Aphex Twin
Richard David James, known professionally under many different names, but most famously as Aphex Twin, is a British musician, composer and DJ active in electronic music since 1988. His idiosyncratic work has drawn on many styles, including techno, ambient, acid, and jungle, and he has been described as a pioneering figure in the intelligent dance music genre. Journalists from publications including Mixmag, The New York Times, NME, Fact, ''Clash and The Guardian have called James one of the most influential and important artists in contemporary electronic music.
James was raised in Cornwall and began DJing at free parties and clubs around the South West in the late 1980s. His debut EP Analogue Bubblebath, released in 1991 on Mighty Force Records, brought James an early following; he began to perform across the UK and continental Europe. James co-founded the independent label Rephlex Records the same year. His 1992 debut album Selected Ambient Works 85–92, released by Belgian label Apollo, garnered wider critical and popular acclaim. James signed to Warp in late 1992 and subsequently released charting albums such as ...I Care Because You Do and Richard D. James Album, as well as Top 40 singles such as "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker" ; the latter two were accompanied by music videos directed by Chris Cunningham and brought James wider international attention.
After releasing Drukqs in 2001 and completing his contract with Warp, James spent several years releasing music on his own Rephlex label, including the 2005 Analord EP series under his AFX alias and a pair of 2007 releases as the Tuss. In 2014 he made available a previously unreleased 1994 LP as Caustic Window. He returned later that year with the Aphex Twin album Syro on Warp, winning the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album. He has since released charting EPs including Cheetah and Collapse''. His 2023 single "Blackbox Life Recorder 21f" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Recording. Since 2015 he has been sporadically releasing music on SoundCloud.
Early life
James was born on 18 August 1971 in Limerick, Ireland, to Welsh parents. According to James, he had a stillborn older brother also named Richard whose name he inherited. In a 1997 interview James stated that this death occurred while his family had moved to Canada in 1968 for his father's mining work; it led his mother to reuse the name because "she didn't want to accept the death of the child." James grew up in Cornwall, where he lived in Lanner while attending Redruth School in Redruth. James said he liked growing up there, "cut off from the city and the rest of the world". He became interested in making sounds before writing music, and as a child he played with the strings inside his family piano and disassembled tape equipment. In a 2001 interview James said that at age 11 he won £50 in a competition for producing sound on a Sinclair ZX81, a home computer with no sound hardware: "I played around with machine code and found some codes that retuned the TV signal so that it made this really weird noise when you turned the volume up." However, Fact Magazine reported in 2017 that this contest story is dubious, and likely based on a program published in Your Computer Magazine 1982, for which the author was paid £6. James states that he bought his first synthesizer at age 12 and after taking an interest in electronics would modify analogue synthesisers "and junk" to make noise.James began making music aged 14, partially as a refuge from the "bloody awful" Jesus and Mary Chain albums played by his sister. Cornwall had few record shops, but a thriving nightlife in which acid house was popular. James claimed to have been making music with similarities to acid and techno for years before hearing the genres, leading him to purchase every record he could find in the styles. He studied at Cornwall College from 1988 to 1990 and graduated with a National Diploma in engineering. According to one lecturer, he often wore headphones during practical lessons and had a "kind of mystique about him... I think some of the other students were a bit in awe of him."
Career
1988–1991: Cornish free parties, Rephlex Records and first releases
In the late 1980s, James became involved in the Cornish free party scene, putting on raves at "secret coves along the coast and behind sand dunes". The first party he DJed at was in a barn in 1988. Parties were also known to take place at Gwennap Pit. They mainly attracted local youths and travellers, with entrance donations taken in cannabis. The community also held events at small clubs in towns around the county, including St. Ives, Porthtowan, and St Austell. James later referred to this scene as the "best he's ever been involved in".James started a regular DJ slot in 1989, playing alternate weeks at the Bowgie nightclub in Crantock. There he met Tom Middleton and Grant Wilson-Claridge. James incorporated his own tracks, recorded on tape, into his DJ sets. Impressed by James's music, Middleton played a tape James had given him to a free party organiser in Exeter, Mark Darby, who eventually convinced James to release a record on his fledgling record label Mighty Force Records. James was initially resistant, but while he was tripping on acid backstage at a DJ gig, Darby and Middleton convinced him to release the record. Darby later said: "I think if he had not done that trip that night there may have never been any Aphex Twin." James has given a similar account: "...they made me sign the contract when I was off my face. I was tripping and they're waving this money and a pen at me. It's a bit clichéd but it's the way they got me to sign." Similarly impressed by James's music, Wilson-Claridge suggested they use some money he inherited to create a record label to release it. He and James founded Rephlex Records in 1991.
