An Hour Of 2025 Part Three

This is my third and final Sunday mix pulling together some of my favorite tracks from 2025 (the first one, ambient and instrumental, is here and the second, dub and dance, is here). This one starts out folky, strays from dub to cosmische and Balearic, and picks from the past too with two covers, some Stone Roses inspiration and Mazzy Star, songs borrowing from the years 1971, 1989, 1993 and 1999. Going back to go forwards. 

An Hour Of 2025 Part Three

• Joao Leao: One Of These Things First
• Sydney Minsky Sargeant: Summer Song
• Coyote: Battle Weary
• Stereolab: Flashes From Everywhere
• Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U Pt. 4 (Jupiter/ Reprise)
• Saint Etienne: Alone Together (Hove Lawns Sunset Mix)
• Pale Blue Eyes: How Long Is Now (Richard Norris Remix)
• Red Snapper: Ban- Di- To
• Five Green Moons and Brix Smith: Boudica
• Raz and Afla: Windowlicker
• 10:40 Present Retro Fit: Lavender Mist
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Joao Leao is a Brazillian- Canadian artist. This cover of a Nick Drake song came out on 7" in February on Toronto label Local Dish, a lovely, slightly tropical and ever so sweetly melancholic version of the original. 

Sydney Minsky Sargeant's solo album Lunga was a 2025 highlight, an album with some songs that date back to his teenage years growing up in Todmorden and the flipside to Syd's main job as leader of Working Men's Club. Lunga is downtempo, personal, acoustic guitar based with echoes of Syd Barrett in the singing and Nick Drake in the playing. Summer Song is reflective, a little lost, the sound of the end of summer. 

Notts Balearic veterans Coyote continue to drip feed new songs and tracks. 2025 saw a six track mini- album, Wailing To The Yellow Dawn, a collaboration with Peaking Lights and two singles including the one here, the dubbed out sounds of Battle Weary with the vocal sample iterating, 'Sufferin' is a poor man's crime'.  

Stereolab returned after a long gap with a new album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film, an album stuffed full of vintage synths, motorik rhythms, wit, invention and (crucially) good songs. Flashes From Everywhere starts out like an easy listening track and then goes krauty and flirts with being poppy. 

Stretford's Psychederek released the four track EP Thinkin' Bout U in August, four different versions of the song, covering everything from Pacific State style dance to broken down, beach bar Balearica (Pt. 4, the one I've included here), kind of proving there's no such thing as a definitive or final version. You can always find another way to do something. 

Saint Etienne released four versions/ remixes of Along Together (a track from 2024's The Night). The Hove Lawns Sunset mix re- imagines West Sussex as a Mediterranean island, slo mo beats and sunset by the pool vibes. Bob, Pete and Sarah then announced an album that would be their last and a tour this year that will be ditto. I think we'll miss them when they're gone.

Pale Blue Eyes are from Sheffield, an indie/ krauty trio. Richard remixed the song as a cosmische autobahn trip, soaring away from South Yorkshire and into 70s West Germany.

Red Snapper were all over my 2025. A tour in March to celerbate the 30th anniversary of Reeled And Skinned, a new album Barb And Feather, and an appearance on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 with the percussion mayhem of Qraqeb. Ban- Di- To is amped up jump blues done 2025 style. 

Five Green Moons second album, Moon 2, was a second strong dub/ folk set from Justin Robertson, who is really in a purple patch at the moment. Brix Smith appears on Boudica. Surviving The Fall/ leading an uprising against the Romans- similarly troublesome I'd imagine. 

Raz and Afla released their cover of Aphex Town's Windowlicker, an Afro- futurist dancefloor bomb that repositions Aphex Twin somewhere new. 

Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 released An Alternative History back in April, a track Jesse made inspired by a post here at Bagging Area where I imagined an alternate history of The Stone Roses, one where they didn't mess it up after June 1990 but kept going and recorded singles, EPs and albums all the way through the 90s culminating in a gig at Raglan Road scout hut in Sale, up the road from me, where Ian and John first rehearsed way back. You can read that post here. Jesse fired up his studio, sampled Ian and built a new/ imaginary Roses track. The third version, Lavender Mist, went all backwards and is named after Jackson Pollock's painting of the same name. For a while Jesse had the idea that I might provide the vocal but I bottled it. Probably for the best. My singing voice hasn't been the same since I gave up smoking. I always planned to include Lavender Mist on an end of year mix but Mani's death in November added an extra poignancy to everything Roses related. You may have seen the photos from the funeral of his former bandmates carrying his coffin out of Manchester cathedral. A very sad loss. 

Four Tet's Mazzy Star sampling Into Dust (Still Falling) was my favourite single of 2025, a lush and slinky tune that (as I said elsewhere) sounded like summer in the summer and sounds like winter in the here and now. Kieran Hebden can do little wrong for me- his album with William Tyler was as good an album as any other released in 2025 and as Four Tet has been on a roll of superb albums in the last decade with New Energy in 2017, Sixteen Oceans in 2020 and Three in 2024.  

