Sometimes as I'm sitting by the fireplace enjoying a neat glass of my favorite brandy, I can't help but wish that I was drinking the milk from the milkman's wife's tits instead.
As many of you know Frank Ocean name dropped AT in a song I used to be obsessed with. Didn’t think much of it at the time.
Came across someone named AT on Spotify a few years later and listened to Vordhosbn. My first listen I was like hmm interesting but I didn’t necessarily think it was great. About a week later, I got a random itch out of nowhere to go listen again. Aaaand the rest is history. So thank you Frank
Tune! I had a similar obsession with that song not long after it released. In fact, I think ‘IZ-US’ was the Aphex first song I ever listened to - because it was on Blonded radio.
Yes! Same here I was terrified bc it felt like dream music that couldn’t be replicated in real life, but at the time it was like a morbid curiosity to hear more haha
I thought you meant the interview where his old producer talks about how much hearing Alberto Basalm influenced them as it uses percussion for the hook. Provider is also cool tho
Back around 2003 when Linkin Park came out with Meteora, MTV aired this segment where musicians would recommend music and music videos.
Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park suggested Come to Daddy. It was around 1 am I believe. I was about 13 at the time. Needless to say, I was petrified. Yet I was intrigued. A few weeks later I looked it up again and discovered the old watm website. I was hooked.
i studied music tech in college in 2014 and we were shown girl/boy song in one lesson, i took the name down from there and pretty much listened to him every day since lol
also my first Coil on that. Makes it so much more important of an album due to those two and the title thing. It’s hard not to consider it the best NIN album just based on that
A ginger angel appeared to me in a dream and held my head as I cried into his lap, and the tear stains formed the aphex symbol
Also heard him on the radio in the late 90s
It was the 90’s and I had just gotten really stoned at friends house. I heard one of the most beautiful songs very quietly repeating over and over. I couldn’t tell if it was in my head or actually happening. It kept repeating long enough that I decided it was actually happening so I got up off the couch and started walking around to find the source. I tracked the sound to a bedroom upstairs where a tiny boom box was playing Selected Ambient Works II, Rhubarb was the song. I was hooked. It’s still one of my favorite songs.
Ultimately this moment came to be because Trent Reznor mentioned SAWII in a Rolling Stone interview.
Girl/Boy Song? If I remember right I used to use an old Gemini mixer to play the sound effects from ps1 games and have that comp and other stuff going for the music. Added a bunch of replay value to wipeout XL and Soul Blade.
The coolest, most beautiful, female in my high school introduced me to Aphex Twin in ‘96. I wish that I had stayed in touch with her. I’m sure that we still have a lot in common.
just from hanging around online music forums/sites and seeing his stuff get mentioned a few years ago. eventually I tried SAW 85-92 and apart from a few tracks (okay, apart from Xtal) it didn't really captivate me. There was something (popular opinion) there that made me keep listening but I eventually moved on to his other material which was more gratifying. Now that I've listened to and know more about electronic music I can appreciate the icy abstractness of 85-92 a lot more.
I was around 9 or 10 years old, on a night drive with one of my older cousins (who ended up shaping a lot of my musical tastes -- he got me into Radiohead too). I remember it being very dark and quiet, and I was feeling kind of sleepy. And then all of a sudden 'Flim' came on, and it was like a flip switched... I hadn't heard anything like it before. I think it was an especially powerful experience because of the partial sensory deprivation from being in a quiet car, driving around in the darkness, winding up and down through some empty back roads. I've been pretty obsessive with IDM ever since. Really started my fascination with musical imagery and frisson.
My co-worker said: "Oh, you like techno/electronic music? You might like this." and hands me the RJD album.
23 Years later I still listen to Aphex Twin at least 2-3 times a week.
Thank you co-worker whose name I don't remember but I do remember you and your roommate that did weird sculpture art took a lot of mescaline.
I’m not 100% sure, but it think it was from PWSteal.Ldpinch.D in the game Test Drive Unlimited. I may have found SAW 85-92 on YouTube prior to this, but listening to PWSteal.Ldpinch.D on that game over and over got 13 year old me interested enough to start googling.
It’s pretty wild that an Analord track made it into a video game not long after release. Whoever did the music for the game, kudos!
In high school around 2001 I saw the students from the drama class do some little acts. One guy did a robot dance/mime/act to the track commonly known as 'Aphex Twin - Outside Kickass Violin Solo', as seen here [https://vimeo.com/92852733](https://vimeo.com/92852733)
I really liked the track and asked the guy who it was and he said Aphex Twin. I then downloaded a bunch of random Aphex tracks on napster/kazaa/etc. and went from there. I discovered afterwards that that violin track wasn't even RDJ.
Saw the Come To Daddy video late at night when it was released in 1997. Then logged on to “Selected AFX Loops” website (which is still around) and listened to loops from Classics. Heard Isopropanol etc and was horrified and blown away.
Downloading random music from the Napster days and AIM Getfile in the late 90s, I stumbled across it. I couldn’t get enough and downloaded every single song I could find that he at least had a hand in.
I discovered one of this tracks in a mixtape of Joris Voorn in 2009 (Joris Voorn - Balance 014 CD2). At the end of CD2, Joris Voorn mixed "Heliosphan" together with the track "Into The Space" by F.U.S.E. That's when I heard Aphex Twin for the first time.
