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Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin is a UK Techno/Ambient Artist, real name Richard D. James.

Born to Welsh parents in 1971, James spent his childhood in Cornwall. He experimented with electronics from an early age, winning a competition to make a Sinclair Spectrum play a tune by setting the connected television's volume to full and alternating the colours on the screen, producing different pitches of noise.

He became a DJ and musician on the local rave scene, taking on the monicker "Aphex Twin" from the name of a manufacturer of signal processing equipment combined with the word "twin"; this was because the original Richard James, his brother, had died before Richard D James was born. James uses the "D" of his middle name to distinguish himself from his late brother.

He was a founding partner[?] in the Rephlex Records label in 1991 and released his first records on this label, as well as Mighty Force and R&S Records of Belgium. James soon moved to London and released a slew of albums and EPs on the Warp Records label. He was also responsible for a number of disturbing music videos in collaboration with director Chris Cunningham.

Aphex Twin is credited with pushing forward the genres of techno, ambient and drum and bass and has created a vast amount of music, much of it unreleased. Recent experimentation on his album Drukqs included use of a prepared piano in the style of composer John Cage.

He owns a 1950s armored scout car (a Daimler Ferret Mark 3), a submarine, and lives in a converted bank. Aphex Twin continues to create records at the boundaries of the accepted norms of music.

Table of contents

1 Discography

2 Aliases

3 See Also

4 External Links

Discography