Zahl

Aphex Twin's Soundcloud page- registered to user18081971- saw a spate of excitement and activity a few days ago when said owner, user18081971 (Richard D James/ Aphex Twin), uploaded a pair of new tracks, or rather two versions of one new track. The first was Zahl am1 live track 1. At first it was download enabled but he seems to have cut that and they're just at Soundcloud to stream. I got this one but not the other...

Zahl am1 live track 1

It's a very lovely thing indeed, a spongy sounding synth track, layers of sounds, a sort of reflective ambience but with a murky edge, beautiful but a little on edge with a long fade out. 

Zahl am1 live track 1c f760m1 unfinshd starts with the same synth chords and sounds, those spongy chords the basis of it, but it adds drums and stretches things further- the ambience is weirder but set against a pretty dynamic rhythm. The drums stop and then change pace halfway through too. You could probably actually dance to it. 

Where/ when they date from is anyone's guess. They seem to be fairly recent. Richard said that he 'got many requests for this one from a few years back' and that he thinks 'there's better mixes, will upload them if I find them'. To call these tracks sound design or sound construction is to do them as disservice- there's too much human emotion, too much soul poured into them for them to be that. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Four

One more cover version Sunday mix then I'll leave it alone for a while. I've been finding cover versions in all sorts of places since I started the first mix four weeks ago, songs springing to mind at random moments. Most of the ones I've chosen do something with the source material, take it somewhere else emotionally or stylistically. Some rip the original to shreds, some pay their respects but still tear it up. Some nod their head to their influences or pay something back. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Four

• Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End
• Spiritualized: Any Way That You Want Me
• The Kills: Pale Blue Eyes
• One Dove: Jolene
• Galaxie 500: Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste
• John Cale: All My Friends
• Monkey Mafia: As Long As I Can See The Light
• Raz and Afla: Windowlicker

Sonic Boom formed Spectrum after Spacemen 3 split up and his cover of Daniel Johnson's True Love Will Find You In The End is a gorgeous, angelic take on the song. Released in 1992 as a single and later included in two versions on a Sonic Boom/ Spectrum compilation.

Two years earlier Jason Pierce/ J Spaceman flew the Spacemen 3 coop first, releasing the first Spiritualized single, a cover of The Troggs 1966 single. Jason doesn't radically alter it but he makes it a Spiritualized song all the same. 

The Kills cover of The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes is gloriously ragged and fuzzed up, the guitar stuttering and ripping a hole in the speaker while Alison gives deadpan vocals. It was a B-side to their 2012 The Last Goodbye single.

One Dove's dubbed out, trippy reggae cover of Dolly Parton is a blast, Dot's beautifully off key vocals perfect for the band's blissed out but slightly on edge comedown re-imagining of the song. It came out as one of the B-sides to the 1993 single release of Why Don't You Take Me.

Galaxie 500 recorded several fantastic covers- their take on New Order's Ceremony may be the best NO cover ever recorded. Their cover of Jonathan Richman's Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste is superb, Jonathan's ninety second original stretched to to seven minutes, a thrilling Galaxie performance, the rumble of drums and bass matched by Dean's trebly, overdriven guitar. They only existed for four years, 1987 to 1991, but what a great band they were. 

John Cale covered LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends for LCD's own release of the single back in 2007- it came out as the B-side on 7" along with a sister 7" that had  Franz Ferdinand cover of the same song. Cale's version, piano, clipped krautrock guitars and his lived in, baritone voice give James Murphy's song a new dimension- when Cale sings, 'where are your friends tonight?', it conjures all sorts of imagery. 

Monkey Mafia's cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's was a 1998 single, a late 90s revisiting of a 1970 song, a call out to the weary travelers and wanderers, a song about going home. Pre- millenial tension?

Raz and Afla's cover of Aphex Twin's Windowlicker came out this year, a fantastic synths and percussion Afro- electronic floor filler- well, I can imagine some floors that it might fill. 

Twenty One Minutes Of Two Minute Tracks

I had an idea that I would do a Sunday mix of all those short electronic/ ambient tracks that appear on albums, the intros and outros, the bridging tracks, found sounds, brief ambient pieces and short one minute ideas that never got worked up into a full track but that the artist clearly liked. I realised that to make it forty minutes long would require at least twenty tracks and time constraints this week meant that I started the mix but haven't got anywhere near forty minutes- it's just shy of twenty one minutes, fourteen tracks from a variety of sources. I need to give it more thought really and gather together some more and either do a part two or expand this one out but in the meantime, here it is...

Twenty One Minutes Of Two Minute Tracks

I decided early on that two minutes was the cut off (although there are a couple here which just tip over that time). I was going to go totally beatless but that didn't work out. It's almost completely without vocals too. I wasn't sure it all worked but playing it back last night I was pretty happy with it. An expanded edition/ part two is definitely on the cards. 

• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Gospel Oak FX)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Tiny Reminder No. 1
• Four Tet: This Is For You
• Sewell And The Gong: MYND
• The Orb: Snowbow
• Ultramarine: A Year From Monday
• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Hi- Tech)
• M- Paths: Calm
• Polypores: Mystery Energy Score
• Aphex Twin: Avril 14th (reversed music not audio)
• Pandit Pam Pam: Interludio
• Daniel Avery: First Light
• Sydney Minsky Sargeant: Intro
• Andrew Weatherall: Intro

A Man Called Adam's Easter Song is one of their best, a triumphant piece of optimsitc, life affirming Balearica. In 2017 the duo put out a special edition on Bandcamp to celebrate the song's 20th birthday which came with two new very short versions, the found sound intro of Gospel Oak FX and the ambient with beats of Hi- Tech. Both appear on this mix. 

In 2000 Two Lone Swordsmen released their electronic triple disc opus Tiny Reminders, Weatherall and Tenniswood's pursuit of  techno/ bass purism followed through to its end. Each of the three disc opened with a burst of static/ quiet noise called Tiny Reminder and numbered 1, 2 and 3. 

Four Tet's Sixteen Ocean's was a 2020 highlight, three sides of vinyl that soundtracked those early days of lockdown in March/ April 2020 of that year. This Is For You is one of five short tracks on it- the others are Hi Hello, ISTM, 1993 Band Practice and Bubbles At Overlook 25th March 2019- any/ all of which I was going to include here and didn't.

Sewell And The Gong's Patron Saint Of Elswhere is one of my favourite albums of 2025, a Balearic  folk/ motorik beauty with MYND a short one minute fourteen seconds of sound sandwiched between much longer excursions. 

The Orb tend to do long tracks. Snowbow is from 2005's Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt, an album I only found recently and have been enjoying. Snowbow is the closing track, two minutes and fourteen seconds.

A Year From Monday gave me the idea for this mix. It's on an album of Ultramarine recordings from 1997/ 8 that sat unreleased until this year. I posted it a few Monday's ago and listening to it in the car I wondered how it would work with a load of other very short tracks around it. 

M- Paths' Calm was on their album Hope, released on Mighty Force in 2023, a rippling melody line and drums. 

Polypores released an album in June, Cosmically A Shambles. I posted a song from it on Friday. The slightly hyperactive and bleepy Mystery Energy Score is in the middle of the album and this mix. I couldn't decide if its energy was a good change of pace or not and nearly took it out. In the end I thought it just about worked.

Aphex Twin's Avril 14th is his most streamed track, a Satie like piano piece smothered in reverb. THis version, the music reversed not audio version, is from user18081971's Soundcloud page, widely acknowledged to be Richard D James' outlet for all manner of unreleased music. 

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Interludio is from Dot, an EP from January this year, six tracks recorded while caring for a young baby, Diogo. 

First Light is the opening track on Daniel Avery's Song For Alpha, a 2018 album that was the start of a run of outstanding albums that isn't over yet. One minute and forty seconds of wodnerful ambient drones. 

Sydney Minsky Sargeant's album Lunga came out last week, an autumn 2025 highlight. Intro is the opening track (obviously), a short ambient piece that eases us into Lunga. And out of this mix.

Andrew Weatherall's Intro was the very short first track on Convenanza. 'I seem to have got in with the wrong crowd', the voice says, setting Andrew's stall out. 

Windowlicking

Friday in late April. How did that happen? In my head it feels like we're only a few weeks into 2025 and yet next week it's going to be May. We got back from Marrakech a week ago today, Easter is gone and there's another four day week on the horizon. My head's still spinning from everything we saw and did out in Morocco, I haven't yet written in any detail about the musicians we saw playing in the desert last Thursday night and there's a post about Brian Jones and the Master Musicians of Joujouka and Sufi desert trance music that's been percolating in my head for a few days. 

Eliza is in Bali- and that's a whole other story- she came back from university last summer and went straight into work, working at the day care club that Isaac used to go to. Having saved up enough money to pay off her student overdraft and finance a bit of travelling she dropped it on us with about ten days notice before departure that she'd booked a flight to Bali and was going off for a month travelling solo- she flew the day before we flew to Morocco. When she was due to land in Bali, me and Lou would be landing in Marrakech, none of us with a working phone, all three of us needing to buy SIM cards and being in completely different continents and time zones. You'll be relieved to know all has been fine in Bali and she's having the time of her life.

Sometimes things just fall into place. This track came to me two days ago, one of those things which shouldn't work but does brilliantly, a track that re- configures an older one into something entirely, wonderfully new- this is an Afro- Beat, Afro house cover version of Aphex Twin's 1999 track Windowlicker by Raz and Afla...

Raz and Afla are a duo. Raz Olsher is a producer from Hackney and Afla Sackey is a musician from Ghana- they style themselves as taking 'a cosmic journey through the African continent and beyond'. Heavily percussive but light on its feet, with wordless and spooked vocal sounds, brightly coloured synths and funked up African guitars, this take on Windowlicker does exactly what good cover versions should- it re- imagines the original, shifts it somewhere else, throwing new light on an old song. You can buy it at Bandcamp.

Aphex Twin's Windowlicker is one of Richard D. James' freakiest, sleaziest and out there pieces of music, heavily processed and filled with gasps and moans, that diverts into various future sounds- a drum 'n' bass intro, a weird, time- stretching middle section, some futuristic alien dub, and a nerve shredding noisy ending.  

