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Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Never Heard of 'Em Never Heard of 'Em: Aphex Twin

Posted by Anna Minard on Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 10:25 AM

Anna Minard claims to "know nothing about music." For this column, we force her to listen to random records by artists considered to be important by music nerds.

APHEX TWIN
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
(Warp)

It turns out I can't write about Aphex Twin without writing about Dave Segal. It just couldn't be done. So here are some things about Mr. Segal, our staff music writer:

1. He is a committed vegan and yet somehow never annoying about it.

2. At 50 years young, he is also by many miles the healthiest of our office dwellers, likely only one-third of the way through his life span.

3. He likes music that seems like it was made by aliens A LOT.

4. He seems to be a fan of mind alteration.

He's the one who assigned me Aphex Twin, and after I listened to it a little half-assedly, rushed, in some in-between spaces—in the car, while doing chores—I found that insufficient. So I decided to fully Segal-out. I'm sure he would've recommended I find a nice dark room with an excellent sound system, drop some acid, and then listen to this double album while mainlining quinoa. But I got as close as I could, out of respect. I went home, cooked some brussels sprouts and spinach (green vegetables, man!) for dinner, poured myself a great big glass or three of wine, and put Aphex Twin on some real speakers.