Scoring an interview with enigmatic producer Richard James, aka Aphex Twin, is no easy feat. When popular EDM publication Groove decided to test the waters, they decided to go at things a bit differently. What they did was go out and get 25 of electronic dance music’s best DJ’s/producers to ask the legendary musician and composer random questions. Artists such as Skrillex, Richie Hawtin, Caribou, Joe Goddard of Hot Chip, and Ricardo Villalobos were brought on board to ask James some questions, including one about a supposed boat party in which James hired Captain Birdseye (from the Frozen Food company) to hand out acid, “No, but I want to do this! It’s one of many undone ideas.” Some of the other topics that he spoke about:
His ideas for music software that mutates:
“I recently hired a Chinese programmer to make a music software for me. It’s taking the concept of mutation into music software. You give the program some sounds you made and then it gives you six variations of it and then you choose the one you like most and then it makes another six and it kind of keeps trying to choosing the variations by itself. It’s a bit like that, but more advanced, but basically it starts with a sound, analyzes it, then does different versions of variations. It randomizes, it compares all of them to the original and then it picks the best one. It sounds totally awesome, but it needs to be tweeked a little bit. I will continue with this. I have a whole book full of ideas for software and instruments.”
On the state of the EDM boom, in particular the massive LED light shows:
“It’s fine. I actually don’t care what people are doing. I just care about what they’re actually playing. It doesn’t feel related to anything I’m doing. This guy Skrillex, I’ve only heard about his tracks, because my kids played them. It sounds like he has a good grasp of technology. I think it’s pretty poppy, isn’t it? It’s too poppy for me.”
On having ghosts/spirits present when making music:
“Yeah, I always felt a presence or something, I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s just a human conditon, but it always feels like the gods are looking on us and are like: ‘Ah, let’s make him do this’. And it’s really weird, because the other day I got stoned and went to bed, and I had the biggest intense feeling of someone watching over me.”
Read the full interview here.