Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Aphex Twin

Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), known professionally as Aphex Twin, is a British musician, composer and DJ active in electronic music since 1988. His idiosyncratic work has drawn on many styles, including techno, ambient, acid, and jungle, and he is closely associated with the intelligent dance music (IDM) genre. Journalists from publications including Mixmag, The New York Times, NME, Fact, Clash and The Guardian have called James one of the most influential and important artists in contemporary electronic music.

This profile of Aphex Twin covers Early Life and Family Background, Records and Milestones, 1992–1994: Selected Ambient Works and early success, 1995–2000:...I Care Because You Do, Richard D. James Album and Come to Daddy and 2001–2009: Drukqs, Analord and the Tuss.

James was raised in Cornwall and began DJing at free parties and clubs around the South West in the late 1980s. His debut EP Analogue Bubblebath, released in 1991 on Mighty Force Records, brought James an early following; he began to perform across the UK and continental Europe. James co-founded the independent label Rephlex Records the same year. His 1992 debut album Selected Ambient Works 85–92, released by Belgian label Apollo, garnered wider critical and popular acclaim. James signed to Warp in late 1992 and later released charting albums such as...I Care Because You Do (1995) and Richard D. James Album (1996), as well as Top 40 singles such as "Come to Daddy" (1997) and "Windowlicker" (1999); the latter two were accompanied by music videos directed by Chris Cunningham and brought James wider international attention.

After releasing Drukqs in 2001 and completing his contract with Warp, James spent several years releasing music on his own Rephlex label, including the 2005 Analord EP series under his AFX alias and a pair of 2007 releases as the Tuss. In 2014 he made available a previously unreleased 1994 LP as Caustic Window. He returned later that year with the Aphex Twin album Syro on Warp, winning the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album. He has since released charting EPs including Cheetah (2016) and Collapse (2018). His 2023 single "Blackbox Life Recorder 21f" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Recording. Since 2015 he has been sporadically releasing music on SoundCloud.

Early Life and Family Background of Aphex Twin

James was born on 18 August 1971 in Limerick, Ireland, to Welsh parents. He has said that he had a stillborn older brother, also named Richard, and was later given the same name. In a 1997 interview, James said his brother had died in Canada in 1968, where his parents had moved for his father's mining work, and that his mother kept the name because she could not accept the death.

James was raised in Cornwall, living in Lanner and attending Redruth School in Redruth. He later described Cornwall as isolated from cities, a quality he said he enjoyed. Before writing music, he became interested in making sounds: as a child he played with the strings inside the family piano, experimented with tape recorders, and later began modifying electronic equipment.

In a 2001 interview, James said that when he was 11 he won £50 in a competition for producing sound on a Sinclair ZX81, a home computer with no dedicated sound hardware. Fact questioned this story in 2017, citing a similar program published in Your Computer Magazine in 1982 under the name G. N. Owen, for which the author was paid £6.

James bought his first synthesizer at age 12 and began making music at age 14. Cornwall had few record shops, but acid house was popular in its nightlife; James later said he had been making music similar to acid and techno before encountering the genres and then sought out records in those styles. He studied at Cornwall College from 1988 to 1990, graduating with a National Diploma in engineering. One of his lecturers recalled that James often wore headphones during practical lessons and already had a "kind of mystique" among other students.

Records and Milestones of Aphex Twin

In the late 1980s, James became involved in the Cornish free party scene, putting on raves at "secret coves along the coast and behind sand dunes". The first party he DJed at was in a barn in 1988. Parties were also known to take place at Gwennap Pit. They mainly attracted local youths and travellers, with entrance donations taken in cannabis. The community also held events at small clubs in towns around the county, including St. Ives, Porthtowan, and St Austell. James later referred to this scene as the "best he's ever been involved in".

James started a regular DJ slot in 1989, playing alternate weeks at the Bowgie nightclub in Crantock. There he met Tom Middleton and Grant Wilson-Claridge. James incorporated his own tracks, recorded on tape, into his DJ sets. Impressed by James's music, Middleton played a tape James had given him to a free party organiser in Exeter, Mark Darby, who eventually convinced James to release a record on his fledgling record label Mighty Force Records. James was initially resistant, but while he was tripping on acid backstage at a DJ gig, Darby and Middleton convinced him to release the record. Darby later said: "I think if he had not done that trip that night there may have never been any Aphex Twin." James has given a similar account: "...they made me sign the contract when I was off my face. I was tripping and they're waving this money and a pen at me. It's a bit clichéd but it's the way they got me to sign." Similarly impressed by James's music, Wilson-Claridge suggested they use some money he inherited to create a record label to release it. He and James founded Rephlex Records in 1991.

James's first release was the 12" EP Analogue Bubblebath, released on Mighty Force in September 1991. The EP made the playlist of Kiss FM, an influential London radio station, giving it wide exposure in the dance music scene. In 2015 The Guardian called the release one of the key moments in the history of dance music. The record caught the ear of Renaat Vandepapeliere, the head of R&S Records, at that time one of the leading European rave labels. James visited him in Belgium, bringing a box full of cassettes of his music. From these cassettes they picked out tracks for two records, including James's first album Selected Ambient Works 85-92.

In 1992, as word of his 12" records spread, James started performing at London techno events like the formative club Knowledge, held at the SW1 nightclub in London's Victoria, and the influential night Lost.

Through 1991 and 1992 James released three Analogue Bubblebath EPs, two EPs as Caustic Window, the Red EP as part of the Universal Indicator collective, along with the Digeridoo and Xylem Tube EPs on the R&S label. Although he moved to London to take an electronics course at Kingston Polytechnic, he admitted to David Toop that his electronics studies were slipping away as he pursued a career in electronic music.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphex_Twin), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.