? or other people?
Perhaps the way you’re perceived in the press
I don’t know, it’s a difficult question to answer
You’re not deliberately awkward for example?
I dunno, sometimes I am, it just depends on your mood, I mean I’m not always awkward, you know, It just depends, sometimes people just ask you awkward things and you can’t help but be awkward back.
And that’s all there is to it? There does seems to be a sense of fun going on here, that you actually enjoy a lot of it.
Well, I always try to have fun, whatever I do.
The recent performances you have done, using the food mixer and the sandpaper and stuff, I mean, do you take yourself seriously?
I wasn’t taking myself seriously then at all.
Are you surprised by the reaction?
I was really surprised yeah! It was only supposed to be a little thing for a laugh and it all sort of got blown out of proportion kind of thing. Then I got asked to.. people really enjoyed it and wanted me to do it again and said yeah you know we’ll pay for you to go to New York and go and do it out there. So I thought yeah cos I wanted to go see my friends as well so I thought I’d go and do it again, where as I didn’t actually mean to do it twice, I only meant to do it once.
Is there a point to it all?
Yeah the point was, I mean sort of the background to it was that it was for a club that’s just down the road from me, where I live, called Disobey and they have lots of strange acts and live performances and stuff, its all quite bizarre and sometimes it’s shit and sometimes its completely excellent, but always its unexpected.. expect the unexpected when you go there. And they just asked me to DJ, and I thought yeah cos I just live up the road, so I thought I can’t really play any records cos it will be a bit sort of conventional for the club, so I thought I’d use sandpaper instead and you know, mix in different grades of sandpaper.
And that was it?
Yeah, and it sounded really good and they wanted to make records of it and all this sort of stuff, but I had to say no to them.
I think we can all be thankful for that.
Yeah, exactly.
I remember reading once about a performance you did in London, I can’t remember when or where exactly, where you did a deliberately hard set and you seemed to be annoyed that people started to dancing to that as well, I mean do you like winding people up?
No, I think what I probably said was, I mean I think is that sometimes I get scared sometimes when everybody gets into what I’m doing because what I’m playing, because I like to play music that people don’t expect to hear really, only because that’s what I like to hear when I go to a club, I don’t want to hear music which I’ve heard all the time and I’ve got completely bored of, I want to hear something new that I haven’t heard before. That’s what I try and do when I DJ, so if everybody’s dancing, then its usually a sign that its not working.
Yeah I think I can understand that. I suppose the same goes, in a sense for the records you make, you know, you can come up with some really beautiful melodies and then drown them in very odd noises, I mean why is that? are you sort of searching for a sound that is in your head?
Well sounds are my sort of obsession really, so to me its the sounds that are most important.
…accuse you of having no quality control.
hmm
You don’t go along with that?
Well I’ve never released a record that I don’t like, which is something that I’m sort of quite proud of, cos its quite easy to release things or like things five years before and then later realise its a pile of shit. I haven’t done that yet.
No? (laughs)
I’m sure I will do one day but not yet.
Yeah, I wonder how you will feel about some of the things in the future, I mean do you think they will stand the test of time?
Well they have so far so, you know
Because Classics did really well, i mean that all sounded very fresh, when it came out recently
Yeah I mean that was nothing to do with me, I didn’t want them to release that, I asked them very kindly not to release it, but they didn’t take any notice of me
Does it annoy you when you lose control over your own material like that?
Yeah of course it does
But what was your objection?
Well I just didn’t want to release.. I didn’t want to backtrack over old things
Yeah but for many people (this is what I don’t understand) for other people its very new and stuff they haven’t heard before
Yeah I mean I can understand that, but I’d rather put the effort into releasing something new, I mean I’ve got so much stuff to release, then I might as well release something which is more fresh rather than something that was released three years ago, basically its just R&S milking as much money as they can out of me, cos they know I’m not going to give them any more records
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