source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 10:09:21 -0800 Subject: Aphex Twin vs. High Information From: eric@cmlab.sfc.keio.ac.jp (Eric Lyon) I wrote: This has certainly been the case with high information masterpieces such as Beethoven's late string quartets, Ives' 4th Symphony, Varese's Ameriques, or Richard James' Auto Hangable Lightbulbs. David Beardsley wrote: >While I find Richard James (aka Aphex Twin) texturaly interesting, >I wasn't aware that there was any "high information" content. >I'd be be the first to admit that I haven't heard either of these obscure >limited edition records, but I know someone who does and I do >have to check them out. But, what IS the "high information" content? Good question. First let me apologize in advance if James is a composer considered outside the boundaries of the Tuning list. He does have many electronic compositions which are decidedly non-12 or completely timbrally oriented, rather than pitch-centric on his Selected Ambient Works (v. I and II). One reason the music might not be considered "high information" is, like the earlier minimalist music, there is a large amount of repetition. I claim that for James this is repetition with variation. However the variation is found not in the pitch domain but in the timbral domain. There is a constant interlocking and deconstructing of counterpuntal layers, married to rapid variation in the processing of individual layers yielding some extremely complex musical organisms. The work I mentioned above takes this to new extremes, however I would recommend the following tracks as more available examples of the complexity I described : Polygon Window on Polygon Window, Digeridoo and Tamphex (Hedphuq Mix) on Classics, d-scape on Vertebral Ridge, and Ventolin(Salbutamol Mix) on Ventolin. Compositions which focus their attention to timbral transformations (Scheonberg's Farben, Stockhausen's Stimmung, The Barrons' Forbidden Planet score) are an important concommitant of music in the electronic age. I'm a bit nervous about the relevance of this to the Tuning group which is refreshingly noise free, so I won't post any more on the timbre or Richard James unless others pick up the thread. Regards, Eric Lyon . Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 24 Jan 1996 20:29 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id LAA21182; Wed, 24 Jan 1996 11:29:43 -0800 Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 11:29:43 -0800 Message-Id: <199601242037.PAA03482@cerberus.Ensoniq.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu