Wrong Music

Back at the beginning of March 2006 I checked out the Wrong Music night that Cardiff's Lesson No1 put on at Clwb Ifor Bach. I wanted to witness for myself DJ Scotch Egg and friends, about whom I'd been hearing nothing but over-excited/ semi-incomprehensible chatter for a good year or so. Hyped-up on the word-of-mouth buzz and from the hilarious/confusing/awesome hyperactive tracks on the Whatever compilation I picked up, I was ready to be entertained. They didn't disappoint. After all, if gameboy-gabba, spastic breakcore beat-boxing, and occasional bursts of death-metal style screaming, mostly delivered in broken English and Japanese doesn't sound like an entertaining night out then I don't know what would. But aside from enjoying myself - particularly Ove-Naxx's set and, later, the just-as-good home-burned CDR I bought from him after a conversation in which pulsating white-noise at the threshold of human hearing and my lack of any knowledge of the Japanese language competed to create total confusion – I was left feeling that what i had witnessed was more than just entertainment. It was something new, something completely different to anything that, after 15 years of immersing myself in electronic music, I would have expected.

The performances were not without precedent, of course. The most obvious – most mainstream - point of reference for Wrong Music is the image that has built up around Aphex Twin since the early 90s, as well as his own musical output since his 'Hangable Autobulb' EPs of 1995 – interestingly just reissued by Warp on CD. This is best typified in the videos directed by Chris Cunningham, especially 'Come To Daddy'. Here Aphex Twin's drill n bass style, which fragments the rhythmic conventions of jungle/drum n bass, introduces vox samples to parodic effect, and generally signifies subversively on mainstream musical and dance culture meets a dark, urban landscape that draws on horror conventions and, visually and musically, makes a link to goth/industrial/metal subculture. Within this strange world, where television sets in perfectly good working order are dumped in the street – clearly an apocalyptic sign! – Aphex Twin is metamorphosed into a ghoulish, monstrous creature, while in turn all the other people in the video seem to be transforming into Aphex Twin. This repeats a notion from the earlier 'Donkey Rhubarb' video, where we see children in Aphex Twin masks, and is later reworked in 1997's 'Windowlicker' video, where it's parodic meaning becomes somewhat clearer. This later video clearly plays upon the conventions of Gangsta Rap videos, and presents Aphex Twin in a Bling-tabulous world where, once again, the effect of his music seems to be to transform everyone into his own hideously distorted image.

This transformation is presented humorously, and has generally contributed to an idea of Aphex Twin as a sort of “mad genius” of the electronic world, but it can be understood as far more than just a sort of crude raspberry. On the contrary, these videos reveal a consistent approach, and one that makes sense both in terms of the ideas circulating in the musical subculture from which this artist emerged, and which comments upon his anomalous position within a more mainstream music culture, as a celebrity of 'pop star' of some description. The repeated motif of the Aphex Twin mask, or of characters transforming into a distorted version of Aphex Twin as they listen to his music, along with the appropriation of elements of a Gangsta Rap fantasy in 'Windowlicker' (stretch Limousine, scantily clad female dancers, fly gold chains...) all add up to a powerful rejection of Aphex Twin's own status as a celebrity. However, these images are equally resistant to the underground cult-of-personality that has grown up around him which, within the underground scene, is arguably just as incongruous as the idea of Aphex Twin as a pop star.

The late 1980s explosion of 'rave' in the UK, fired by US house and techno, was largely driven by the music of individual performers, rather than bands with several members. However, as a result of a fusion of several disparate ideas it simultaneously placed a huge value on collectivity, and a rejection of the star-worship/cult of celebrity that mainstream, and much guitar-based independent music operates within. A number of factors can be discerned: the importance of DJs, rather than the artists, clearly played a part, as did the use of electronic technology and reliance on sampling, all of which were understood to downplay the importance of the individual; equally, the free party and rave scene took off in the UK at a time when it a generalised left-leaning socialist/communist/anarchistic collectivism had currency in youth counter-culture, merging with hedonistic drug-taking to create a group focus rather than an individual one. Dance music simultaneously positioned itself in relation to primal drumbeat, social revolution, and a dehumanised, machinic future-that-had-already arrived, all of which created a focus on the affective, physical aspects of the music, the immediate experience, rather than on the artists as individuals.