James's first release was the 12" EP Analogue Bubblebath, released on Mighty Force in September 1991. The EP made the playlist of Kiss FM, an influential London radio station, giving it wide exposure in the dance music scene. In 2015 The Guardian called the release one of the key moments in the history of dance music. The record caught the ear of Renaat Vandepapeliere, the head of R&S Records, at that time one of the leading European rave labels. James visited him in Belgium, bringing a box full of cassettes of his music. From these cassettes they picked out tracks for two records, including James's first album Selected Ambient Works 85-92.
In 1992, as word of his 12" records spread, James started performing at London techno events like the formative club Knowledge, held at the SW1 nightclub in London's Victoria, and the influential night Lost.
Through 1991 and 1992 James released three Analogue Bubblebath EPs, two EPs as Caustic Window, the Red EP as part of the Universal Indicator collective, along with the Digeridoo and Xylem Tube EPs on the R&S label. Although he moved to London to take an electronics course at Kingston Polytechnic, he admitted to David Toop that his electronics studies were slipping away as he pursued a career in electronic music.
1992–1994: ''Selected Ambient Works'' and early success
The first full-length Aphex Twin album, Selected Ambient Works 85–92, comprised material dating back to James's teen years. It was released in November 1992 by Apollo Records, a subsidiary of Belgian label R&S. John Bush of Allmusic would later describe the release as a watershed moment in ambient music. In a 2002 Rolling Stone record review Pat Blashill noted that Aphex Twin had "expanded way beyond the ambient music of Brian Eno by fusing lush soundscapes with oceanic beats and bass lines," demonstrating that "techno could be more than druggy dance music". Writing for Pitchfork in 2002, David Pecoraro called it "among the most interesting music ever created with a keyboard and a computer". DJ Mag's Ben Murphy named it "a seminal record in the IDM, ambient and experimental canon".In 1992 James also released the EPs Digeridoo and Xylem Tube EP as Aphex Twin, the Pac-Man EP as Power-Pill, two of his four Joyrex EPs as Caustic Window, and Analogue Bubblebath 3. "Digeridoo" reached No. 55 on the UK Singles Chart, and was later described by Rolling Stone as foreshadowing drum and bass. That year, he also appeared as the Dice Man on the Warp Records compilation Artificial Intelligence with the track "Polygon Window". The compilation helped create the genre later known as "intelligent dance music", and helped launch James's career alongside Autechre and Richie Hawtin. As Polygon Window, in 1993, James released his first records on Warp: Surfing on Sine Waves and the EP Quoth. Later that year he released the EP On, which entered the top 40 on the UK chart. Rephlex also released an EP by James under the alias Bradley Strider, Bradley's Robot, and two more Caustic Window records.
James was part of several tours in 1993. He supported the Orb on several dates, and joined the "Midi Circus" tour at venues across the UK, co-headlining with Orbital, the Orb and Drum Club. Later in the year, he was part of the NASA "See the Light" tour with Orbital, Moby, and Vapourspace at venues across the United States.
Warp released the second Aphex Twin album, Selected Ambient Works Volume II, in March 1994. It explored a more ambient sound, inspired by lucid dreams and James's experience of synaesthesia. It reached number 11 in the UK chart, but was not particularly well received critically; critic Simon Reynolds later noted that "many in the Aphex cult were thrown for a loop" and that "Aphex aficionados remain divided". Other 1994 releases were a fourth Analogue Bubblebath, ''GAK, and Classics'', a compilation album.