Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II by Marc Weidenbaum Page A
Authors: Marc Weidenbaum
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and it functions as a good-natured wake-up call.
Then there is that beat, which seemed to foretell the piece’s later adoption by classical ensembles, since it resembles nothing so much as the sound of a conductor tapping a thin wooden baton against a black metal music stand: stentorian, authoritarian, unflinching. There is also the parallel to the metronome, one of the earliest, pre-digital, perhaps pre-electric, sonic gadgets. Repetition being a form of change, what initially sounds like a
tick tick tick
develops a sense of other beats, as the space between them becomes a kind of syncopation, the vacuum another beat until itself, but one not on the 4/4. You hear these little secondary beats or off-beats between the two main beats, and in time there is even a sense of swing. Toward the end of Aphex Twin’s “Blue Calx” there is a gentle nudge in the left ear, then the right, and then back again. Reference to this alternating, locative aspect of the arrangement may presume you are wearing headphones. Once your ear has become accustomed to the alteration, it becomes something that you listen for, much as you might listen for the squeak of a finger against a guitar string, or the ever so slight break in a singer’s voice, or the seam in a hip-hop sample. This change in the “Blue Calx” track occurs in the secondary beat, not the click track beat—not metronomic pulse of the piece, not the bit that sounds like an impatient but drowsy conductor egging on his young, instrument-bearing wards by beating his narrow blonde wooden baton atop a black wrought-iron music stand. No, it is in the secondary beat, a rhythmic sequence that lingers atop the main beat. It comes on like a slow ping pong, with the back and forth we associate as signatures of drum ’n’ bass and jungle, although here it is at half the pace of the main beat, rather than pushing land speed records like a proper club track. The beat resounds, and as it does the center of the beat seems to move from side to side, an effect pushed further by the echo. The beat is three beats that ring out quickly, but their echo has innumerable ripples, not just the echoes of the beats, but the echoes of how those beats intersect with each other. In Aphex Twin’s approach, the three-beat riff is occasionally repeated with a fourth beat, an accent pitched higher and held off just a moment.
At around 6:19 in the original, there is a dull thud, a singular sound that announces the end—well, of the song—is nigh. The “Auld Lang Syne” bit has faded, and the baton is more prominent, as it had been when the track began. The beat brings to mind a flash of light seeking out the contours of an enclosed space, or a gunshot used to map the sonic signature of a venue. As is frequently the case on
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
, the echo has an artificial architectural intent. It creates a room and a mental space. You can sense its contours. Each imagination will see a different room, but each room is defined by the contours defined by the beat. Its echoes map these two spaces: the imagined space of the song’s occurrence, and the mind of its listener.
The melody aside, the track provides a template for minimal techno, the music of acts like Monolake and Porter Ricks and other artists associated with the Chain Reaction label, which would launch the following year: the dank aural space, like a dark long hallway, the way the simple tones and beats have expansive effects, in a way saying, “This is enough because anything more would be too much.”
In Burhans’ hands, the beat is the same: same pulse, same intent. But it is, of course, entirely other. Small variations in sound can be appreciated as a form of development in the original version, the way the beat is ever so slightly warped or distant from one occurrence to the next, the way those variations undermine the fixed nature of the beat by introducing uncertainty. What is to be said of the drift between the digital
Then there is that beat, which seemed to foretell the piece’s later adoption by classical ensembles, since it resembles nothing so much as the sound of a conductor tapping a thin wooden baton against a black metal music stand: stentorian, authoritarian, unflinching. There is also the parallel to the metronome, one of the earliest, pre-digital, perhaps pre-electric, sonic gadgets. Repetition being a form of change, what initially sounds like a
tick tick tick
develops a sense of other beats, as the space between them becomes a kind of syncopation, the vacuum another beat until itself, but one not on the 4/4. You hear these little secondary beats or off-beats between the two main beats, and in time there is even a sense of swing. Toward the end of Aphex Twin’s “Blue Calx” there is a gentle nudge in the left ear, then the right, and then back again. Reference to this alternating, locative aspect of the arrangement may presume you are wearing headphones. Once your ear has become accustomed to the alteration, it becomes something that you listen for, much as you might listen for the squeak of a finger against a guitar string, or the ever so slight break in a singer’s voice, or the seam in a hip-hop sample. This change in the “Blue Calx” track occurs in the secondary beat, not the click track beat—not metronomic pulse of the piece, not the bit that sounds like an impatient but drowsy conductor egging on his young, instrument-bearing wards by beating his narrow blonde wooden baton atop a black wrought-iron music stand. No, it is in the secondary beat, a rhythmic sequence that lingers atop the main beat. It comes on like a slow ping pong, with the back and forth we associate as signatures of drum ’n’ bass and jungle, although here it is at half the pace of the main beat, rather than pushing land speed records like a proper club track. The beat resounds, and as it does the center of the beat seems to move from side to side, an effect pushed further by the echo. The beat is three beats that ring out quickly, but their echo has innumerable ripples, not just the echoes of the beats, but the echoes of how those beats intersect with each other. In Aphex Twin’s approach, the three-beat riff is occasionally repeated with a fourth beat, an accent pitched higher and held off just a moment.
At around 6:19 in the original, there is a dull thud, a singular sound that announces the end—well, of the song—is nigh. The “Auld Lang Syne” bit has faded, and the baton is more prominent, as it had been when the track began. The beat brings to mind a flash of light seeking out the contours of an enclosed space, or a gunshot used to map the sonic signature of a venue. As is frequently the case on
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
, the echo has an artificial architectural intent. It creates a room and a mental space. You can sense its contours. Each imagination will see a different room, but each room is defined by the contours defined by the beat. Its echoes map these two spaces: the imagined space of the song’s occurrence, and the mind of its listener.
The melody aside, the track provides a template for minimal techno, the music of acts like Monolake and Porter Ricks and other artists associated with the Chain Reaction label, which would launch the following year: the dank aural space, like a dark long hallway, the way the simple tones and beats have expansive effects, in a way saying, “This is enough because anything more would be too much.”
In Burhans’ hands, the beat is the same: same pulse, same intent. But it is, of course, entirely other. Small variations in sound can be appreciated as a form of development in the original version, the way the beat is ever so slightly warped or distant from one occurrence to the next, the way those variations undermine the fixed nature of the beat by introducing uncertainty. What is to be said of the drift between the digital
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