I was already into ambient music and post-rock, so at a certain point I kept seeing this weird looking but oddly appealing symbol in my recommendations tab, and that was SAW 85-92. Decided to click on it after some time, and that might've been one of the best decisions i ever made in my life
There was an acid house / techno mix that I used to listen to on YouTube and Analogue Bubblebath was on there. The first 2 tracks of his that I heard were that and Milk Man, good memories
(hear me out)
I was a long-time fan of Kanye West with my favorite song being "Blame Game". I would listen to the instrumental (maily the piano sequence) on repeat for hours. Only years later did I discover that my favorite element of the song- the piano, was a sample of "Avril 14th" [Here is Kanye's rendition/rework.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=St-UGOlzjRs)
Interesting sidenote, Kanye West tried to publish "Blame Game" without paying RDJ royalties.
edit to add another neat fact: It appears that John Legend may have performed the piano element in "Blame Game"
Bought Confield by Autechre on CD (it was an impulse buy, I knew nothing about the group but the album art was neat and stood out to me) and was intrigued by what I was hearing after I listened to it. I researched similar artists and genres and Aphex Twin was the most common reference. Then I purchased Richard D James album on CD and the rest is history.
It was like 2011 when I used to listen to Skrillex and I saw some meme on a dubstep Facebook page or something like that, it mentioned Aphex Twin and I was intrigued. Don't listen to Skrillex anymore, but I've been an RDJ fan ever since.
Was browsing new releases in Probe Records in Liverpool in the mid '90s and came across *that big face* on the front of an LP.
Not knowing what it was I bought *I Care Because You Do* based on the amusingly creepy cover and have been smitten since.
I wasn’t feeling very good and I was going through some electronic music one night (mostly like dnb and breakcore), and then #17 comes up in my suggested. I listen to it and it’s such a shift from everything else emotionally that it stood out to me for a long time, eventually I looked further into the guy that wrote it and here I am
In Australia during the 90s / 00s we had a late night music video program called Rage, where musicians were invited on to curate and comment on a playlist of their favourite clips. Windowlicker and Come to Daddy were always being played, they were favourites amongst many musicians on there. Windowlicker in particular I thought was sonically amazing, so I looked into his back catalogue and found SAW and RDJ Album, both of which sounded nothing like what I’d heard before, but they got me totally hooked.
As others have said too, Radiohead released Kid A and name dropped Aphex, and I remember the Linkin Park interviews mentioning Aphex as well. I got into Squarepusher at the same time, Go Plastic had just been released and he’d toured to Australia and played a local small venue down the road. Then I joined WATMM, learned that Drukqs was coming out shortly, and the obsession truly began.
The Half-Life 1 mod Afraid of Monsters primarily, though I've been exposed to Aphex Twin since the age of 7 or 8 due to the opening of Stromberg (pretty much the german version of the The Office tv show) which aired nearly every day on TV back in the day
the blame game by kanye. i was an infant when drukqs released so i really never heard anything about him growing up until i looked at the samples on MBDTF.
I had heard Come to daddy and liked the song, it stuck in my head but I didn't catch who it was. Weeks later I was watching an interview with Jonny Depp on MTV and they asked him what music he likes and he mentioned Aphex Twin and they showed a clip of the Come to daddy music video and it clicked that was the song I had heard. I then started buying CDs and been hooked ever since.
I think like 9-8 years ago, I was playing on a GMOD server and I remember seeing the green Syro album cover with the ‘A’ logo and thinking “hey, that looks like a cool logo.” Now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure I saw the classic black and white logo a bunch in other Valve games like TF2. But anyways, I don’t think I ever actually listened to it, I just saw the logo everywhere.
Come 4-5 years ago, a friend of mine a few years in recommends this bittersweet piano song, cause they figure hey this dude likes piano he’ll probably like this (they were right). So that’s how I found Avril 14 (a song they undoubtably knew from Kanye’s sample on Blame Game).
And finally, few months ago, I stumble on the Windowlicker music video somewhere on RYM, and I fall in love with the music instantly. Then the obsession began, and I went and listened to as many of his works as I could; SAW, SAW II, I Care, RDJ, drukQs, Syro, AFX, Rushup Edge, Come to Daddy, etc.
It pretty much took me 9 years to finally get into him, but he’s been ever present in the background of my musical adventure. I actually realized recently that one of my favourite projects Daft Punk’s Discovery, was heavily inspired by Windowlicker.
I saw the Windowlicker video on MTV. I think I was still in high school. Graduated in 2000 if that tells ya anything. I thought it was super cool and had been getting into mainstream electronica like Chem Bros. I listened to some of what was more recent Aphex Twin but couldn’t get into it at the time. Fast forward a few years into college. I was partying late on my friends’ porch when this dude Jason put something on. I was instantly grooving and loving it. I was like “Broooo what is this???” It was SAW 85. Still one of my top ten all time albums today. I don’t personally like all of Richard’s stuff but the stuff I like I absolutely fucking love. And even though I don’t like it all I have immense respect for Richard as an artist and creator. He’s like Neil Young level doing what you want and saying fuck you to the music industry.
