My avatar/Richard D James

[Vincent]

My old avatar (the face) was the cover of an Aphex Twin album that was called "Richard D James Album".

Richard D James is the man behind Aphex Twin who also goes under the names:

Polygon Windows
Gak
afx
Caustic Window (see new avatar :-D )

It's hard to describe his music though...  Some is just weird, some is acid dance/trance, some is ambient but quite a bit is just noise :-D

Oh, he's from Cornwall and owns a tank :-o

If you want to check out his stuff try Selected Ambient Works 1985-1992, Surfing on Sine Waves, Richard D James, Ventolin and Druqks for quite a range of his styles.

--edit--

If you've seen the videos for Come to Daddy and Windowlicker, Richard is the faces on the kids in the first and the guy in the limo in the latter.

[Vincent]

Karlos wrote:
"Aphex Twin" maybe comes from the Aphex Corporation who produced (and trademarked) a lot of sound effects processing techniques.

Interesting :-)

Ok Mr Brainy, how about telling us how he got the other names :-P

Oh, and I missed a few names:

Power-Pill (only used for a Pac-Man remix)
Tan 109 (only for the Universal Indicator single sets)

[Vincent]

Karlos wrote:
One can advance no rationale to elucidate Richard James' naming strategy :-D

:lol: You just need to look at the names of the songs on Drukqs to see that :-D

Presumably Power Pill relates to the power ups in Pac Man?

Yup, that's the only thing he's rel;eased under that name, a four track single of mixes of the original tune, I think his mix is slightly faster than the original, but the original tune is the main basis, unlike many other remixes :-D

@blob

:lol:

[Vincent]

Cyberus wrote:
By the way, one of the CDs I own AFX : Analogue Bubblebath, has another release version called 'Hangable Autobulb' - I though that was class when I heard it!

Ah, Hangable Autobulb 1, nice EP that :-)

There's also a Hangable Autobulb 2, and there's been 5 different releases for Analogue Bubblebath (Vol 2, 3, IV and 5) I think 3 is the most common one on these shores.  All of them are great buys (Vol 2 has Digeridoo as the first track).

The Joyrex series is another good one (Caustic Window - Joyrex J4, J5 and J9... don't know if there's a J1, J2 etc or if they're by someone else).

For your friends who like trance, try and get Universal Indicator - Green (only avaliable as a 12", 10" and 7" set).  There's also Red and Blue releases too (both normal 12"s).

I first really got into Aphex when I heard Ventolin.  I know most of it was just noise, but it was so different to anything else :-)

After that it was Analogue Bubblebath 3, Surfing on Sine Waves and Selected Ambient Works 85-92.  Been grabbing anything I could ever since then :-D

--edit--

If anyone wants a list of the stuff I know that's been released under any of his pseudonyms (I've always had trouble spelling that :-D) I can post one here... But there's about 40 releases :-o

:-D