The Aphex Face (2010) | Hacker News Reader

The Aphex Face (2010)

bastwood.com

128 pointsjstrieb44 comments

After Cicada and 11b-x-1371, I've been collecting some examples of coded messages in music for what I had hoped would be an article decoding a bunch of them, but alas, I'm giving it up here instead.

There is a mysterious group called Gescom, who were associated with artists from the Warp label, whose samples I've done some decoding on with Audacity. Interestingly, Max Richter used to do work with Future Sound of London, and some of his pieces appear to have coded artifacts, most notably, the morse code on "Infra," and what appears to be either a map of the Thames or the bus route of the 7/7 bombers, and a couple of pieces with "Cypher" in the title. I almost wish I'd spent more time on them before forfeiting the surprise in an HN comment, but I'm probably never going to finish it.

KMFDM's "blood evil" has some signal encoding at the end that you can hear and see in the spectrogram which I think might be a video signal, but I haven't figured out how to demodulate it.

In my own music to figure out how much trouble artists go to on these, I created a sample library of sound encoded images and use it on a very old sampler. The distinctive buzzing noise of an encoded image is something that grabs you once you know what it is, and the hunt begins!

(edit: can't bear to mention this without a shoutout to Master Boot Record and his mbrserver.com bbs as well)

Do you have your music up anywhere? Your influences are ticking all of my boxes

Thanks! https://soundcloud.com/n-gram-music/sets/formalisms has the concept driven experiments. Details are in the track descriptions. 'look closer' was the morse and images test. The funnier one is 'brainfunk' which was to see if I could encode a brainfuck program in arbitrary lyrics. 'exegesis' is a riff on old 1950s dance instructions, but using PKD's description of what became The Matrix, but in the 70s.

They're contrived, (hence formalisms) and the other play lists are more musical, but I thought these were still fun enough to share.

Gescom are supposed to have "close ties" to Autechre but I've always believed that Gescom are Autechre, and use the name as a brand for some of their off-script or collaborative work.

For the longest time (until now) I've simply thought that gescom were a de facto alias of autechre...

yeah it's Autechre and a load of their mates isn't it?

> Incorrectly perceived as simply an Autechre side-project, Gescom in fact exists as a platform for a number of aligned artists to work in various different combinations, whilst remaining otherwise-anonymous. Personnel in Gescom has varied from release to release and even track to track. Quote from the Autechre FAQ: "Actually the whole Gescom crew consists of almost 20 people. Sean Booth calls it an 'umbrella-project'."

https://www.discogs.com/artist/49-Gescom

One of the Gescom samples from "corporate id" track, essentially you slow it down and reverse it and you get the phrase, "do, the things peo-ple say you cannot do."

Ultimately, what was music but a way for a certain kind of mind to find and identify others of its kind? So these artists that are using novel encodings and ideas are essentially looking for others. I've got a limited amount of cycles for it, and I just hope they aren't aliens baiting a trap.

Wow thanks for the tip on "Blood-Evil" been a fan for decades and it never occurred to me. Also was really into Gescom back in the day so maybe people who like hiding data in recordings have good taste.

For those who already have listened to AT and the rest of the contemporaries forward and back (you already have the 200 ‘unreleased’ tracks, right?), a perhaps new thing to try is the 33 rpm trick: RDJ once said that if you want a 45 minute album instead of 30, just play it at 33 rpm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWqf17mUyoQ

Other fellas, especially closer to the breakcore variety, also become pretty chill with this approach.

It's rather important, though, to not preserve the pitch when slowing the tracks down. This detail changes the mood considerably. VLC can play music at various speeds, with either fixed pitch or changed accordingly, both on desktop and Android—the checkbox is in the settings (dunno about IOS).

IIRC I found about this while doing my hobby of searching on Youtube for music descriptions which semi-randomly pop up in my head, and thus came upon the mix of ‘slow hardcore’ from Soulwax—which actually emulates 80s Belgian EBM that in turn is said to have started as just techno or acid house vinyl played at slower speed. Magical stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yBvP3616Wc (and gotta say, the mix of proper EBM is hella drivey too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XUipCxjmmw).

