Disquiet

And this marks the final entry in the track-by-track reverse countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a month after my book’s publication. More on my Aphex Twin book at [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/) and [Bloomsbury.com](http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/aphex-twins-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-9781623567637/). The plan is to do this countdown in the reverse order, from last track to first. For reference, [an early draft of the introduction is online](https://disquiet.com/2012/08/31/saw2for33third/), as is [the book’s seven-chapter table of contents](https://disquiet.com/2013/11/14/aphex-twin-chapter-titles/). The book’s publisher posted [an interview with me](http://333sound.com/2012/12/04/the-33-13-author-qa-marc-weidenbaum/) when I was midway through the writing process.

*There is some irony to doing this countdown since the book is already shipping to folks who pre-ordered it via an online retailer such as [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/), but the official date stands, and that’s the target — the end date — of this countdown, February 13. And for what it’s worth, while the physical copies are mailing now from retailers, the Kindle version won’t turn on until February 13. Still, the digital version costs less.*

*As I’ve noted on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/427970434294751232), this track-a-day approach is exactly the opposite of the book’s approach, which is a collection of interrelated, reporting-based essays.*

*I am enjoying seeing the book pop up in people’s Twitter and Instagram feeds:*

Colossal congratulations to @disquiet on today’s release of his 33 1/3 book: SAWII. More here: http://t.co/VReoTnTle2 pic.twitter.com/WXILLPRkc2

— Boon (@boondesign) February 13, 2014

Second only to perhaps “Blue Calx,” which is the album’s centerpiece and the closest thing it has to a single, the opening track is the most familiar, if only because as it comes first, its start, if not its finish, is clearly discernible. The rest of the album can become a constant, singular whole except to particularly attentive listeners. It has been widely adopted, and used in film (in the book I speak with two directors who used it in their work, Lucy Walker and Jordan Melamed). It’s a sinuous piece, with a hint of a vocal, perhaps a female, whose wavering is a human approximation of the waveforms that constitute much of the record album.

Here it is in a performance by Alarm Will Sound. I spoke with the composer who transcribed the work and with the ensemble’s music director for the book:

Here is a remix by Wisp, more about whom in the book:

More on my Aphex Twin _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_ book at [amazon.com](www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/) and [Bloomsbury.com](http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/aphex-twins-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-9781623567637/).

Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.

The publisher of my Aphex Twin book, 33 1/3, an imprint of Bloomsbury, has invited me to write blog posts this week to note the book’s official publication on Thursday, February 13. The third of these five posts is up today: [“Cultural Afterline Is a Form of Change.”](http://333sound.com/2014/02/12/aphex-twin-week-cultural-afterlife-is-a-form-of-change/)

These are the first three paragraphs of the piece, a little less than half post’s total length:

>Much of my book about the Aphex Twin album Selected Ambient Works Volume II is about what I’ve come to think of as the album’s “cultural afterlife.”
>
>All art, once released into the world, gains as many co-authors as it has recipients, viewers, consumers, listeners, readers, what have you. That is to say, every album — every book, every painting, every movie — has a cultural afterlife, by which I mean the extended period long after its initial appearance. In pop music, songs often end up in movies, or covered by other musicians, or parodied, or licensed for advertisements, or employed as theme songs for TV shows. Each of these employments and deployments shifts the album’s meaning.
>
>What makes such shifts over time of particular interest for an ambient album, such as this one by Aphex Twin, is that ambient music is an inherently static form — something to which change is seemingly anathema. Yet as the famed koan by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt — from their Oblique Strategies cards — goes, “Repetition is form of change.”If ambient music in its repetitive, often droning, state can be said to change over time, then what does that change constitute?

Read the full piece at [333sound.com](http://333sound.com/2014/02/12/aphex-twin-week-cultural-afterlife-is-a-form-of-change/).

I am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a month after my book’s publication. More on my Aphex Twin book at [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/) and [Bloomsbury.com](http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/aphex-twins-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-9781623567637/). The plan is to do this countdown in the reverse order, from last track to first. For reference, [an early draft of the introduction is online](https://disquiet.com/2012/08/31/saw2for33third/), as is [the book’s seven-chapter table of contents](https://disquiet.com/2013/11/14/aphex-twin-chapter-titles/). The book’s publisher posted [an interview with me](http://333sound.com/2012/12/04/the-33-13-author-qa-marc-weidenbaum/) when I was midway through the writing process.

