Aphex Twin - "Avril 14th"

The link

Aphex Twin - "Avril 14th" on Youtube

As far as I know there is no Aphex Twin YouTube channel. Music videos of his on YouTube are rehosted. Even Aphex’ own website seems to have disappeared. 

What it is

“Avril 14th” is a short piano piece by Richard D. James, who is better known as “Aphex Twin”. It can be found on the 2001 album “Drukqs” and is, in one word, lovely.

Aphex Twin is one of the pioneers of, for lack of a better term ‘non dancefloor-oriented techno’. See the Wikipedia page linked above for Aphex’s opinion on the ‘Intelligent Dance Music’ genre he is often put in.

Please find the two minutes of time required to listen to this song.

What it means to me

For me, there are two levels to “Avril 14th”. On the surface, it’s just a well written piano melody. At second glance, it’s a well written piano melody composed by Aphex Twin.

Aphex Twin made a career out of music that is, shall we say, not easily digestible. Techno is not a friendly genre at the best of times, and Aphex delights in distorted ‘I want your soul’ samples, 5 minute video intros  (rather explicit) and powerful abstract soundscapes. While some people think this is great, many others just hear noise.

And then Richard turns around and gives us this. It’s a testament to the man’s genuine musical talent. Talent he usually expresses quite differently.

“Avril 14th” is also surprising difficult to play. I downloaded the sheet music from the Aphex Twin website back when it existed, and struggle to play it (*) – mainly because part of the actual recording’s charm turns out to be that the piece is very slightly off-meter. There’s a terrible hardcore remix of this song on YouTube (I won’t dignify it with a link), which uses an instrumental played from the score (probably by computer), and it just sounds mechanical.

This song is an excellent reminder that there is a difference between talent and its expression – it’s always worth investigating whether you don’t like an artist, or a genre.


Leonard

* I wouldn't claim to play the piano particularly well.