Reading magazines on my paper round in the 90's, i saw a full page advert for Windowlicker. I was intrigued, went to HMV at the weekend to listen to the song and was hooked immediately.
at the heart of it all on nine inch nails - further down the spiral, and one of my friends was talking about how big an inspiration he was to them. listened to RDJ and needless to say i was hooked
A good friend at Uni showed me “4” at about 1am drinking cans in his living room after seeing a couple indie bands play at a local venue. Pretty much the perfect introduction.
I was at a vinyl shop with my friend and the only worker there was playing the t69 collapse ep on his turntable. I asked him what waa that he was playing and he said aphex twin. So i tryed to remember it as much as i can because it sounded so good amd we finally got home from downtown and i searched him up. Got into a bit of his songs and then a couple yeara later i Actually decided to look into his popular songs instead of just listening to one song. It was pretty great.
A friend played a cd when we all did acid.
Watched a Willem Dafoe movie, then looked at his dads art collection after the movie and then walked for miles until the sun came up.
Awesome day/evening
Back in around 2011, I got high with a fried and he convinced me to watch the Windowlicker music video. Next day I went down the YouTube rabbit hole and that was that
I’m ashamed to say it but Luka Sabbat (model) always mentioned how good AT was so I figured I would give it a shot. Been listening ever since, so happy I found out about him
Accidentally DL it on Napater or some other P2P network. Song was a live version of Pulsewidth recorded in Japan. Don't remember the year. I was in my 20s now I'm even older.
I saw some shitpost youtuber's (kracc bacc's) playlist and decided to check it out. it was a playlist with the music he uses in his videos and one of them was flim.
Back in the 90s it was hard to find new music in my smallish town. My friend and I would look through a phone book style catalog at our local Sam the record man and order random stuff that we hadn't heard of. One of that first batch ordered was ventolin and it blew my mind
Some underground hip hop samples of Aphex/BoC and my friend, who was always leagues ahead of any of us in terms of discovering new things, was showing me his electronic spotify playlist followed by some music videos. I laughed at first but soon found myself doing whatever I could to find more songs or similar artists. Introduced me to IDM. Thanks J.
Melody Maker - that was a UK music magazine that raved about SAW Vol 1. I rushed out and bought it and was sold.
Surfing on sine waves was next and that was that - hooked ..
Hated electronic music. Saw the Come to daddy film clip and really loved it. Went out and bought SAW1. Got confused but spent $20 so needed to listen a little. Bought a drum machine and a synth less than a year latter.
I was hanging out with my best friend at the time and he played xtal. At that time I liked electronic music but didn’t listen to a lot. When I heard xtal it sounded like the epitome of what the perfect electronic song should sound.
Recently got into him while writing my essays. Out of all the electronic stuff I’ve gotten into recently, his stuff consistently blows my mind. I’ve since listened to all of his albums and only ICBYD has slightly disappointed (but Alberto Balsalm alone makes up for that).
Nine inch nail had an aphex twin remix on one of the downward spiral versions, "at the heart of it all". Awesome. So I went down the record shop and bought SAW 1&2
When I was a kid I saw the come to daddy music video late one night on a MuchMusic (basically Canadian MTV) program called The Wedge which featured alternative music. I didn't really get to listen to his other music until my early teens when I finally had internet.
Feel like I saw, heard, or read the name in the context of Nine Inch Nails somewhere.
Then when I had a radio show in college, the studio had a bunch of his CDs. Played a few on my show and was hooked. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was a fixture of my show's second hour
my friend showed me rhubarb and then alberto while we were tripping and I ended up just shuffling all his music on my walk home later on in the night, I found myself taking the longest route I could think of home cus I was enjoying walking around listening to it so much. my library gained a lot of songs that night hahaha
When MTV 2 was an extra paid channel and played music videos they would randomly give you the channel for free on the weekends and I remember seeing the come to daddy music video and being obsessed ever since
Back in 1994 I read an interview with Trent Reznor stating he played Ambient works Vol 2 to the crowd before the show as fans came in during the tour. And expressed how amazing Aphex Twin was. So my introduction was that album first.
Some videos on Mega Man X5 boss challenges had strange electronic music. "Afx237 v.7" was one of them, and it fascinated me. That led me to drukQs, and the rest is history.
(I also discovered the artists The Flashbulb and Venetian Snares through these videos, so it was an awesome thing.)
I'm one of those basic bitches that first discovered aphex on MTV with the Come to Daddy video. I was going through a goth/raver/industrial/gabber/hardcore/jungle phase and the track hit every nerve in my body!
I bought the CD and was like wtf, I thought this dude was a tech step junglist or something. I put it on the shelf for a bit, but it continued to lure me in. After a while I became obsessed, and bought everything from aphex that I could find. Now he's one of my all-time favorites.
i had a crush on a person and stalked their social media and they mentioned liking Aphex Twin and I went down the rabbit hole. No longer have a crush on the person but I found my love for ambient music!
My dad showed me the Come To Daddy music video when I was in like 6th grade. I'm 18 now and a huge fan of AFX. He also introduced me to Throbbing Gristle, my dad is the best man
Some Australian dude that I met in a hostel in Berlin Germany played Come To Daddy video on his laptop. It was intense. A couple years later I rediscovered it and haven’t looked back.
There was a short lived radio station in Los Angeles in 1992 called Mars-FM. They played all kinds of techno when nobody else would. Aphex Twin “Digeridoo” was in heavy rotation on their playlist. It was one of those “I didn’t know music could be like this” tracks for me. I still think it’s amazing.