Windowlicker 

 

#20

Last year Warp re- issued Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II, a four discs of vinyl album originally released in 1994. It followed the hugely acclaimed Selected Ambient Works 85- 92, the album which cemented Richard D. James' reputation as an auteur, a genius, a maverick and a colossal talent (much of which was evident on his very first 12" Analogue Bubblebath). SAW II is a very different album to SAW 85- 92. It is almost entirely beatless, a lengthy set of ambient music, slow moving tracks built on waves of sound, noise, subtle drones and hum, the sound of continents shifting slightly, of ice ages coming and going- minimalist dark ambient. 

The album seems built to confuse. The majority of the tracks have no name, all titled 'untitled' and on digital releases were numbered #1, #2 etc, apart from #13 which is named Blue Calx. Many gained unofficial fan names- radiator, white blur 1, tree, stone in focus, lichen. The sleeve wasn't much help either. The eight sides of vinyl and individual tracks are represented by symbols (all of which are very similar to each other). If you took the four discs out of the sleeve and mixed them up, you'd be lost fairly quickly. It's not user friendly at all. The re- issue has added two tracks, both with actual names- th1[evnslower] and Rhubarb Orc. 1953 Rev.

James compared the album to listening to the sound of a power station while on acid. There's no doubt that listening to it is an immersive experience that can alter the way you feel. It is very much an album that encourages one to reflect and to contemplate, a serene, discombobulating, almost out of body experience. It's melancholic, spooky but ultimately, I think, filled with an eerie sense of humanity- or of nature maybe. The vinyl re- issue, four discs housed in a big sleeve with a poster and stickers, is a monolithic feeling release and came with a £50 price tag. I got some Christmas money from a relative and after a little dithering spent the money on Selected Ambient Works II, a decision I don't regret at all. It's a magnificent piece of work. This is ten sublime minutes of it...

#20 (Stone In Focus)

There are some copies left at Bandcamp or you can get a more budget friendly digital release. 

Fifty Five Minutes Of Mighty Force

Mighty Force began life in 1990 as an Exeter based record shop and then label run by Mark Darby, created largely to put out the music on a tape passed to him by one Richard D. James. Said cassette contained Analogue Bubblebath, the first appearance on vinyl of Aphex Twin. The label ran to 1999, from '95 in London, and then closed its doors. Mark began releasing music again in summer 2019 and since then had put out album after album of outstanding electronic music- ambient, techno, dance music, acid and all points in between and around, releases by David Harrow, Boxheater Jackson, M- Paths, Golden Donna, Myoptik, Long Range Desert Group, Yorkshire Machines, WRNR, Shrieky, SubDan, M- Paths, D'FunK, Fluffy Inside, AP Organism, Paddy Thorne, KAMS, Sven Kossler, Solipsism, and dyLAB plus several compilations of MF Acid and this year has already released two further compilations to celebrate the label's thirty three years. MF33 Volume 2 can be found here. The most recent Mighty Force release appeared ten days ago, an hour long mix of music by Boxheater Jackson containing music from his Indigenous State Of Mind album and some previously unreleased Boxheater tracks. Find it here. There is nothing on Mighty Force that isn't worth listening to, Mark's quality control is ridiculously high. Today's mix is a celebration of the label, nine tracks long with eight from the reborn Mighty Force. 

Fifty Five Minutes Of Mighty Force

• Aphex Twin: Analogue Bubblebath
• AP Organism: Moon Rocks
• Fluffy Inside: Nylon Corner
• KAMS: Website Rave
• Long Range Desert Group: Lutheran Burglar
• Yorkshire Machines: LS3 03
• M- Paths: M- Paths By Name, Empaths By Nature
• Boxheater Jackson: Let It All Go!
• David Harrow: Jitter

Analogue Bubblebath is a perfect piece of electronic music, a track Mark heard in his shop over the shop's sound system and was 'like nothing (he'd) ever heard before'. It took a while to convince Richard/ Aphex Twin to release it, Richard eventually agreeing while under the influence of LSD. Analogue Bubble bath is otherworldly, emotive, inventive, ambient dance music that keeps shifting shape, and still sounds like the future. 

AP Organism released Space Docks And Moon Rocks in May 2023, a two track EP of dubby/ cosmic/ ambient electronica from Andy Pitman.  

Fluffy Inside's Nylon Corners came out in July 2023, a ten track album that works as both headphone and dancefloor music. The title track is a beauty, acid melodies dancing about over rattling 303 percussion.

Website Rave is from KAMS Described Spaces album, a twelve track delight. Website Rave sounds exactly like its title suggests it should- acid basslines, thumping machine drums, squiggles, sirens, the occasional sampled vocal shout. 

Long Range Desert Group's album Pro- oxidant was one of my favourites back in 2022, drawing its influences not just from electronic music but from post- punk, from ACR, 23 Skidoo and Talking Heads. Heads down, absorbing and cinematic, the whole album is  an essential Mighty Force release. 

