Aphex Twin vs. High Information

I wrote:



This has certainly been the case with high information masterpieces


such as Beethoven's late string quartets, Ives' 4th Symphony, Varese's


Ameriques, or Richard James' Auto Hangable Lightbulbs.

David Beardsley wrote:

>While I find Richard James (aka Aphex Twin) texturaly interesting,
>I wasn't aware that there was any "high information" content.
>I'd be be the first to admit that I haven't heard either of these obscure
>limited edition records, but I know someone who does and I do
>have to check them out. But, what IS the "high information" content?

Good question. First let me apologize in advance if James is
a composer considered outside the boundaries of the Tuning list.
He does have many electronic compositions which are decidedly
non-12 or completely timbrally oriented, rather than pitch-centric
on his Selected Ambient Works (v. I and II). One reason the music
might not be considered "high information" is, like the earlier
minimalist music, there is a large amount of repetition. I claim
that for James this is repetition with variation. However the variation is
found not in the pitch domain but in the timbral domain. There is
a constant interlocking and deconstructing of counterpuntal layers,
married to rapid variation in the processing of individual layers
yielding some extremely complex musical organisms.
The work I mentioned above takes this to new extremes, however
I would recommend the following tracks as more available
examples of the complexity I described : Polygon Window on
Polygon Window, Digeridoo and Tamphex (Hedphuq Mix) on Classics,
d-scape on Vertebral Ridge, and Ventolin(Salbutamol Mix) on Ventolin.

Compositions which focus their attention to timbral transformations
(Scheonberg's Farben, Stockhausen's Stimmung, The Barrons' Forbidden
Planet score) are an important concommitant of music in the electronic age.
I'm a bit nervous about the relevance of this to the Tuning group
which is refreshingly noise free, so I won't post any more on the
timbre or Richard James unless others pick up the thread.

Regards,

Eric Lyon


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