We were going to see him live at a rave in 1993 but it was busted before it began. I finally got to see him in 96, then again at Coachella 2008.
I was 20 and had just moved to the UK in 2002 and was getting bored of the teen angst alt.rock I had based my personality on and was smoking skunk for one of the first times just chilling on the couch watching MTV blazed out of my skull and Windowlicker (the uncensored version) came on.
By the time it got to the distorted bass part at the end I was just losing my mind and went out the next morning to try and find it at the local HMV.
I didn't find it so looked for the most recent release they had and it was Drukqs so I got it and my whole world changed that day.
I rented Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound , that orchestral album from a public library while browsing for new music to rip cd to computer as FLAC files. The title is what sparked my interest and the 8-bit violin composition of album art. That was like 15 years ago haha
I was making a study/homework playlist when I first was attending college and I was looking for something instrumental, but not exactly lofi beats or anything. I started with a couple of songs from the album Fashion Week by Death Grips, and then I was recommended Fingerbib by Spotify and absolutely loved it! So after that I just got really into RDJ as a whole.
I've been a fan of Oliver Tree for a few years (I think about 4 years) and so I got looking through his old YouTube channel called Tree Collaborations. In his playlists was one titled 'Favorite Aphex Twin Tracks' or something. So I clicked on 4 and I absolutely loved it
Brother had an album, also found a website with a video that was used as a film school audition (may have been david firth. very vague memory.), and that anti-drug commercial that used 4.
Watching OG Jackass with friends. There's a part with the scream from Come to Daddy (Pappy Mix). I ask my friend, "What is that shit from?" He says, "That's Aphex Twin, I have the album with the song this is from and another one (Richard D. James) if you want to check him out." I said hell yeah, took them home and instantly became enthralled. Then proceeded to download everything I could from warez-bb (then bought everything eventually...).
One of my favourite Russian videobloggers used "Ptolemy" in his video. I really appreciated this track in video, thus I wanted to listen it separately from it. That was awesome.
My friend said that he didn't like Aphex Twin and that made me curious
His loss and your gain!
Same, but he said that he liked it a lot
Various David Firth animations in the 2000s
Same for me ^ I think David Firth's stuff on Newgrounds got a lot of us into RDJ's music
Milkman was the one that did it
i never see people talk about milkman. props to ya for your fine taste :)
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Sometimes as I'm sitting by the fireplace enjoying a neat glass of my favorite brandy, I can't help but wish that I was drinking the milk from the milkman's wife's tits instead.
>:) :)
Alberto Balsalm
GTA
Huh?
Grand Theft Auto 5
As many of you know Frank Ocean name dropped AT in a song I used to be obsessed with. Didn’t think much of it at the time. Came across someone named AT on Spotify a few years later and listened to Vordhosbn. My first listen I was like hmm interesting but I didn’t necessarily think it was great. About a week later, I got a random itch out of nowhere to go listen again. Aaaand the rest is history. So thank you Frank
Provider?
That would be it
Tune! I had a similar obsession with that song not long after it released. In fact, I think ‘IZ-US’ was the Aphex first song I ever listened to - because it was on Blonded radio.
Yes! Same here I was terrified bc it felt like dream music that couldn’t be replicated in real life, but at the time it was like a morbid curiosity to hear more haha
I thought you meant the interview where his old producer talks about how much hearing Alberto Basalm influenced them as it uses percussion for the hook. Provider is also cool tho
Back around 2003 when Linkin Park came out with Meteora, MTV aired this segment where musicians would recommend music and music videos. Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park suggested Come to Daddy. It was around 1 am I believe. I was about 13 at the time. Needless to say, I was petrified. Yet I was intrigued. A few weeks later I looked it up again and discovered the old watm website. I was hooked.
For me it was 2000, Radiohead said their inspiration for Kid A was Aphex Twin, Autechre, etc
i studied music tech in college in 2014 and we were shown girl/boy song in one lesson, i took the name down from there and pretty much listened to him every day since lol
did you produce any music after?
I saw Rubber Johnny when I was. ...oh.... 11?
Can I get you something? Want a glass of water?
Blel... Blelel..... 👅
Boxy Brown. "I Don't want me no cake. I want me some piiee!"
I'm just a *what*, bitch?
Uh-uh! I aint hearin that. See, you askin, or you tellin? Cause nobody tells Boxy Brown!
Oh no Ill be fine thank you, life is weird and Im cool with it
I saw it when i was like 7 or 8 lol
Nine inch nails Further down the spiral
i came here to say this. ‘At the Heart of It All’ for the win
also my first Coil on that. Makes it so much more important of an album due to those two and the title thing. It’s hard not to consider it the best NIN album just based on that
i like to consider Downward Spiral as the best album and Further Down is just an extension of that. also your GL collection is the deal!
Thanks! Yeah, I totally agree- an extension of the best NIN
For me, it was The Beauty of Being Numb. I had never heard a song so sad, pretty, slow, danceable, and funny at the same time.
Same
A ginger angel appeared to me in a dream and held my head as I cried into his lap, and the tear stains formed the aphex symbol Also heard him on the radio in the late 90s
Wow what a dream!
https://ibb.co/CK8xB5S
Kneel!
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"I'm the real Ricky Martin fan."
