20250802 Saturday

Book log: Aphex Twin: A Disco Pogo Tribute (2024)

Cornwall's greatest contribution to music history, Richard D. James 
(aka Aphex Twin, AFX, Polygon Window and a host of other aliases), 
gets a coffee table style tribute in this beautiful and comprehensive
book. Published by Disco Pogo, a contemporary print magazine created 
by some of the former contributors to the 1990s electronic music mag 
Jockey Slut, the book is a detailed and thorough look at one of the 
biggest enigmas of modern music. The content is based around 1990s 
Aphex Twin interviews and articles by NME, Jockey Slut and other 
publications, interspersed with more recent and retrospective texts 
and a ton of photographs. Most of the major album releases gets a 
chapter, and the book builds a solid chronology following James' 
career from late 1980s DIY beach parties around Cornwall, to enormous
Gesamtkunst performances at today's most prestigious festivals. 
Through interviews with Aphex Twin's collaborators (dancer/designer 
Paul Nicholson, live visuals artist Weirdcore, artist colleagues 
Seafeel, 808 State, and more), as well as texts about his methods, 
equipment, media manipulation, we get quite close to the artist but 
there is still a veil of mystery and a distance. There is still a lot
to be said about the actual music, the book never gets into the 
actual hows and whys.

I enjoyed the first half of the book the most, which contains early 
interviews, as well as newly written texts by the journalists of said
interviews, where they detail how the interviews where conducted - or
sometimes weren't. The latter half has a section on the fans -- which
is sympathetic and cute, but not that interesting -- as well as a 
text arguing Aphex Twin's central position in the 2020s, with his 
influence on contemporary artists and TikTok youth culture. All in all
an enjoyable read for a longtime fan of Aphex Twin's music.