When presented with an Aphex Twin track, Karlheinz Stockhausen once commented: “I heard the piece Aphex Twin of Richard James carefully: I think it would be very helpful if he listens to my work “Song of the Youth,” which is electronic music, and a young boy’s voice singing with himself. Because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it [was] varied to some extent and if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations.”
To which AT responded: “I thought he should listen to a couple of tracks of mine: ‘Didgeridoo,’ then he’d stop making abstract, random patterns you can’t dance to”.
- “Advice to Clever Children”. The Wire 67 (141): 553.
