Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II Read Online Free PDF

rendition heard here, the “p” in “pom” while a plosive is treated with a softening agent, like the sound emanates from deeper in the mouth: more breath, less lip. There is a deep, digital echo on the voice, short and rapid-fire. This is not architectural echo, not echo resulting from physical space. It is technological echo, audio echo, effect echo. These echoes overlap, and the repetition emphasizes the artificiality. It is dependable in a way that real-world–physical-world repetition rarely ever is. In the repetition, the fact that it is repetition becomes all the more clear, the echoes aligning too perfectly, like objects without shadows, faces too symmetrical.
    There’s a prominent role in electronic music, especially in its dance realms, for the disembodied female vocal. It is arguable, of course, that all instances of human presence in music and sound are disembodied, but this specific mode is unique. For one thing, the vocalist in such circumstances is not the focus of the track, is not the name on the track. The track has a producer listed, and the vocalist is at best a “featured” element, her name appended or parenthetically mentioned along with or as part of the title, or buried in the production notes. Further, the vocal in such instances is unsubstantial if not downright ethereal, a mere soundbite. The voice is remote- trigger seduction, not just the woman on the catwalk, but as seen from fifty paces, with a kill-chip implant should she wander off course. I realize this music is incredibly popular, but often to me it always sounds like the music of a prisoner. This Aphex Twin track be can understood to push back against the female soundbite approach in its own way: the robotic hardness, the voice as instrument, the absence of a take-away catchphrase text, all pushing against the overly submissive idea of the female guest appearance.
    At the two-minute mark in “Mould” there is a pause. You can almost imagine the vocalist taking a break from her duties on the track, sweating it out like a trumpet-playing bandleader giving the spotlight over to other members of the band. Here those members, so to speak, are for about a minute just two simple tones, one low and one mid-level. There is a deep, bass-like throb, and a wavering set of downward notes on what appears to be a keyboard synthesizer. And then the voice cuts back in and continues as the track yields, its fading providing a sense of closure.
    ## Static Development
    If there is a track that expresses how something with a beat can be static, and how something that is static can express change, that is “Rhubarb,” the third track on the album. It is based on a short melodic phrase, a lilting thing. It repeats for the length of the song, and the only extent to which it alters is the eventual addition of one single note. It sounds like five notes at first, but eventually the first half of the phrase reveals itself to be three notes, having originally sounded like two, for a total of six notes. How that sixth note, the third note that appears at the end of the first phrase, makes its arrival is the entire narrative of “Rhubarb.” It slowly becomes apparent, at first only evident if you really listen for it: the hold at the end of the second note just barely suggests that something may be lingering in the shadows. The track could serve as
The Young Person’s Guide to Repetition Being a Form of Change
. With the exception of that note, the melody does not change so much as the way it is presented changes—what instrumentation is playing, what the tonality of that instrumentation is, how the background and foreground support and influence the melody.
    And when at around the six-minute mark the note suddenly goes away again, the ear listens for it all the more. The sense of loss is balanced with the sense of gain. It is mournful, the idea that the note is no longer there, but the absence is a sort of flashback, a glimpse of youth from the vantage