I'm pretty sure I saw the logo spray-painted somewhere while I was walking around the city this weekend. Is SAW the best place to start with him?
I would recommend the following as immediate listens, start to finish. you can probably find them all on youtube. he sometimes uses alt names but everything should be easy to locate:
SAW 85-92 (as aphex twin)
Surfing on Sine Waves (as polygon window)
I Care Because You Do
On EP
Hangable Auto Bulb
Richard D James Album. A very short review on Entertainment Weekly of all places http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,286627,00.html sums it up better than any of the knob slobbing tomes written about this album. If machines could joke or cry, this is how they would sound. has stuck with me since I read it almost a decade ago.
"Compilation" (iirc this was as caustic window)... a very different side of the dude, 99% hard acid techno thumpers. I still haven't listened to the recently released caustic window lp but I'd assume it's probably in the same vein.
all of the above will give you a pretty broad range to sample his overriding aesthetic, you'll begin to see the fingerprint pretty easily. eps like come to daddy and windowlicker get a lot of attention which i attribute the music vids but eh, they don't do anything for me musically outside of probably Flim. drukqs isn't bad just overly long, 26 mixes for cash is half genius half troll-garbage-genius.
ime/imo/etc 
I never wrote a proper thank you post for this. I'm a square who likes to pay for his music so I wasn't able to get around to anything listed until recently when I had some money. I traded in a bunch of old textbooks to Amazon and got back $180 in gift card credit. They've also been having a pretty big sale for the past few days so I've been gorging myself with new music. None of Aphex Twin's stuff was part of the sale, but I decided to pick up SAW 85-92 and On.
I've only started developing a taste for electronic music fairly recently so it takes me a while to sort out my opinions every time I hear something new.
Both of these projects have gotten me thinking a lot more about why I listen to music. I’m not someone who constantly has something playing. When I’m listening to music I’m usually doing some sort of monotonous task at the same time. I’ll be at the gym, doing laundry, or grocery shopping. If I’m playing a game, it’ll have to be something that doesn’t require much thought. Both Borderlands games and TF2 were great for this. I was able to do it during matches in XCOM too since there isn’t much of a story and the gameplay started seeming much simpler to me the more I played it.
The reason for all this is that I like to to free up my mind so I can think about the music I have playing. I’m concerned this might have hampered my ability appreciate more subdued genres. If SAW and On are representative of the rest Aphex Twin’s discography then they tell me he doesn’t really create music with the aim of arresting his listener’s attention the way a lot of pop music does. Most of my music library has vocals to it, so there’s a lot for me to chew on beyond composition even if the lyrics aren’t that deep.
With lyricless music or any song where vocals aren’t at the forefront I have a much harder time making any sort of assessment of the quality of what I’m hearing. I know it’s all subjective but I like knowing why I enjoy some things more than others. When I listen to SAW or On it’s like my mind is scrambling for some part of the music to focus on.
These posts Esch made in
Gaf-Hop about Lese Majesty really
stuck with me. I don’t have a KTT account, but I know that’s not the kind of person I want to be. I don’t want my listening habits to be governed by an affinity toward more fiery grandiose records. That stuff has its place and I’ll probably never stop liking it, but I need to remember that there’s so much more out there. Right now I slightly prefer On over SAW. That’s partially because On is shorter and I’ve had a lot more opportunities to listen the the entire thing uninterrupted, but I think it has more to do with the fact that On has a bit more of a kick to it than SAW does.
I’ve been able to appreciate more understated stuff in the past. I heard Midnight Marauders for the first time earlier this year. It’s quickly become one of my all-time favorites and the song there I like the most is Electric Relaxation because how fucking chill it is. I’d like to be able to feel the same way about stuff that’s even softer. I also need to learn how to just let music play without thinking about it so hard.
Here’s the rest of my haul from the Amazon sale for anyone who cares. It’s still going so I might get some more stuff since I still have money on my gift card balance.
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing…
Ice Cube - Death Certificate
Portishead’s entire discography
Black Star - Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star
Gang Starr - Moment of Truth
Blue Hawaii - Untogether
Ol’ Dirty Bastard - Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version
Q-Tip - The Renaissance
Next few months are gonna be real good.
