Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.rock
Titolo: Aphex Twin: un ottimo disco

      from:    
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com
Aphex Twin
26 Mixes for Cash
[Warp; 2003]
Rating: 7.7
Cash. Dosh. Dough. Ducats. Dollars. Green. Cream. Lucre. Luciano. Flow. Call
it what you wish, currency's agenda remains the same: get paid. Aphex Twin,
AFX, Richard D. James, DJ Pritchard D. Jams Cash'n Carry, Polygon Window,
Caustic Window, Soit PP, Q-Chastic, or The Diceman, by any other name, he'd
still be the eclectic cult of personality electronic genius that we've
seemingly known for years. He's been all about the Benjamins more than any
of his fans would care to admit. He lives in a bank for Christ's sake!
Prolific through the mid-90s, Richard D. James seems content now to
frustrate fans with half-assed double-disc sets, blow ears with
full-frequency acid-mashed DJ sets with the likes of Russell Haswell, and
wow his closest mates with amazing tracks that might never leave his laptop.
Today we are left with the scraps from his bygone days as a mischievous
media icon, in a subdued pewter digipak containing two discs' worth of
musical whoredom, as he remixes both the academic and the absurd with equal
amounts of aplomb, pisstakes, and irreverence for the source material. That
attitude helps it all go down, especially as he deals with the early 90s'
alternative casualties of war. He reduces Curve's "Falling Free" to Toni
Halliday's bare voice, rebuilding her as a siren calling amidst crashing
acid throbs, and for years it has remained a watermark in James' remix
repertoire. Seefeel's "Time to Find Me" stays surprisingly close to the
original, adding a bit more percussion but keeping its 90s crunch crispy and
intact. Similarly, he ratchets up St. Etienne's "Your Voice My Head" with
some burping bass and metallic thumps, making the head nod. One hit wonders
Jesus Jones have their forgotten "Ones and Zeroes" decimated to the point of
grateful extinction, as not a scrap of their sound is audible over its six
minutes. Instead, the Aphex Twin Hovercraft is in full regalia, all
disembodied lucid dream formations hovering in haunted washes of dislocated
drums.
Most hilarious is what he does to millionaire simp Trent Reznor. Paid absurd
amounts in an attempt to remix Nine Inch Nails and soup up his stuff with
that Aphex action, James leaves the odious source tapes unheard on "The
Beauty of Being Numb Section B", opting for something equally obnoxious.
Meandering on the keyboards for the first half of the song, he then decides
to blow through a straw uninterestedly and cut up some wide-mouthed yawns
for the remainder. Not exactly a great track, but apropos for the wretched
artist in question. "At the Heart of It All" is similarly lethargic and
half-assed, sounding like he slowed "Ventolin" down to 16 RPM and then
poured on some slowly heaving, molasses-thick brass.
Not that the more highbrow and academic musicians get a reprieve from the
caustic magic: Gavin Bryars' near-perfect minimalist piece, "Sinking of the
Titanic", is drowned out by the droning of some well-heeled passengers on
the boat, as loud metal drums slowly flood the mix and overtake it
completely. While unmindful, it's a pleasant enough take on the composer.
Less listenable is a track James spent a good deal of time tweaking, the
ponderous Philip Glass orchestration of Bowie/Eno's "Heroes", furious in its
velocity and swooping sound manipulations, with strings gnashing about as
Bowie's melodramatic squawks buzz by. The beatless structure he creates is
interesting, yet it remains a cold take that you won't be returning to. More
interesting is how he manipulates the easy-listening marshmallows of Mike
Flowers Pops' "Debase" and twists it into something closer to his own take
on Candyland.
Loving care is given to his mates, though. He takes stabs at no less than
five artists on his Rephlex label, all to the most interesting results. The
Gentle People's "Journey" is a Paradise of extended exotica, like Les Baxter
and tiki huts out on the MIR Space Station, where the repeated reverberated
refrain of "We're taking you on a journey," becomes a veritable mantra.
