My book on the 1994 Aphex Twin album Selected Ambient Works Volume II is now, I have learned, in its second printing (Amazon, Powell’s), which is pretty great. The book was published back in February as part of the 33 1/3 series, and I had a blast doing readings at City Lights in San Francisco and Powell’s in Portland, and giving talks and presentations (in person and via Skype) at various institutions, including SETI. As it turns out, that February publication was in advance of what has turned out to be, quite unexpectedly, the Year of Aphex Twin, starting with the logo-festooned blimp over London that coincided with his birthday, continuing to a full-length album on the Warp label (Syro), and moving on to a deep dive into his archives thanks to tracks posted on his SoundCloud account. For the moment, that SoundCloud account appears to have been wiped clean, sadly, but I’m hopeful it’s a temporary thing, because the reversed version of “Avril 14th” was quite lovely.
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