Aphex Twin: "avril altdelay"

While one can point to paradigm-shifting late-90s Aphex Twin tracks like “Come to Daddy” and “Windowlicker” and their massive influence on 21st century music—ranging from Radiohead to Four Tet to Arca—his most pervasive track might be his quietest. “Avril 14th” was tucked into the middle of the first disc of 2001′s Drukqs, a brief respite (just under two minutes) from the sprawling, manic, delirium-inducing tracks surrounding it. It was Richard D. James doing his best impression of early 20th century composer (and grandfather of ambient music) Erik Satie. On “Avril 14th”, James stripped away all the alien eerieness of Selected Ambient Works II so as to reveal the sense of melody at the core of all his best work.

Since then, “Avril 14th” has dispersed like a dandelion, sticking in the most curious of places. It appeared in one of Andy Samberg’s digital shorts for “SNL”, in Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette, and as end credits for Chris Morris’ Four Lions. Most infamously, it was sampled (poorly, per James) by Kanye West on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Now it appears in a slightly new form for a recent hard drive dump to Soundcloud, along with many other fascinating studies, suggesting there might be another realm of Not-Selected Ambient Works out there in the ether. Slight but charming, swaddled in copious amounts of delay, “avril altdelay” still sounds as evocative and contemplative as ever. Extended just over three minutes, here’s to hoping it continues to resonate outwards for another 14 years.

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