Kinesthesia's "Triachus" could almost be a Tom Waits remix, all junkyard
clanging and dust-caked noises, with slow swells of synth breaking through
the metal clunks. His remix of 808 State's acid classic "Flow Coma" even has
a twisted hip-hop feel to it, wheeling forward and back, popping and
snapping as he spins and halts the frequencies masterfully. Baby Ford's
house track is similarly frenzied, which is not surprising, as they're two
of his more recent efforts.
In hindsight-- and listening to this release, in particular-- it's easy to
see how Richard James recycles his own ideas in the various remixes and his
own songs. At the same time as he was doing his Joyrex bangers, he was also
jackhammering the tracks for Mescalinum United. Meat Beat Manifesto's remix
could easily hail from I Care Because You Do. And the string sounds that he
honed to a cerebellum-slicing edge for his Richard D. James Album get trial
runs not only through the Gavin Bryars track, but also through the mercurial
mashing of goth-rocker Phillip Boa's "Deep in Velvet", as well as the
endearing remix of Thrill Jockey glitch resident Nobukazu Takemura's "Let My
Fish Loose". More Beat than beat-oriented, he loops some acoustic bass with
flute trills, all the while abducting Aki Tsuyuko's little girl voice and
taking it to various locales: the bottom of a well, the middle of a stirring
pit orchestra, out on a pastoral countryside, and down through the cavernous
alien world of ring modulation, twisting her gentle frequencies into a nasty
extreme that's at once cute and irritating.
Most surprising of all is what he does with one of his old Selected Ambient
Works tracks. "SAW2 CD1 TRK 2" was always a favorite of mine; a lonesome
Ligeti-like lilt lost amid dark funhouse mirrors. Here it's restored to its
original version, as once heard on the John Peel show, in which the
"ambient" track is merely an eerie backdrop for a vicious acid workover. The
drums bubble and hiss like gas escaped from slashing ginsu blades, building
into a delicious bumping middle section. It's such a delirious pleasure that
it makes me question that perhaps the entire two discs of Selected Ambient
Works II might merely be clipped of their nasty beats, and thus presented as
mere halves of their former selves.
So what we're left with is a set that could have easily arrived back in '97,
with little or no loss of quality. That frustrating gestation period aside,
many of the tracks here are certified classics, and it's nice to have them
all in one place, best approached in small doses. Dated, yes, but James'
ahead-of-the-curve deposits are still accruing enough interest to serve as a
polite introduction to his oeuvre.
-Andy Beta, April 11th, 2003
from:


from: 
http://www.releasemagazine.net/
8/10
I think the sheer commercialism implied in the title "26 Mixes for Cash" is
as much bogus as the rumour about Richard D James driving around in a tank
or, for that matter, being dead and letting a robot do all his work.
Probably bullshit, in as many words. Interestingly enough, there also was a
rumour preceding Mr James's latest album, "Drukqs", that he only made that
one for the money also.
Can't the man take credit for his own genius? Because "26 Mixes for Cash" is
clearly the work of one. Maybe one with bad advisors, because every single
song on this elegantly packaged double-CD isn't brilliant. But most are, for
example Nine Inch Nails' "At the Heart of It All" or the version of "Falling
Free" by Curve - both uncharacteristically examples of the slightly more
up-tempo second disc.
The first disc is more ambient, one almost flows through it without effort,
other than marvelling over the magnificently deranged remix (apparently made
in four hours) of Philip Glass' rendition of "Heroes" by David Bowie. The
rest is a little too close to easy listening for my taste, but still
glorious in all its sweeping soundscapes and minimalist conjurations of
loneliness.
The second disc is less coherent, but not less good. Aside from already
mentioned "At the Heart of It All" one could put forth "Deep in Velvet" as
another example of great electronic music. But dropping names avails to
nothing and only leads to examples of songs that doesn't defend their places
at all - like pumping "We Have Arrived", originally by Mescalinum United.
But don't read what I have written -listen to the record instead. This is a
collection of 26 mixes for cash, but it's several leagues ahead of many of
the competitors in the electronic genre who have put out real albums
recently. And if that isn't a sign of genius, then I don't know what is.
KALLE MALMSTEDTAD