Yorkshire Machines put out their Firing Up EP in late 2023. It is thumpy acid dance music. LS3 03 samples Sean Bean from the TV adaptation of David Peace's deeply unsettling Red Riding quartet of novels. No one made the construction of a vast shopping centre sound more like a threat than a promise.

M- Paths have had two albums out on Mighty Force, Hope in March 2023 and Submerge in April this year. The track here is from Hope. On the whole M- Paths make chilled out ambient and ambient techno. The one here is pretty thumpy though, dance music as a thing of optimism. 

Boxheater Jackson has had two full length albums out on Mighty Force, the first We Are One in 2022  and the second this year's Indigenous State Of Mind from September last year. Both albums are superb, Big Vern creating widescreen, stripped down, consciousness raising, awestruck dance music. Boxheater Jackson is otherwise known as Big Vern Burns. He who DJed alongside Andrew Weatherall at the Double Gone Chapel and before that was an engineer at Sabresonic and then went onto Rotters Golf Club. 

David Harrow's road to Mighty Force takes in a past that includes time spent with Psychic TV, writing and producing with Anne Clark, being a key member of the On U Sound crew, playing with Jah Wobble, recording with Andrew Weatherall as Blood Sugar and then on Sabres as Technova, writing Billie Ray Martin's Your Loving Arms, moving to LA and releasing music as James Hardway and more recently putting out modular synth/ ambient/ dub recordings under his own name. Jitter was the title track on a two track EP from 2023, a slice of mighty, jittery acid techno to finish things here. 

Avril 14th Delayed

Yesterday was 14th April, Avril 14th in Aphex Twin world. That track, Avril 14th, came out on Richard D. James' 2001 album Druqks, a two minute piano piece that provides some calming bliss, a moment of reflection in an ever- speedy world, an almost New Age composition but with that Aphex Twin edge that shifts it into slightly uncomfortable territory, loss and sadness at the fringes and very much a track that suggests something about memory and reminiscence. 

Avril 14th

It was recored using a Disklavier, essentially a piano that reads MIDI data and thus plays the notes without a human pressing fingers on keys- Aphex Twin blurring the lines between machine and human and producing something that is still ineffably human and beautiful. It's been used all over the place, in various films and sampled by Kanye West. It has been streamed hundreds of millions of times but remains unknown and obscure all the same. 

In 2018 Aphex Twin dropped two further versions and then deleted them the following day. Both add to the mystique. 

Avril 14th (reversed music not audio) sounds like things are as they should be. There's a lot of reverb and the piano does sound like it's playing itself

Avril 14th (reversed music not audio)

Alt Delay makes time shift around and adds further layers of melancholy to the piano in ways which are difficult to fully express. Liable to cause the blinking back of tears at the sudden appearance of memories, at least in this quarter.

Avril 14th (alt delay)

NYE 23

Let's wave goodbye to 2023 with the final Sunday mix of the year, this one stretching out with an hour and thirteen minute's worth of tunes from this year, not exactly a Best Of 2023 (although these are among the best of this year) more of a Some Of 2023. A mixture of trippy, dubby electronic music, throbbing dance tunes, chuggy indie dance, Balearic pop and Dublin guitar slinging sturm und drang. 

Happy New Year. Have fun tonight however you're choosing to celebrate. Thank you to everyone who's come here this year, to read and comment. I don't think I write this thing with an audience in mind but it helps to know that there is one, and that the people that populate it and places like this one are defintely a community. The comments and responses, particularly to some of the more personal, grief related posts, are genuinely much appreciated and a real support. Thank you, all of you. 

Onwards into 24. 

2023 NYE Mix

• Aphex Twin: Blackbox Life Recorder 21f
• Four Tet: Three Drums
• Khidja: Do You Know This Record Marius?
• Psychederek: Test Card Girl
• 10:40: Little Black Dress (Undressed Dub)
• A Man Called Adam: The Girl With The Hole In Her Heart
• David Holmes: Stop Apologising (Horse Meat Disco Vocal Remix)
• Marshall Watson and Cole Odin: Just A Daydream Away (Hardway Bros Remix)
• Islandman: Godless Ceremony (Hardway Bros Remix)
• James Holden: Common Land
• JIM: Still River Flow
• Fontaines DC: 'Cello Song

Short Forgotten Produk

The Soundcloud page belonging to user18081971 is widely recognised as belonging to Richard D. James, Aphex Twin. Every now and then he uploads previously unreleased material to it, presumably when recordings re- appear in front of him when looking through folders/ DATs/ tapes while searching for something else. Back in July this one was uploaded...

Short Forgotten Produk Trk Omc

Two minutes of fuzzed bass, a lazy drumbeat and some almost jazzy synth chords and keys. Just before the minute another synth part appears and shifts it into different territory before disappearing again and everything stripping back for the last thirty seconds, leaving just the bass. According to Richard  it was 'as promised to people that pm'd me. made approx 2006- 07'. It's not much more than a sketch, an idea slightly fleshed out, short and forgotten until now, but the AFX magic is located within it. 

If you want a further reminder of Richard D. James' ability to create transcendental music earlier this year he released an EP led by the track Black Box Recorder 21f, four minutes of electronic alchemy, dedicated to his parents both of whom he has lost in recent years, his dad in 2020 and his mum in 2022. 