*There is some irony to doing this countdown since the book is already shipping to folks who pre-ordered it via an online retailer such as [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/), but the official date stands, and that’s the target — the end date — of this countdown, February 13. And for what it’s worth, while the physical copies are mailing now from retailers, the Kindle version won’t turn on until February 13. Still, the digital version costs less.*

*As I’ve noted on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/427970434294751232), this track-a-day approach is exactly the opposite of the book’s approach, which is a collection of interrelated, reporting-based essays.*

*I am enjoying seeing the book pop up in people’s Twitter and Instagram feeds:*

I was interviewed by the fine folks at NewbsRadio for their February 12 podcast ([newbsradio.com](http://newbsradio.com/napoleon-dynamite-podcast/)). The first hour or so is about the movie *Napoleon Dynamite*. My section starts around ten minutes past the hour. It was done on a cellphone, so the sound isn’t so great.

This second track follows the echoed rhythmic fade of the first track (“Cliffs”). The beat here is a little loping, a little off to a side. It’s percussive in a cumulous way, or cumulous in a percussive way, like Caribbean drums played in soft clusters. Close to a minute and a half in, a melody of sorts appears, or appears to appear. There’s a suggestion it may develop, but it’s just another layer of note-like percussion set on repeat. At around two minutes, another element: a fluttering of background pneumatic percussion, the sound of steam escaping from tight vents, of pressure being released.

There’s an alternate version of the track on the the album *26 Mixes for Cash* album, about which there is more in the book. It originally appeared as part of the Peel Sessions. It seems to be the same track but with a more trenchantly, unerringly metric beat overlayed/underlayed on/in it.

And here is is reversed:

More on my Aphex Twin _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_ book at [amazon.com](www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/) and [Bloomsbury.com](http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/aphex-twins-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-9781623567637/).

Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.

The publisher of my Aphex Twin book, 33 1/3, an imprint of Bloomsbury, has invited me to write blog posts this week to note the book’s official publication on Thursday, February 13. The second of these five posts is up today: [“The Wind Chime as Rhythm Machine.”](http://333sound.com/2014/02/11/aphex-twin-week-the-wind-chime-as-rhythm-machine/)

These are the first three paragraphs of the piece, a little less than half post’s total length:

>If there is a single track that stands out to me as the core of my appreciation of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, it is arguably “White Blur 1,”around which much of the book’s first chapter is built. “White Blur 1” is a title attributed by fans, based on the photo associated with the specific track on the album’s inner sleeve. This is either track 11 or 12 of your copy, depending on your edition. Yes, Selected Ambient Works Volume II is, among many other things, a willful puzzle. Once puzzles are sorted out, though, they can get familiar quickly; once you figure out a Rubik’s Cube, it transforms magically from stress-inducer to a colorful stress-release ball with square edges: the inscrutable becomes comfortable.
>
>This track in question often goes by an even more colloquial reference than even “White Blur I”: “The one with the wind chime.”You can hear it at the following YouTube post, in one of many uploaded versions, which tend to differ on what the accompanying imagery is (angry Aphex Twin face, pictures from nature, dark industrial equipment, etc.). In this case, the image is of actual wind chimes:

>I won’t go into detail here about the intriguing quality of the wind chime as a rhythmic component. There’s plenty of detail in the book’s opening chapter (“There Is No Volume I,”which appears to be available in full at my book’s page on Google Books). In brief, the wind chime is a “generative”instrument. It is a system that is enacted, rather than a score that is followed linearly. For an ambient track to employ the wind chime is for it to do more than just use rhythm for texture; it’s to explore texture as rhythm, how something can feel like a rhythm yet not actually have a rhythm, at least not in the traditional sense of having a dependable, mappable beat.
>
>…

Read the full piece at [333sound.com](http://333sound.com/2014/02/11/aphex-twin-week-the-wind-chime-as-rhythm-machine/).