Aphex Twin is probably one of the few artists I have consistently liked and gone back to listen to over the years.
I don't know anything much about music, but I feel out of electronic music past and present his works are the most dynamic and interesting. Most other stuff I kind of like but it gets old so move on to other things.
These are pretty random but all are probably different than what people normally associate with electronica. I don't like most of the popular electronica out there.
One guy I recently discovered and fell in love with is Jeremy Blake, who is also behind the YouTube channel Red Means Recording [1].
A few weeks ago, he released a song, Reggie's Song [2], which has been like an absolute mind virus. If I'm not playing it on my bike commute to work, I need to get it in during the day somehow. The song was mostly created on a Pocket Operator OP-1 [3]. The whole video is super entertaining, as he annotates the creation process via textual inserts, and has arguments with an alter-ego, Octocat (the GitHub one?).
Another EP that I really enjoyed recently, though not in the same style, is OVERWERK's Canon [4]. The same artist also created a Daft Punk anthology a few months back, which is a great way of going through the many years of Daft Punk's history, all in a single song [5]
Edit: It's also through issues with playing OVERWERK's and Jeremy Blake's songs that I discovered that SoundCloud appears to have some pretty major issues with their CDN. They've never gotten back to me, but some people can't play a bunch of songs, and the Android app silently skips over them. https://twitter.com/teotwaki/status/847140656715837440
I feel the same way, but ironically I attribute this to his knowledge of music outside of the electronic genre. I do listen to a bit of electronic music, but generally I prefer the sound of "real" instruments and what human hands play.
In other words, Aphex Twin is the most "organic" electronic music out there. This acoustic drum is a great example of how far he will go to achieve that.
I'm really impressed by the detailed work described in this page!
I've got this weird place in my mind for electronic music. I listen to it in the background nearly 9 hours a day while working. I've got a pretty huge collection on Spotify and a well-tuned Pandora channel. Generally up-beat, few words for the most part, not too Vegas or rave like. It needs to be interesting but not necessarily so interesting I start paying attention to it.
I've got some classical mixed in, but I found that either I get bored of it or I start paying attention to it, and thus, it's purpose as background music is nullified.
When I'm in the car or at home, anywhere else other than in my office I never listen to electronic music. Heavy metal/rock for the gym, and then basically anything under the sun that I like when I'm just listening.
Mishima by Philip Glass (Kronos Quartet plays Philip Glass would be a good bet). The album Asperities by Julia Kent, just out last year, is pretty phenomenal. Systems/Layers by Rachels and Vulnicura Strings by Björk might work. Soundtrack to Requiem for a Dream.
Note that there's an album of classical versions of Aphex songs by Alarm Will Sound which is very good (their Avril 14th is inferior though)
Avril 14th is one of my absolute favorite songs. It's my go-to song when I need to just relax and push away from reality for a bit; one of the few I can just put on repeat and be happy with.
Nils Frahm's Screws Reworked is usually tagged 'new classical' but certainly has roots in the same space as Avril 14th. New classical as a whole is an interesting genre.
Try Chilly Gonzales - Solo Piano (first one). Then try Erik Satie and John Cage. Then maybe Goldmund and Yann Tiersen (Amelie soundtrack). Then give up and go back to Richard.
Based on the timeline [0] I'm guessing that these were used in his album Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2. I assume that this robot is used on the track snar2 [1] and perhaps others.
[0] - "15.01.2015: Aphex Twin announces a release using Robosnar as well as our HAT robot."
I read speculation somewhere that the first track of that album is the finished product, and the other tracks are works in progress or mood/jam palettes or investigatory scraps of various parts, some of which went unused. When I listened through with that in mind it made sense (and made the album more approachable), and the track titles may indeed support that theory. But, as with all things Aphex Twin, we are left to interpret on our own -- who knows?
Richard has been around long enough. I don't think he cares if everything he does is a masterpiece, he just likes fooling around and experimenting with new things.
If you liked this, you might also be interested in Squarepusher and Z-Machines "Music For Robots". It has significantly fewer technical details, however.
Really interesting writeup. The contraption has parallels to some of what we do with software: automating a legacy system without completely reinventing it.
For such an accomplished practitioner, the author made one glaring mistake:
> We will use one solenoid on each side of the snares, thus doubling the force
Clearly they have a system with one solenoid pulling from each end of the same thing. This does not increase the force at all. Pulling on a rope with one end fixed is just as good as pulling on both ends (from the rope's perspective there is no difference).
An outfit called Polyend has commercialized the concept with something they call PERC, though I don't believe they have something capable of engaging and disengaging the snare like this contraption.
Would love to see a video of Richard James sending midi data to that snare that was meant for a completely different instrument, maybe one of the melodies from Windowlicker :-P
Even though I think this was video trickery mostly, I often wonder if the later experiments with computer controlled instruments were partly inspired by this Monkey Drummer video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1ZGIrNf71Q
That video is funny, perplexing and frightening all at the same time! I was a little relieved to realize the human appendages were added digitally (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Drummer).
I don't know anything much about music, but I feel out of electronic music past and present his works are the most dynamic and interesting. Most other stuff I kind of like but it gets old so move on to other things.