Blackbox Life Recorder

Aphex Twin dropped a new track last week, fairly unexpectedly, ahead of an EP out at the end of July. Blackbox Life Recorder 21f has much to recommend it and it's definitely a grower too, revealing a little more on each listen. The drums are superb, joined by a low key synth part and then there's a shift in rhythm at one minute six, the drums picking up and more layers being added. Lots going on, some of it very subtle and some more upfront- there's pause at two and a half minutes, even more drums/ percussion and what sounds like a voice, taking us through to the fade out.  

There's some real beauty tinged with melancholy in the track, a trick he's been pulling off since Selected Ambient Works. You can order it digitally or physically here. I do baulk a little at the £21 price for a 12" single but suspect it will sound very deep and rich on black plastic. 

This is from Syro, his return record back in 2014, a track that is both minimalist and has lots going on. 

Minipops 67 [120.2] [source field mix]

Spiral Staircase

This is the fifth of five Luke Vibert posts, from my ongoing collaboration with reader Spencer- we have a new project that should have started by now. I've been a bit all over the place with things in recent weeks but will make every effort to get onto that now this run of posts is coming to a close. 

In 2004 Luke Vibert in his Wagon Christ mode held a remix competition via the magazine Future Music CD. That competition was won by Aphex Twin who remixed Wagon Christ's Sci Fi Staircase into this...

Spiral Staircase [Future Music Competition] (AFX Remix) 

It is Richard D James at his very best, opening with alternating synth notes and then an acid squiggle. A crunchy breakbeat hits after forty seconds and the three elements loop and spiral around each other, a hiss eventually pushing in too. More synths, a rising and falling topline that dances, almost visibly. The sudden stop at two minutes twelve gives the shortest of breaks and then the second half develops, more of the same but different slightly. There is some very loud sub-bass kicking in before the end section at around four minutes goes much deeper, into ambient techno territory and a long ending, sub bass capable of making car speakers jump from their moorings. It is deceptively beautiful, endlessly imaginative and quite beautiful. 

It may seem a little unfair that Aphex Twin won the competition. He knows Luke well from Cornwall and he put out many of Luke's recordings. On AFX's Soundcloud page he added some notes about the track which I put here verbatim...

best way i can explain this was falling in love with someone that didnt exist, it couldve been applied to anyone and everyone.
liferush.
I mean it was for luke's competition but when I was making it I obviously had other thoughts going around me ed.
Was hard keeping it a secret from him, i had an advantage, i knew better than most what luke liked !-)
I gave the prize to the runner up, i forgot his name now.
It's quite quiet because the sub is so loud and low, trade/off.

I've sequenced the five Luke Vibert tracks from this mini- series into one twenty- seven mix but including the alternative version of Spiral Staircase rather than the one above, a minute shorter and opening with that sub bass wobble and then the dancing melody line. 

Bagging Area/ Spencer Luke Vibert Mix

• Plug: Me And Mr. Jones
• Luke Vibert: Doozit
• Kerrier District: Disco Nasty
• Wagon Christ: Spiral Staircase [Future Music Competition] (AFX ALTRemix)
• Luke Vibert: Back With Me

The previous posts with my warblings about each track are here- Plug's Me And Mr Jones, Doozit, Kerrier District's Disco Nasty and Back With Me. 

Saturday Live

Aphex Twin playing to a mixed age crowd in a long concrete room, Printworks, in London in September 2019 (and doesn't 2019 seem like a different time now?). There's a lightshow and lasers. The crowd stand facing the DJ, an aspect of modern clubbing I still find a bit odd, especially the people who go down the front and stand at the barriers like it's a rock gig. Richard D. James plays some records, some made by himself, some by other people. There are some other pieces of kit in the DJ booth, synths and drum machines, for live accompaniment to the music, at times breaks and drums on their own linking two records but a part of the show in their own. There's a slow intro, the sounds easing the crowd in gently and then after two minutes he segues into one of his own tracks, an unreleased one that may be titled London trk 1. Sounds fade in and out, there are breakdowns, juddering rhythms and the sweet glide of ambient techno, some old school favourites- Renegade Soundwave's The Phantom must have been in his record box since 1989 and Holy Ghost Inc's Mad Monks On Zinc and Underground Resistance's UR My People since 1991- and some brain melting Aphex Twin tracks. It builds into what becomes something quite frantic and full on, some unreleased Squarepusher hitting hard and then he breaks it all down, flicking the switch into his own ambient classic Stone In Focus, a ten minute beatless track that sounds like the universe being created very slowly. This Aphex Twin DJ gig is in every sense, a show, an experience, two hours of cross generational appreciation of a master at work. 