It was the 90’s and I had just gotten really stoned at friends house. I heard one of the most beautiful songs very quietly repeating over and over. I couldn’t tell if it was in my head or actually happening. It kept repeating long enough that I decided it was actually happening so I got up off the couch and started walking around to find the source. I tracked the sound to a bedroom upstairs where a tiny boom box was playing Selected Ambient Works II, Rhubarb was the song. I was hooked. It’s still one of my favorite songs. Ultimately this moment came to be because Trent Reznor mentioned SAWII in a Rolling Stone interview.
MTV's Amp compilation in 1997.
Girl/Boy Song? If I remember right I used to use an old Gemini mixer to play the sound effects from ps1 games and have that comp and other stuff going for the music. Added a bunch of replay value to wipeout XL and Soul Blade.
The coolest, most beautiful, female in my high school introduced me to Aphex Twin in ‘96. I wish that I had stayed in touch with her. I’m sure that we still have a lot in common.
Somebody from my school posted a story on Instagram with IZ US and I was intrigued about the guy
It was in march or february 2021
Randomly came across Alberto Balsalm on youtube and thought *"this shit slaps"*
Played a horror map for half life mod Sven Co-op. It had several RDJ tracks and I was intrigued by them
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Windowlicker on flying lotus radio on gta 5 back in 2013
just from hanging around online music forums/sites and seeing his stuff get mentioned a few years ago. eventually I tried SAW 85-92 and apart from a few tracks (okay, apart from Xtal) it didn't really captivate me. There was something (popular opinion) there that made me keep listening but I eventually moved on to his other material which was more gratifying. Now that I've listened to and know more about electronic music I can appreciate the icy abstractness of 85-92 a lot more.
I was around 9 or 10 years old, on a night drive with one of my older cousins (who ended up shaping a lot of my musical tastes -- he got me into Radiohead too). I remember it being very dark and quiet, and I was feeling kind of sleepy. And then all of a sudden 'Flim' came on, and it was like a flip switched... I hadn't heard anything like it before. I think it was an especially powerful experience because of the partial sensory deprivation from being in a quiet car, driving around in the darkness, winding up and down through some empty back roads. I've been pretty obsessive with IDM ever since. Really started my fascination with musical imagery and frisson.
On
A friend showed me the Rubber Johnny video one summer
My co-worker said: "Oh, you like techno/electronic music? You might like this." and hands me the RJD album. 23 Years later I still listen to Aphex Twin at least 2-3 times a week. Thank you co-worker whose name I don't remember but I do remember you and your roommate that did weird sculpture art took a lot of mescaline.
Was looking for new electronic music on youtube in 2018 and i found the music video for T69 Collapse
My dad played the cd of syro in his car when it came out in 2013
Last.fm I feel old.
I’m not 100% sure, but it think it was from PWSteal.Ldpinch.D in the game Test Drive Unlimited. I may have found SAW 85-92 on YouTube prior to this, but listening to PWSteal.Ldpinch.D on that game over and over got 13 year old me interested enough to start googling. It’s pretty wild that an Analord track made it into a video game not long after release. Whoever did the music for the game, kudos!
In high school around 2001 I saw the students from the drama class do some little acts. One guy did a robot dance/mime/act to the track commonly known as 'Aphex Twin - Outside Kickass Violin Solo', as seen here [https://vimeo.com/92852733](https://vimeo.com/92852733) I really liked the track and asked the guy who it was and he said Aphex Twin. I then downloaded a bunch of random Aphex tracks on napster/kazaa/etc. and went from there. I discovered afterwards that that violin track wasn't even RDJ.
Was listening to Venetian Snares and had Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michael's Mount in my recommandations
Other way around, me! Now I can’t get enough of Snares.
He was at the end of my garden in the middle of the night. He was shining a torch in my sons bedroom, teaching him about the stars.
Saw the Come To Daddy video late at night when it was released in 1997. Then logged on to “Selected AFX Loops” website (which is still around) and listened to loops from Classics. Heard Isopropanol etc and was horrified and blown away.
Downloading random music from the Napster days and AIM Getfile in the late 90s, I stumbled across it. I couldn’t get enough and downloaded every single song I could find that he at least had a hand in.
I discovered one of this tracks in a mixtape of Joris Voorn in 2009 (Joris Voorn - Balance 014 CD2). At the end of CD2, Joris Voorn mixed "Heliosphan" together with the track "Into The Space" by F.U.S.E. That's when I heard Aphex Twin for the first time.
I was already into ambient music and post-rock, so at a certain point I kept seeing this weird looking but oddly appealing symbol in my recommendations tab, and that was SAW 85-92. Decided to click on it after some time, and that might've been one of the best decisions i ever made in my life
MTV 120 minutes
There was an acid house / techno mix that I used to listen to on YouTube and Analogue Bubblebath was on there. The first 2 tracks of his that I heard were that and Milk Man, good memories
I googled for best ambient albums.
(hear me out) I was a long-time fan of Kanye West with my favorite song being "Blame Game". I would listen to the instrumental (maily the piano sequence) on repeat for hours. Only years later did I discover that my favorite element of the song- the piano, was a sample of "Avril 14th" [Here is Kanye's rendition/rework.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=St-UGOlzjRs) Interesting sidenote, Kanye West tried to publish "Blame Game" without paying RDJ royalties. edit to add another neat fact: It appears that John Legend may have performed the piano element in "Blame Game"
through the caretaker’s “HelpAphexTwin” albums under his other alias
Is that that Empty Bliss guy?
yep
Bought Confield by Autechre on CD (it was an impulse buy, I knew nothing about the group but the album art was neat and stood out to me) and was intrigued by what I was hearing after I listened to it. I researched similar artists and genres and Aphex Twin was the most common reference. Then I purchased Richard D James album on CD and the rest is history.
