Whenever I mess around with someone else’s song, I like to pretty much take every liberty I can outside of changing the melody and chord sequence, depending on what kind of song it is. Almost as much as melody and chord sequences, instrumentation and production have always been an enormous drawing point for me when I listen to music. I like to geek out in my mind and imagine what gear someone is using or what kind of studio technique was used to achieve a certain sound.
Richard D. James, more commonly known as Aphex Twin, has been producing and creating electronic music since the early 90s. What makes this man truly unique is that he was not only creating digital soundscapes in a time where there was none of the now standard software programs to support electronic music production, he was manufacturing his own unique technology simply to serve his own productions. In my opinion, a lot of ”DJs” making electronic music today are nothing more than button jockeys letting the program do the work for them. Not that any of the teenagers on MDMA give a shit, they just want more bass. I think it’s of the utmost importance to marry technology and humanity as evenly as possible when making music. Learning and using the vast array of resources available to us without relying on that power to dictate the outcome, while paying homage to who and what came before you to allow you that freedom.
I had an idea to try and replicate the Aphex Twin song “Maximum Electronica” when I was super stoned sitting in my band mate’s car. I was playing the song for them and I said “I really want to make a version of this song but replace all the digital keyboard parts with a guitar”. He looked at me and gave me a stoney smile which I read as “I’m high, but that sounds cool”. That was in September. The reason it’s taken me this long to complete it is because the original version of this song is so dense, production-wise, that it took me forever just to figure out all of the different layers. I tried to remain as close to the arrangement as I possibly could but in all honesty, I could never make my version as interesting or as fluid as the original so I omitted about a minute of the song out of my version. All the sounds you hear, with the exception of the sequenced drums, were made with an electric guitar or bass. Different filters and synth pedals were used to replicate the sounds but at the end of the chain was a microphone and an amplifier.
*listen with headphones*