Nice to see this here 20 years later, I'm the "chaosmachine" mentioned in the article :)

I remember your original article. Those images in this one are directly taken from your page aren’t they?

They aren't. The coloring is quite different, and as the article itself says it's all about fixing the linear scale used in the original article, because the images are supposed to be viewed with a logarithmic scale. The original article wasn't updated to use images with a logarithmic scale, as far as I can see in web.archive.org.

Aphex Twin and BoC have changed my life. I've listened to Aphex Twin every day for the past two decades and not much else. The lore is so deep with both. Check out https://bocpages.org/wiki/About and the story behind Hexagon Sun studios. Very cool

Indeed their official and unofficial discographies are fantastic. Especially the huge Aphex Twin SoundCloud dump containing 250+ songs sprawling his whole music career.

On the "not much else" note, it's worth pointing out that the kids these days are putting out some amazing work that lives up to the precedent set by BoC and Aphex. Skee Mask in particular is really great, and I think Four Tet's work is sometimes a little under-appreciated because he likes to make things very accessible and incorporate more commercial elements into his work. I really think his Sixteen Oceans album is a companion piece to Tomorrow's Harvest in disguise.

Love Skee Mask. New record came out last week and it's pretty good!

https://iliantape.bandcamp.com/album/itlp09-skee-mask-pool

Aleksi Perälä has been this for me the past few years and is the one pushing mystical electronic music forward that’s approachable in the way BoC and RDJ are.

Same story here (22 years actually). For me, Aphex Twin is the only music I "listen to." I listen to other music, but only in passing. My daily work music is always Aphex Twin. To me, it is the only music that captures the true sense of an uninterpreted future; it is not constrained by a style or a lifestyle, it doesn't contain an image or a purpose or a meaning, it is just the sound of the vast expanse of the world to come.

You'd love Ruby My Dear. A French outfit putting out some excellent albums. I've been an Aphex fan for more than two decades and their music is very much along the same lines, albeit a little less ambient and a bit more banging techno. https://rubymydear.bandcamp.com

I'm a huge Aphex Twin and BoC fan, they've changed my life too, since the early 90s, but there's so much amazing music out there! It's heartbreaking to imagine listening to only them. Although, great picks if you were going to be exclusive.

I'd definitely take Aphex Twin's music to the proverbial desert island. Some of his stuff is the most emotionally moving and rich music I know.

Couldn't agree more - love seeing Boards of Canada getting some exposure here. IDM in general is such a fascinating genre.

I'm slightly put out (personally) to see Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin in some kind of parity. Surely only one is making music to listen to and thus the genuine article, the other only making music to actively ignore whilst on. Takes allsorts, I guess.

What does “to actively ignore whilst on” mean? Also which one do you mean?

BOC are, I find, thoroughly unlistenable. Great pretenders, but nice people, I wish them continued success. Several programmers I know, and now more than several here, put BOC on to code to; this is undoubtably because they make background music, and not foreground music.

Isn't that sort of the point?

When I were a lad we referred to this sort of music as "ambient" music. A term coined by Brian Eno for his Ambient 1: Music for Airports album from 1978.

I think the quote was something like "as ignorable as it is interesting".

Both Aphex Twin and BoC are aiming for that space.

Yes it is the point (If indeed we are agreeing on the same point). I like 'ignorable as it is interesting'. I'm just quite astonished people are viewing these two artists in the same ballpark, I find them incongruous - BOC being an always laid back affair.

> Great pretenders ... undoubtably because they make background music

Pretenders to what? The certainty in this comment confuses me, since my perception of Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin seeems to be the opposite of yours :)

Pretenders as in I see them (BOC) as exploiting a genre rather than being anything approaching a band, in the broader sense - not to totally disparage that angle. Yes, I'm rather surprised people see a simpatico here. For example, the BOC's copious use of real and pseudo old sounding recordings and sounds is, I think, never appeared in an Aphex track.

Expired link in the article on BoC .

https://web.archive.org/web/20060519060341/https://www.speak...

If we're doing Aphex stories, my favourite one is that Selected Ambient Works II was made via Lucid Dreaming.