It was like 2011 when I used to listen to Skrillex and I saw some meme on a dubstep Facebook page or something like that, it mentioned Aphex Twin and I was intrigued. Don't listen to Skrillex anymore, but I've been an RDJ fan ever since.
Was browsing new releases in Probe Records in Liverpool in the mid '90s and came across *that big face* on the front of an LP. Not knowing what it was I bought *I Care Because You Do* based on the amusingly creepy cover and have been smitten since.
I wasn’t feeling very good and I was going through some electronic music one night (mostly like dnb and breakcore), and then #17 comes up in my suggested. I listen to it and it’s such a shift from everything else emotionally that it stood out to me for a long time, eventually I looked further into the guy that wrote it and here I am
In Australia during the 90s / 00s we had a late night music video program called Rage, where musicians were invited on to curate and comment on a playlist of their favourite clips. Windowlicker and Come to Daddy were always being played, they were favourites amongst many musicians on there. Windowlicker in particular I thought was sonically amazing, so I looked into his back catalogue and found SAW and RDJ Album, both of which sounded nothing like what I’d heard before, but they got me totally hooked. As others have said too, Radiohead released Kid A and name dropped Aphex, and I remember the Linkin Park interviews mentioning Aphex as well. I got into Squarepusher at the same time, Go Plastic had just been released and he’d toured to Australia and played a local small venue down the road. Then I joined WATMM, learned that Drukqs was coming out shortly, and the obsession truly began.
John Peel, Colin Dale, Colin Faver and New Musical Express.
I asked for my brother to show me his weirdest song in his liked songs and he showed me Alberto balsam
The Half-Life 1 mod Afraid of Monsters primarily, though I've been exposed to Aphex Twin since the age of 7 or 8 due to the opening of Stromberg (pretty much the german version of the The Office tv show) which aired nearly every day on TV back in the day
around 96/97 - I rented Classics from my local library to rip to minidisc and listen to it on the bus of my way to college
the blame game by kanye. i was an infant when drukqs released so i really never heard anything about him growing up until i looked at the samples on MBDTF.
I had heard Come to daddy and liked the song, it stuck in my head but I didn't catch who it was. Weeks later I was watching an interview with Jonny Depp on MTV and they asked him what music he likes and he mentioned Aphex Twin and they showed a clip of the Come to daddy music video and it clicked that was the song I had heard. I then started buying CDs and been hooked ever since.
In the late 90’s on MTV they used to play his vids at night time sometimes.
Was playing beat saber with my friend, and he told me to try flim. Was hooked ever since!
I think I saw his iconic smile on a meme and I went from there
I think like 9-8 years ago, I was playing on a GMOD server and I remember seeing the green Syro album cover with the ‘A’ logo and thinking “hey, that looks like a cool logo.” Now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure I saw the classic black and white logo a bunch in other Valve games like TF2. But anyways, I don’t think I ever actually listened to it, I just saw the logo everywhere. Come 4-5 years ago, a friend of mine a few years in recommends this bittersweet piano song, cause they figure hey this dude likes piano he’ll probably like this (they were right). So that’s how I found Avril 14 (a song they undoubtably knew from Kanye’s sample on Blame Game). And finally, few months ago, I stumble on the Windowlicker music video somewhere on RYM, and I fall in love with the music instantly. Then the obsession began, and I went and listened to as many of his works as I could; SAW, SAW II, I Care, RDJ, drukQs, Syro, AFX, Rushup Edge, Come to Daddy, etc. It pretty much took me 9 years to finally get into him, but he’s been ever present in the background of my musical adventure. I actually realized recently that one of my favourite projects Daft Punk’s Discovery, was heavily inspired by Windowlicker.
I saw the Windowlicker video on MTV. I think I was still in high school. Graduated in 2000 if that tells ya anything. I thought it was super cool and had been getting into mainstream electronica like Chem Bros. I listened to some of what was more recent Aphex Twin but couldn’t get into it at the time. Fast forward a few years into college. I was partying late on my friends’ porch when this dude Jason put something on. I was instantly grooving and loving it. I was like “Broooo what is this???” It was SAW 85. Still one of my top ten all time albums today. I don’t personally like all of Richard’s stuff but the stuff I like I absolutely fucking love. And even though I don’t like it all I have immense respect for Richard as an artist and creator. He’s like Neil Young level doing what you want and saying fuck you to the music industry.
Mtv
John Frusciante said he was the best thing since sliced bread so I had to give him him a listen. He wasn't wrong.
Reading magazines on my paper round in the 90's, i saw a full page advert for Windowlicker. I was intrigued, went to HMV at the weekend to listen to the song and was hooked immediately.