Within this context, the idea of a 'Superstar DJ' was a contradiction, and artists seemed to confirm this by releasing music under multiple names and in multiple styles. For this reason, the attention focused on Aphex Twin was right from the start as problematic within the scene which he inhabited as it this refusal to stay put was from a mainstream point-of-view. Thus 'the first Aphex Twin album' was released in 1991 under a different artist name, 'Polygon Window', whilst the first album released under the name Aphex Twin, in 1993, was entitled Classics: a title that defies easy interpretation, to say the least. In one sense, the tracks on this album were indeed 'classics', since it collected together his early, genre-defining techno 12” tracks from early 90s rave scene. Nonetheless, for an artist's first album to be an album of classic tracks recorded only in the previous two or three years defies the entire narrative major labels (and, within literature, publishers) build around successful artists. The title thus implies that the album is an inappropriate form for this music to be released in at all – it's importance has already been established elsewhere – on the dancefloor; and not (only) in being performed live but, on the contrary, as a track played by DJs who had nothing to do with making this music. They, not the record companies, have acted as the intermediary between artist and audience.

The above is not meant to suggest that Aphex Twin necessarily has any coherent strategy here, but the recurrence of these problems and contradictions is plain to see. The musical style and presentation of his next two albums – I Care Because You Do and Richard D. James – deliberately confront one with the question of where he fits in with the music, of how the relationship between the two is to be configured, or disfigured. By persistently foregrounding these questions, Aphex Twin refuses the place assigned him in mainstream music culture. And no wonder, since the narrative options available to him are so limited. Essentially, it comes down to a choice between the Beatles and Elvis, the group journey or the self-destructive star. In this opposition we can see the meaning of the Aphex Twin mask, the repetition of self ad nauseum. In keeping with his sub-cultural roots, Aphex Twin's videos reject completely the idea of his own star status and, through parody, mock the way the music promo video has become important at all. The message seems to be : 'You want to be me? Desire me? Well here I am, again and again, to the point where it is a horror!'. The underlying position seems to be a complete rejection of celebrity, which is treated with ironic detachment if not naked contempt.

If Aphex Twin is typical in many respects of a whole generation of electronic musicians, a first wave born in late 80s rave culture, in terms of the current scene his anti-star stance seems highly anachronistic. In the mid-late 90s narratives of stardom took hold in electronic and dance music and enabled it to score some notable mainstream successes – the likes of The Chemical Brothers and Moby, the huge house scene which is built around big-name DJs who also have Radio 1 shows, the kind of coverage found in Mixmag, etc. - and there was a definite move towards the individual even on the fringes. Regardless of their marginal status, labels like Warp, just by persisting over 15 years with a core roster, have helped create fixed points-of-reference, named artists, who are to varying degrees celebrated as individuals, as stars, alongside the music they release. And in the last few years there has been a definite shift towards a focus on personality in electronic music – which is where my starting point, WRONG music, comes in. These acts are all about presenting a highly eccentric, highly individualistic image, musically and in person. They seem to foster trademark quirkiness and delight in outrageous behavior, rather than the quiet anonymity of machines.

However, given the abrasive nature of the music they are making it's hard to see this in terms of the drawing of electronic music into any mainstream narrative: whatever it is, it's not Elvis. What it seems to be is a genuine home-grown punk movement within electronic music, which, it has to be admitted, has developed a rather sedate and cerebral bent as it has become bedded-down and self-sufficient enough to sustain itself as a more or less closed shop – as typified by, say, The Wire. One of the acts, Germlin, from the UK, was introduced as being 16 (although subsequent research reveals this was a bloody lie, as he's actually 20). With nothing but a beat-up iBook, a microphone, and seemingly inexhaustible enthusiasm, he blasted the dance-floor with a jittering, road-drill of drum n bass/breakcore/gabba that was as good as anything I've heard. Watching him I finally understood punk. I also felt old, not least because rather than just experiencing this in the moment, it triggered off exactly the kind of thoughts I'm describing here. If this where the next wave of crossover electronica is coming from – and I can't see many other likely contenders except for dubstep - we need to imagine not an Aphex Twin but an Alec Empire in every high school; one who doesn't even know who Alec Empire is.