Lost In Space - Interview with RDJ by David Toop (March 1994, The Face)

Broaching this subject of dreams, he becomes animated and talks a long streak. "This album is really specific," he says, "because 70 percent of it is done from lucid dreaming... To have lucid dreams is to be conscious of being in a dream state, even to be capable of directing the action while still in a dream. I've been able to do it since I was little," Richard explains. "I taught myself how to do it and it's my most precious thing. Through the years, I've done everything that you can do, including talking and shagging with anyone you feel that takes your fancy. The only thing I haven't done is tried to kill myself. That's a bit shady. You probably wouldn't wake up, and you wouldn't know if it had worked, anyway. Or maybe you would.

"I often throw myself off skyscrapers or cliffs and zoom off right at the last minute That's quite good fun. It's well realistic. Eating food is quite smart. Like tasting food. Smells as well. I make foods up and sometimes they don't taste of anything—like they taste of some weird mish-mash of other things."

...

"About a year and a half ago," he says, "I badly wanted to dream tracks. Like imagine I'm in the studio and write a track in my sleep, wake up and then write it in the real world with real instruments. I couldn't do it at first. The main problem was just remembering it. Melodies were easy to remember. I'd go to sleep in my studio. I'd go to sleep for ten minutes and write three tracks - only small segments, not l00 percent finished tracks. I'd wake up and I'd only been asleep for ten minutes. That's quite mental.

"I vary the way I do it, dreaming either I'm in my studio, entirely the way it is, or all kinds of variations. The hardest thing is getting the sounds the same. It's never the same. It doesn't really come close to it. When you have a nightmare or a weird dream, you wake up and tell someone about it and it sounds really shit. It's the same for sounds, roughly. When I imagine sounds, they are in dream form. As you get better at doing it, you can get closer and closer to the actual sounds. But that's only 70 percent of it."

He was also famous for lying in interviews, which makes it even more fun to guess if any of it is true.

Nevertheless, his early work especially contains some melodies and harmonies that sound to me like they originated on an entirely different plane of existence. I've always felt that RDJ is some sort of conduit for translating melodies from heaven.

The wistful melodies on "italic eyeball", basically all of SAW I, "on the romance tip", some MFM stuff, ICBYD...

He's a troll in interviews for sure, but using dreams to find melodies doesn't sound all too far fetched to me.

There's lots to read about the tuning systems Aphex Twin uses across his catalogue. Alternative tuning scales definitely add to that otherworldly yet familiar feeling.

Yeah, the Korg Monologue he helped designed allows for odd tunings, problem is few other synths do, so it's hard to get an ensemble going.

I have nearly everything RDJ ever released in physical format, and started listing in '95 or so, and pretty much know every song by memory. That said, RDJ's piano work in particular is heavily influenced by Erik Satie, bordering on derivative. Still amazing, but definitely influenced, likewise SAWII leans heavily on Eno. Which is fine, influence is a part of art. ;-)

When I think about music and lucid dreaming, I think of Robert Rich’s work.

During the COVID pandemic lockdowns Markus Reuter has done a video interview[0] with him, and there is an article about his sleep concerts[1].

He published a new album on Bandcamp late last year recently (Neurogenesis), it’s written entirely in just intonation and is fantastic.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lXCjQuiT3zw

[1] https://www.factmag.com/2014/10/10/dreamcatching-the-remarka...

FWIW, Metasynth (what RDJ used to create the image) is still alive and well. It's a cool music program unlike any other, and the developers remain dedicated to its continued existence, which is I'm sorry to say not the norm.

SSTV is another modality Richard has used to encode images:

https://forum.watmm.com/topic/28312-two-remixes-for-afx-sstv...

I have this EP, and the first time I listened to it, I thought it was actually a track. Sounded like Ventolin, another of his tracks, to me. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television

On YouTube as "AFX - EP 2 Remixes by AFX - 03 - Bonus High Frequency Sounds"

1) I <3 7\. 2) RDJ is a trickster and incorporates all sorts of weird stuff like this in his music.

Slight tangent, but for those interested in visual artifacts in music: check out Jerobeam Fenderson's oscilloscope music https://www.jerobeamfenderson.net/. Music that looks cool on an oscilloscope instead of a spectrogram.

orange

Yeah, that’s right

the venetian snares album mentioned in this article is quite good.

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