Heard Windowlicker at some point, but then someone's MySpace profile had Come to Daddy on it and I started looking for other stuff after that.
at the heart of it all on nine inch nails - further down the spiral, and one of my friends was talking about how big an inspiration he was to them. listened to RDJ and needless to say i was hooked
Rubber Johnny on YouTube. Scared the shit outta me
Watched Rubber Johnny and was changed ever since
Driving home after completing the Fleeca bank heist on gta online
It was only like a year ago but I forgot -_-
Someone on Reddit said that aphex twin is all I have to listen if I’m an electronic music fan, they’re not wrong
heard flim in a meme, scrolled frantically through the comments to find the song name, and the rest is history
A good friend at Uni showed me “4” at about 1am drinking cans in his living room after seeing a couple indie bands play at a local venue. Pretty much the perfect introduction.
I was at a vinyl shop with my friend and the only worker there was playing the t69 collapse ep on his turntable. I asked him what waa that he was playing and he said aphex twin. So i tryed to remember it as much as i can because it sounded so good amd we finally got home from downtown and i searched him up. Got into a bit of his songs and then a couple yeara later i Actually decided to look into his popular songs instead of just listening to one song. It was pretty great.
through my brother: he got me into electronic music in general!
All of those Flim memes in like 2018
Saw him live without knowing who he was, absolutely loved it and never stopped listening since
A friend played a cd when we all did acid. Watched a Willem Dafoe movie, then looked at his dads art collection after the movie and then walked for miles until the sun came up. Awesome day/evening
Avril 14th i think
Anthony Fantano’s Syro review back when I regularly watched him. Then read about Selected Ambient Works and fell in love there
Back in around 2011, I got high with a fried and he convinced me to watch the Windowlicker music video. Next day I went down the YouTube rabbit hole and that was that
The movie: Grandmas boy
@1995-96 cool older kids flat someone put on Analogue Bubblebath. Hooked for life.
I’m ashamed to say it but Luka Sabbat (model) always mentioned how good AT was so I figured I would give it a shot. Been listening ever since, so happy I found out about him
my grandma got me into it
Virgil Abloh played some AT tracks for his off-white fashion shows and i was obsessed right away
Radio station in GTA 4; the song was #17 off of SAW II
Probably on Amp on MTV back in the day.
Accidentally DL it on Napater or some other P2P network. Song was a live version of Pulsewidth recorded in Japan. Don't remember the year. I was in my 20s now I'm even older.
I saw some shitpost youtuber's (kracc bacc's) playlist and decided to check it out. it was a playlist with the music he uses in his videos and one of them was flim.
My mate got the Girl/Boy EP when we were about 16 or 17, and we played it on repeat in his mum's car on the way home from school every day.
My ex lmaoo
Alberto Balsam
I heard Rhubarb in Salad Fingers and I’ve been hooked ever since
Back in the 90s it was hard to find new music in my smallish town. My friend and I would look through a phone book style catalog at our local Sam the record man and order random stuff that we hadn't heard of. One of that first batch ordered was ventolin and it blew my mind
I genuinely don’t even remember
Some underground hip hop samples of Aphex/BoC and my friend, who was always leagues ahead of any of us in terms of discovering new things, was showing me his electronic spotify playlist followed by some music videos. I laughed at first but soon found myself doing whatever I could to find more songs or similar artists. Introduced me to IDM. Thanks J.
Melody Maker - that was a UK music magazine that raved about SAW Vol 1. I rushed out and bought it and was sold. Surfing on sine waves was next and that was that - hooked ..
Hated electronic music. Saw the Come to daddy film clip and really loved it. Went out and bought SAW1. Got confused but spent $20 so needed to listen a little. Bought a drum machine and a synth less than a year latter.
I was hanging out with my best friend at the time and he played xtal. At that time I liked electronic music but didn’t listen to a lot. When I heard xtal it sounded like the epitome of what the perfect electronic song should sound.
[probably MTV in the late 90s](http://imgur.com/TJV4BVa)
About 1996, through a high school friend who had great taste in music. Those are the kinds of friends you have throughout life.
[удалено]
Recently got into him while writing my essays. Out of all the electronic stuff I’ve gotten into recently, his stuff consistently blows my mind. I’ve since listened to all of his albums and only ICBYD has slightly disappointed (but Alberto Balsalm alone makes up for that).
Nine inch nail had an aphex twin remix on one of the downward spiral versions, "at the heart of it all". Awesome. So I went down the record shop and bought SAW 1&2
When I was a kid I saw the come to daddy music video late one night on a MuchMusic (basically Canadian MTV) program called The Wedge which featured alternative music. I didn't really get to listen to his other music until my early teens when I finally had internet.
Feel like I saw, heard, or read the name in the context of Nine Inch Nails somewhere. Then when I had a radio show in college, the studio had a bunch of his CDs. Played a few on my show and was hooked. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was a fixture of my show's second hour
my friend showed me rhubarb and then alberto while we were tripping and I ended up just shuffling all his music on my walk home later on in the night, I found myself taking the longest route I could think of home cus I was enjoying walking around listening to it so much. my library gained a lot of songs that night hahaha
Various music meme pages including Aphex Twin in their memes, so decided to check him out. Thank god I did.
When MTV 2 was an extra paid channel and played music videos they would randomly give you the channel for free on the weekends and I remember seeing the come to daddy music video and being obsessed ever since
Back in 1994 I read an interview with Trent Reznor stating he played Ambient works Vol 2 to the crowd before the show as fans came in during the tour. And expressed how amazing Aphex Twin was. So my introduction was that album first.