Disco Nasty

My weekly collaboration with Spencer (he sends me a song, I write about it) has been all about whimsical/ fragile/ fried/ odd psychedelia thus far in 2023, from the very English suburban psychedelics of Woo to John Stout's early 80s proto- electronica, the oddball 50s cool jazz/ spoken word of Ken Nordine to Eden Ahbez's pre- hippy Beatnik exotica and the blues chill of Brian Eno's The Moon's Lament. But now we're turning a corner and heading elsewhere, a change of pace and vibe to match the change in the seasons- today's song from Spencer is a Luke Vibert tune

Disco Nasty

We're still in tripped out territory, but rather than the introspection of the recent songs, this is dance floor funk, science fiction funk maybe but booty shaking funk all the same. The bass is a mind twisting, distorted, bouncing line. Bleeps fly in and out. The hi- hat tsk tsk tsks. The sounds begin to layer up, shape shifting and morphing, synth notes bent and modulated.  Eventually a super- distorted voice interjects, something unintelligible. Wah wah synth toplines ride in and out. Distorted disco funk for the outer reaches of the galaxy. 

Disco Nasty of from Kerrier Disstrict, Luke recording under the same name. He's is closely connected to Aphex Twin and Aphex's Rephlex label and his releases in the 90s were in the techno, drum and bass and then trip hop arenas, diving headlong into drill 'n' bass along the way as Wagon Christ (one of my favourite 90s artist pseudonyms). Kerrier District came out in 2004 on Rephlex. It feels much more recent than that and it's with a bit of a shock I realise this album is now nearly twenty years old. You can buy it digitally here. 

Forty Minutes Of Aphex Twin

A few weeks ago I thought I'd do a mix of Aphex Twin tracks for this Sunday series of half hour mixes and then suddenly felt quite daunted by it- by the sheer range, breadth and depth of his back catalogue- and shelved it. Recently, feeling a little more confident about it, I dove in and just stitched together the Aphex Twin tracks that I'd reach for if I wanted to hear some of the inner workings of the mind of Richard D. James, pulled gravitationally towards the less nosebleed stuff and more towards the more ambient/ dreamy/ chilled output. There are umpteen potential further Aphex Twin mixes lurking in my head/ on my hard drive but for the moment this one will have to do- since throwing it together I've listened to it several times and it works much better than I expected it to. 

Forty Minutes Of Aphex Twin

• #19 aka Stone In Focus
• 34 Ibiza Spliff
• On
• Alberto Balsam
• Delphium
• Analogue Bubblebath
• Avril 14th
• Avril 14th Reversed

Track 19/ #19 aka Stone In Focus is from 1994's Selected Ambient Works II, the vinyl only, it was omitted from the CD releases for lack of running time (it's over ten minutes long), a slow moving ambient recording, three chords in very minimal style. It sounds something like the universe shifting around slightly. Planets and stars in super slow orbit. Dust forming over eons. 

34 Ibiza Spliff is from the Soundcloud page belonging to user18081971, widely recognised as Aphex Twin's unreleased tracks dump, a treasure trove of recordings. On came out on Warp in November 1993 and had a video directed by Jarvis Cocker and filmed in West Kirby, Wirral. 

Alberto Balsam is from the third Aphex Twin album, ...I Care Because You Do, released in 1995, a record that combines analogue ambient, Philip Glass inspired minimalism and brain mashing techno. 

Delphium is from Selected Ambient Works 85- 92, the legendary 1992 album made up of tracks Richard James did using homemade synths and drum machines and recorded onto cassette, full of moments of subtle, melodic, organic, acid house/ dance music/ IDM. 

Analogue Bubblebath was The Aphex Twin's debut, out on Mighty Force in September 1991. The record's Wikipedia page says 'it's release has been described as a key event in the history of dance music' and that's putting it mildly. 

Avril 14th is a Satie- esque minimalist piano track from 2001's Druqks. It has been streamed hundreds of millions of times, been used in films and sampled by Kanye West.

Avril 14th Reversed was officially unreleased until 2018 when James dropped it onto his online store. The mp3 comes with this information- 'reversed music not audio [tapedel] played and programmed modified yamaha disklavia pro, recorded to Nagra IVS 5_' which is a very technical and unromantic description of something very beautiful indeed. 

User Music

It's been nearly a year since Aphex Twin made an appearance round the Bagging Area way and a Friday in February seems as good a time as any to post some customary, casual Richard D. James brilliance. Richard has a Soundcloud page under the name user18711971 which he uses as a track dump, sporadically uploading previously unreleased music/ magic from his presumably enormous collection of cassettes and hard drives. 

Tha2 [world scam mix] is a moody, low tech thumper full of (as a Reddit user has it) 'pseudo- transcendent beats'. Mournful synth chords and acidic squiggles playing off against each and with each other over a distorted kick drum. I don't know why it's called the world scam mix and frankly I think I'd rather not. 

Tha2 [world scam mix]

The title of 34 ibiza spliff would seem to be self- explanatory. The music is otherworldly. 

34 ibiza spliff

Ageispolis

That wasn't the best week at work I've ever had. The weekend never really feels long enough to recharge- it's Saturday morning and then before you know it Sunday night has arrived and with it the Monday morning dread kicks in. But still, here it is, the weekend, in all it's lockdown glory. 

This weekend last year was the last time I went into a record shop or art gallery. Photographing pylons from beneath is the most excitement weekends offer now. 

Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85- 92 contains some of the most original, most startling music of the early 90s. SAW is a compilation of various tracks recorded by Richard D. James in the years in its title, homemade synths and drum machines, a keyboard and computer and recorded onto cassette. The music is ambient techno with beats to reduce it to basics but it is so much more than that- weird, lush melodies, oceanic waves of synth, echo- laden drums, basslines that arrive from somewhere else entirely, bubbles and bleeps and the occasional sampled voice, atmospheres and textures that the young RDJ summoned up in his Cornwall teens and committed to plastic. This one sticks in my mind at the moment but I could choose any of the thirteen tracks that make up Selected Ambient Works 85- 92. 

Ageispolis

Lost Tracks

There were various posts running through my head for the final day of 2020 but in the end what does it matter? The year has concluded in sadly typical style with a day of rising Covid cases, tiering announcements and Brexit debacles. At this point, the year could only really reach a suitable climax if Godzilla and a plague of giant mutant locusts riding an asteroid crash landed in Piccadilly Gardens, proclaiming themselves the vanguard of an invading alien army, ready to enslave us all. 

There doesn't seem to be much to look forward to in the immediate weeks of 2021 but by this point it's all we can do to keep on trudging on, wrap up against the cold and wait for it to pass. Lockdown 1 started in March, ten months ago, which seems a long time ago now in some ways. The wheel keeps turning. It will eventually be the spring. I hope you see in the new year in whatever way you can tonight, thanks to everyone who comes here regularly and irregularly, and let's raise a glass to putting this year behind us, as much as we can. Happy new year to you all, when it comes. 

Aphex Twin still has a Soundcloud page up under the name User18081971, a dump for a multitude of lost tracks, unreleased gems, demo experiments and odd and ends. This one, 34 ibiza spliff, isn't there anymore and I don't seem to have an mp3 of it but it is a minor masterpiece, on the face of it just a lazy beat and some synth chords but it is much more than that. The very slight changes in the volume on the drums, the amount of reverb and the pauses between the notes, the space between the different elements, are all the touches of a master craftsman. 

Also from the Soundcloud page is this, cut from similar cloth- a rhythm track and some melodies that sound downbeat at first but end up feeling more positive.

lost track [dat 24] icbyd

There's all sorts of freebies in there- I can recommend 8 utopia, bimbongo2 and his Joni Mitchell sample track titled parking lot and the two minute sketch called 7 summer festival love in the country. Some of them sound like pieces he started, worked on for half an hour and then saved and forgot about. Some sound like they could have been poured over for ages and then abandoned when a new idea came along. Impossible to tell but all fascinating and typically streets ahead of most of the rest of the field. 

a12.ab3 .215061

 

Soundcloud user18081971, Aphex Twin by another name, has posted another long lost track pulled from an old cassette. The track, catchily titled a12.ab3 .215061 is a superb piece of driving, fizzing acid recorded at some point around 1990. This piece of music, three decades old and not sounding at all like it, is four and a half minutes of buzzing 303 bassline, rattling snares and a topline that'll frazzle your head a little. There's a lovely breakdown part at two and a half minutes with a little tick tock melody playing, then everything else drops out for a while and then comes back in for the last minute with some loopy shit going on at the four minute mark. Proper lost in the strobe and dry ice of the backroom of a club stuff, wondering where all your friends have gone but deciding it doesn't matter, just stay near the speakers, it'll all be fine. The only problem with a12.ab3 .215061 is it's too short and ends abruptly, apparently because the tape ran out. It's on user18081971's Soundcloud page as a free download. 

Not entirely unrelated but written a century before is this by Erik Satie, Gymnopedie No. 1, one of Satie's modernist, minimalist piano pieces. As this was playing on the computer on Monday morning my daughter passed by and said, 'this sounds sad'. And it does but it's very nice too. 

I'm no expert on Satie. I need to explore further. Aphex Twin's 2001 album Druqks contained some Satie style piano pieces, interludes among some manic, rapid fire drum 'n' bass/ breakbeat music. Druqks was released after Richard D James left an mp3 player on an airplane and was concerned the unreleased music on it would be leaked and bootlegged. Alternatively, James had a load of music sitting on his hard drive and wanted out of his contract with Warp. Either way it made for a disjointed album, one which requires some dedication on the part of the listener (or as we'd do now, the ability to rip it yourself and pull out the ones you like into a playlist or a mix CD of your own- probably what he intended all along. I'm sure Satie would approve too). 

Avril 14th

Avril 14th is a beautiful piano piece by Aphex Twin. It was originally released on his 2001 Drukqs album, a double album only released after Aphex left an mp3 player on a plane and was worried that they'd be discovered and bootlegged. There are several other versions of Avril 14th, some of which surfaced at a Soundcloud page belonging to user18081971 (a pseudonym for Ahex Twin/ Richard D James). This one is gorgeous, the use of reverb and delay creating a completely self contained world.

Avril 14th (altdelay)

User18081971 uploaded some new songs last week including two slow, haunting synth pieces. The post was dedicated to his father who had recently passed away along with this, a piece of music called qu 1.



This one too, s8v1 [brooklyn] Both are still available to download. The rest of user18081971's free track archive is here.