Disquiet – Page 912 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 12 (“White Blur 1”)

A track per day up through the February 13 release of my 33 1/3 book

February 2, 2014February 2, 2014 / By Marc Weidenbaum

SAWII11

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.*

Doing this daily countdown project in advance of the _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_ book’s release is — the presentation as serial blog posts with YouTube embeds aside — anything but casual.

Pretty much the last thing you want to do after a book is published is to revisit the subject in depth. The last thing you want to do is unearth things you wished you’d covered differently, or material that would have further strengthened your argument.

Yet here I go, listening daily to tracks as I did during the year of the book’s writing — well, slightly differently. During the writing process, I’d put a single track on repeat for the day; for this countdown, I’m listening back to confirm some thoughts, and to reconcile realizations I’ve had subsequent to the intial writing.

During that lengthy book-production period, no track was as central to my listening and thinking as the 11th/12th, depending on your edition: “White Blur I,” as it has come to be known. It played a central role in my initial proposal to the publisher (33 1/3, an imprint of Bloomsbury), and its importance didn’t diminish as the writing unfolded. The track more than any other on the album foresees the future rise of generative systems in electronic music. This is because it is built on that most ancient of automated instruments, the wind chime.

As I [noted a few days ago](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/429485587452551168), the three tracks that follow “White Blur 1” on *Selected Ambient Works Volume II* can be said to tell, in compact form, the complete story of the album: “Blue Calx,”melody; “Parallel Stripes,”ambience; “Shiny Metal Rods,”minimalist beats. In that thinking, “White Blur 1” would fall into the “Shiny Metal Rods” category — or between “Shiny Metal Rods” and “Parallel Stripes” — but because of the irregularity of the rhythmic material, it truly deserves a category of its own.

And recently over at the Disquiet Junto, the weekly open-call music-making series I run, we did a project informed by this track. It’s titled [“Aeolian Metrics.”](https://disquiet.com/2014/01/16/disquiet0107-aeolianmetrics/)

And here it 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.

Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 13 (“Blue Calx”)

A track per day up through the February 13 release of my 33 1/3 book

February 1, 2014February 2, 2014 / By Marc Weidenbaum

SAWII12

*No new shots of the book in situ today, but this via the Twitter account of the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, branch of the Rough Trade record shop in response to a reader’s query as to whether it’ll be in stock. There is, it so happens, a small bit in the book about the Sire label’s corporate account at the original Rough Trade shop in London.*

@psi yes we'll have it by next Friday

— Rough Trade NYC (@RoughTradeNYC) January 31, 2014

There’s a reason why the two “extra” tracks on _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_, “Hankie” and “Stone in Focus,” appear close to either end of the record, at positions 4 and 19. It’s so that in both their absence, “Blue Calx” remains in the center: either track 13 of 25 or track 12 of 23. (In the edition of the record with 24 tracks, it’s slightly off center, remaining at 13, with 12 tracks preceding and 11 after.) It’s both the center and the odd track out in various ways — the one with a title expressed in actual, you know, words, right there on the album sleeve; one of the few (“Lichen” is another) with a proper melody; the only to have appeared elsewhere prior to album release (on the 1992 compilation _The Philosophy of Sound and Machine_). There’s much on the track in the book so I won’t go into much detail here, except to note that the melody always, to me, brings to mind a muted edit, a melodic reduction, of “Auld Lang Syne.” Auld lang sine wave.

Here is the version recorded by the ensemble Alarm Will Sound, in an arrangement by Caleb Burhans, about whom there is much in the book:

Here it is reversed:

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

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

February 1, 2014February 1, 2014 / By Marc Weidenbaum

RT @dpnem: So Hans Zimmer wants you. But what if your heart already belongs to James Newton Howard. ->
Classical Music Is Zombies because BBC notes its hostility to women ( http://t.co/0uuhaZfP8R) + Slate says it's dead (http://t.co/rI8hIU1WS4 ) ->
Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Vol II reverse-order daily track countdown: #20 (“Hexagon”) http://t.co/RhlaNho9Vq (w/ @vuzhmusic cameo) ->
Today's Aphex SAW2 countdown ("Hexagon," #20) includes 5 versions: original, slowed down, with live drums, reversed: http://t.co/jxFKG9gh6I ->
These news articles in which the accompanying photos are selfies of the victim or suspect. ->
So, they set their mixes of other people's music free for download, and yet not their own music. ->
"Shane Carruth hasn’t shared any public sounds. Follow Shane Carruth for updates of their new sounds." ->
According to the HBO app, all 4 Lethal Weapon movies are "action," and all all but the second are "comedy." ->
RIP, jazz saxophonist Arthur Doyle (69): http://t.co/DAweOKFbYc. Yes, the one namechecked by Sonic Youth on Sonic Nurse. ->

Continue reading “Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet”

Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 14 (“Parallel Stripes”)

A track per day up through the February 13 release of my 33 1/3 book

January 31, 2014 / By Marc Weidenbaum

SAWII13

*And it’s great to see it showing up in people’s homes:*

.@disquiet's new book on SAWII is amazing. If you're an Aphex Twin fan you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy! pic.twitter.com/oLuPL2gKrO

— Jordan Bartee (@jpbartee) January 31, 2014

As mentioned [yesterday](https://disquiet.com/2014/01/30/aphex-twin-saw2-countdown-track-15-shiny-metal-rods/), the most intense, beat-driven track on the album is arguably [“Shiny Metal Rods,”](https://disquiet.com/2014/01/30/aphex-twin-saw2-countdown-track-15-shiny-metal-rods/) and one should be sensitive to the plight of an individual who listens to the preceding track, “Parallel Stripes,” cozies up to the warm embrace of the speakers (or, forbid such a thing, turns up the headphones) during its lulling static-as-substance ambience, and then is hit with the intensity of “Shiny Metal Rods.” As I write in the book, this track is sine wave as form, and the wave emerges out of roughness, out of a “burr of static,” as I put it, that is the equivalent of a fried radio signal. The track just prior to this is, in essence, the album’s single, and also its literal centerpiece (track 13 of 25), “Blue Calx.” Combined, “Blue Calx” (melody), “Parallel Stripes” (pure ambience), and “Shiny Metal Rods” (minimalist beats) in just three consecutive tracks tell the story of this album. More on “Blue Calx” tomorrow.

And here it is reversed:

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

Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 15 (“Shiny Metal Rods”)

A track per day up through the February 13 release of my 33 1/3 book

January 30, 2014 / By Marc Weidenbaum

SAWII14

*And it’s great to see it showing up in people’s homes:*

“Shiny Metal Rods” is another track I explore in some detail in the book (chapter two: “Background Beats”), so I won’t belabor the point here except to say: if there is any track that gives lie to the oft-repeated idea that this album is “beatless,” it is “Shiny Metal Rods.”

The track is little more than beats — hard, driving, slow, steady beats that could be from a bootleg of a Consolidated or Meat Beat Manifesto concert.

And pity the poor listener who nuzzled up to the stereo’s speakers — or maxed out the headphones — during the album’s prior track, “Parallel Stripes,” more on which tomorrow.

And here it is reversed:

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