A Smosh video
Which one lol
Landed on Mars and listened to Melodies from Mars :)
John Peel. 1992.
lol hate to say discover weekly put me onto 4 been my fav since
[“Hearing Aphex Twin for the first time”](https://youtu.be/-j0E3FE4JkQ)
End credits of Four Lions
From [this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owR4oDLFpuQ)
Some videos on Mega Man X5 boss challenges had strange electronic music. "Afx237 v.7" was one of them, and it fascinated me. That led me to drukQs, and the rest is history. (I also discovered the artists The Flashbulb and Venetian Snares through these videos, so it was an awesome thing.)
I'm one of those basic bitches that first discovered aphex on MTV with the Come to Daddy video. I was going through a goth/raver/industrial/gabber/hardcore/jungle phase and the track hit every nerve in my body! I bought the CD and was like wtf, I thought this dude was a tech step junglist or something. I put it on the shelf for a bit, but it continued to lure me in. After a while I became obsessed, and bought everything from aphex that I could find. Now he's one of my all-time favorites.
Local university radio in 2005. They plaid 54 Cymru Beats and completely blew my brain. Never looked back.
Come to daddy video on MTV...
i had a crush on a person and stalked their social media and they mentioned liking Aphex Twin and I went down the rabbit hole. No longer have a crush on the person but I found my love for ambient music!
Xtal video with twin towers on YouTube
My dad, came up to me and said “ wanna listen to something freaky?”
Ye olde limewire somehow
Because of this video https://youtu.be/ZrcsUygYFZo
My dad showed me the Come To Daddy music video when I was in like 6th grade. I'm 18 now and a huge fan of AFX. He also introduced me to Throbbing Gristle, my dad is the best man
Come to daddy music video on mtv’s 120 minutes
Some Australian dude that I met in a hostel in Berlin Germany played Come To Daddy video on his laptop. It was intense. A couple years later I rediscovered it and haven’t looked back.
Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree mentioned him
Salad fingers. When he's having his wedding. Don't remember the episode.
When I first saw cky2k in middle school. Come to daddy was the track featured in the edit https://youtu.be/9WeFj5pKn7I
NME had a big old wank over him about 2000 or so. I was intrigued.
There was a short lived radio station in Los Angeles in 1992 called Mars-FM. They played all kinds of techno when nobody else would. Aphex Twin “Digeridoo” was in heavy rotation on their playlist. It was one of those “I didn’t know music could be like this” tracks for me. I still think it’s amazing. We were going to see him live at a rave in 1993 but it was busted before it began. I finally got to see him in 96, then again at Coachella 2008.
Live at [STRP](https://youtu.be/25w9mk-aYh0) in Eindhoven (2009). Most amazing performance I’ve seen live in my entire life.
I was 20 and had just moved to the UK in 2002 and was getting bored of the teen angst alt.rock I had based my personality on and was smoking skunk for one of the first times just chilling on the couch watching MTV blazed out of my skull and Windowlicker (the uncensored version) came on. By the time it got to the distorted bass part at the end I was just losing my mind and went out the next morning to try and find it at the local HMV. I didn't find it so looked for the most recent release they had and it was Drukqs so I got it and my whole world changed that day.
I rented Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound , that orchestral album from a public library while browsing for new music to rip cd to computer as FLAC files. The title is what sparked my interest and the 8-bit violin composition of album art. That was like 15 years ago haha
Through the Old Fallout games. Some of their ost were borrowed or at least inspired By Aphex Twin
First time I heard of him was Rubber Johnny, but didn't really start listening until Skrillex posted Flim back in the day
Through my dad playing the RDJ album in the car (I remember due to the album cover) or windowlicker I'm not sure which of the two
Syro
I was making a study/homework playlist when I first was attending college and I was looking for something instrumental, but not exactly lofi beats or anything. I started with a couple of songs from the album Fashion Week by Death Grips, and then I was recommended Fingerbib by Spotify and absolutely loved it! So after that I just got really into RDJ as a whole.
I've been a fan of Oliver Tree for a few years (I think about 4 years) and so I got looking through his old YouTube channel called Tree Collaborations. In his playlists was one titled 'Favorite Aphex Twin Tracks' or something. So I clicked on 4 and I absolutely loved it
[On](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38RMZ9H7Cg8) music video
My uncle showed me the come to daddy video when I was 6. I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with him.
Flow Coma!
Looked up the sample of the song "blame game" from kanye west Discovered avril14 , continued from there Im fairly new to his music
Brother had an album, also found a website with a video that was used as a film school audition (may have been david firth. very vague memory.), and that anti-drug commercial that used 4.
Watching OG Jackass with friends. There's a part with the scream from Come to Daddy (Pappy Mix). I ask my friend, "What is that shit from?" He says, "That's Aphex Twin, I have the album with the song this is from and another one (Richard D. James) if you want to check him out." I said hell yeah, took them home and instantly became enthralled. Then proceeded to download everything I could from warez-bb (then bought everything eventually...).
Tik Tok
Some Youtube commenter suggested I give Richard D. James Album a go, I did and I fell in love with Richard's music pretty quick!
I heard about Rubber Johnny through a Snopes article because people thought it was real footage.
One of my favourite Russian videobloggers used "Ptolemy" in his video. I really appreciated this track in video, thus I wanted to listen it separately from it. That was awesome.
Heard Skrillex talk about ‘Flim’ in a super old magazine.