50 facts about Richard David James, best known by his alias Aphex Twin

Learn 50 things about Richard David James, best known by his alias Aphex Twin.

1. Richard David James, best known by his alias Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born British electronic musician and composer.

2. James He has been described by The Guardian as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music", and is the co-founder of Rephlex Records with Grant Wilson-Claridge.

3. Aphex Twin's album Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was called the best album of the 1990s by FACT Magazine.

4. James has also released a number of EPs as AFX since 1991 including the Analogue Bubblebath and Analord series of EPs.

5. James has also used and continues to use several other aliases, such as Polygon Window, Caustic Window, and the Tuss.

6. In addition to Rephlex, James has released Aphex Twin records on Warp, R&S, Sire, Mighty Force, Rabbit City and Men Records.

7. Following public sightings of the Aphex Twin logo in London, United Kingdom, and New York City, United States, in August 2014, the Aphex Twin Twitter account confirmed the release of Syro, his sixth studio album.

8. Following a subsequent press release, Syro was officially released on 23 September 2014 through the Warp music label.

9. In February 2015, Syro won James the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album.

10. In an unprecedented move, James posted 230 unreleased outtakes on SoundCloud over the first few months of 2015, making all of these available for free download.

11. James was born in Limerick, Ireland, but he grew up in Lanner, Cornwall, UK, with two older sisters, in a "very happy" childhood during which they "were pretty much left to do what [they] wanted".

12. James attended Redruth School in Redruth, Cornwall, and claimed to have produced sound on a Sinclair ZX81 (a machine with no sound hardware) at age 11: When I was 11, I won 50 pounds in a competition for writing this program that made sound on a ZX81. You couldn't make sound on a ZX81, but I played around with machine code and found some codes that retuned the TV signal so that it made this really weird noise when you turned the volume up.

13. As a teenager he was a disc jockey at the Shire Horse Inn in St Ives, with Tom Middleton at the Bowgie Inn in Crantock and along the beaches around Cornwall.

14. James studied at Cornwall College from 1988 to 1990 for a National Diploma in engineering.

15. About his studies, he said "music and electronics went hand in hand".

16. James graduated from college; according to an engineering lecturer he often wore headphones during practical lessons, "no doubt thinking through the mixes he'd be working on later".

17. In 1989, James befriended Grant Wilson-Claridge when they were working alternate weeks as a DJ at the Bowgie pub near Newquay, UK. Wilson-Claridge was intrigued by his sets, and when he discovered that James was playing tapes of his own music he suggested that they make records.

18. At first, putting Aphex Twin's recordings on vinyl was a way of making music the duo's friends wanted to hear; because of their geographic isolation they could not access the music they wanted to hear, so they decided to create their own.

19. James' first release as Aphex Twin, later changed to AFX, was the 1991 12-inch EP Analogue Bubblebath on Mighty Force Records. The track "En Trance to Exit" was recorded with Tom Middleton, also known as Schizophrenia.

20. In 1991, James and Wilson-Claridge founded Rephlex Records to promote "innovation in the dynamics of Acid - a much-loved and misunderstood genre of house music forgotten by some and indeed new to others, especially in Britain".

21. From 1991 to 1993 James released two Analogue Bubblebath EPs (one without a band name on it, one as AFX) and an EP, Bradley's Beat, as Bradley Strider. Although he moved to London to take an electronics course at Kingston Polytechnic, he admitted to David Toop that his electronics studies were being evacuated as he pursued a career in the techno genre.

22. After leaving the polytechnic, James remained in London, releasing albums and EPs on Warp Records and other labels under a number of aliases (including AFX, Polygon Window and Power-Pill); several of his tracks, released under aliases including Blue Calx and The Dice Man, appeared on compilations.

23. Although he allegedly lived on the roundabout in Elephant and Castle, South London, during his early years in the city, he actually lived in a nearby unoccupied bank.

24. The first full-length Aphex Twin album, Selected Ambient Works 85-92, was released in 1992 on R&S Records to critical praise; John Bush of Allmusic described it as a "watershed of ambient music".

25. In 1992 James also released the Xylem Tube EP and Digeridoo (first played by DJ Colin Faver on London's Kiss FM) as Aphex Twin, the Pac-Man EP (based on the arcade game) as Power-Pill, and two of his four Joyrex EPs (Joyrex J4 EP and Joyrex J5 EP) as Caustic Window.

26. In 1993 James released Analogue Bubblebath 3; the "On" ep and it's accompanying remix ep; his second Bradley Strider EP, Bradley's Robot; two more Caustic Window EPs and his first releases on Warp Records, Surfing on Sine Waves and "Quoth ep", as Polygon Window.

27. For his 1995 release ...I Care Because You Do James used an image of his face for the album cover, a motif which would be repeated on many of his later records. The album was a compilation of songs composed between 1990 and 1994, a melange of Aphex Twin musical styles.

28. Richard D. James Album, James' fourth studio album as Aphex Twin, was released on Warp Records in 1996. The album includes his personal name (Richard David James) in the title and features use of software synthesizers and unconventional beats. The album garnered high acclaim from music critics, and was named 40th in Pitchfork Media's "Top 100 Albums of the 1990s" list.

29. James garnered attention the following year after the release of the Come to Daddy EP, which was conceived as a death metal parody when he was visiting his house.

30. Accompanied with a music video directed by Chris Cunningham, he became disenfranchised with its success. It was followed by "Windowlicker", another critically and commercially successful EP promoted with a music video also directed by Cunningham, which was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Video in 2000.

31. In October 2012, James brought his remote orchestra act to London for one, three act performance including the "Interactive Tuned Feedback Pendulum Array" which paid tribute and expanded upon Steve Reich's "Pendulum Music".

32. On 16 June 2014, the 1994 Caustic Window LP (originally a test pressing, of which at least five copies were made and given to µ-ziq, Cylob and Rephlex co-founder Grant Wilson-Claridge) was released as a digital download to backers of a Kickstarter campaign to buy a copy of the vinyl record from an anonymous seller on Discogs.

33. Syro was released on the Warp label on 23 September 2014 and the cover artwork, which reads like a tax receipt, is by the Designers Republic brand. A limited-edition box set version of the album was released through the Bleep label, limited to 200 copies. Interested buyers were required to enter a lottery to become eligible.

34. On 27 February 2015, James created the "saw 1.5" playlist on SoundCloud, comprising 11 tracks from the hundred or so posted over the months, presumably tracks that did not make it onto Selected Ambient Works 85-92. He commented that "there are more, inc. versions of the tracks that were released on SAW 1, those will come out on a re-release one day hopefully, so saving those for that." In May, James compiled 36 of the posted tracks as the playlist "Surfing on Sine Waves 2", with the statement "Would love to release this on Warp, all mastered properly, maybe a dble album."

35. On 27 February 2015, James created the "saw 1.5" playlist on SoundCloud, comprising 11 tracks from the hundred or so posted over the months, presumably tracks that did not make it onto Selected Ambient Works 85-92. He commented that "there are more, inc. versions of the tracks that were released on SAW 1, those will come out on a re-release one day hopefully, so saving those for that." In May, James compiled 36 of the posted tracks as the playlist "Surfing on Sine Waves 2", with the statement "Would love to release this on Warp, all mastered properly, maybe a dble album."

36. On 1 July 2015, Richard uploaded a new track to his official Soundcloud announcing a new EP, titled "Orphaned Deejay Selek 2006-2008," returning to his AFX moniker for the first time since the Analord series.

37. In a September 1997 interview with Space Age Bachelor magazine, James said he composed ambient techno music at age 13, had "over 100 hours" of unreleased music and had invented music-composition software consisting of algorithmic processes which automatically generated rhythm and melody.

38. James' Rephlex Records, which he co-owns with Grant Wilson-Claridge, coined the word "braindance" in 1991 to describe Aphex Twin's music.

39. James's face, grinning or distorted, is a theme of his album covers, music videos and songs.

40. James has recorded as Blue Calx, Bradley Strider, Brian Tregaskin, Caustic Window, The, Smojphace, GAK, Karen Tregaskin, Patrick Tregaskin, Martin Tressider, PBoD, Polygon Window, Power-Pill, Q-Chastic, Dice Man, The Tuss and Soit-P.P.

41. In a 1997 interview, James commented on the difference between works released under different names, saying "There's really no big theory. It's just things that I feel right in doing at the time and I really don't know why. I select songs for certain things and I just do it. I don't know what it means".

42. In a 2001 interview, Richard D. James has commented on the ambiguous nature of his own releases and the speculation that surrounds many anonymous artists working in electronica: "a lot of people think everything electronic is mine. I get credited for so many things, it's incredible. I'm practically everyone, I reckon-everyone and nobody".

43. The London Sinfonietta has performed arrangements of Aphex Twin songs.

44. Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk has cited Aphex Twin (particularly "Windowlicker") as an influence.

45. Former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante said that Aphex Twin is "the best thing since sliced bread", and his Outsides EP and PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone are examples of James' influence.

46. In June 2014, Answer Code Request (Patrick Gräser) called James "one producer who always inspires" him in the "Influences" section of the Ransom Note website.

47. Gräser used the Aphex Twin song "Analogue Bubblebath 1" to exemplify James' influence: "I guess being obsessed with your own music is what makes him that brilliant."

48. In June 2014, Wes Borland of Limp Bizkit stated "Cliffs" or possibly "Rhubarb" from Selected Ambient Works II as being the song he would listen to for the rest of his life - if he had to pick one.

49. James described himself in a Guardian interview: "I'm just some irritating, lying, ginger kid from Cornwall who should have been locked up in some youth detention centre. I just managed to escape and blag it into music."

50. He is known for untruths, including a claim that he sleeps only two or three hours a night.

Source: Wikipedia.org