Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II by Marc Weidenbaum Read Free Book Online Page A

producer, was no longer much of a concern for an A&R professional, matching client and opportunity was. The common industry word for this, with no irony intended, is “exploitation.” The Aphex–Chrysalis–Warp team-up got off to a particularly strong start in the form of a celebrated television advertisement for Pirelli, the Italian tire manufacturer. The sixty-second ad opens with a barefoot Carl Lewis, the champion Olympian runner, racing down a track. The score is the pounding clang now associated with trailers for motion pictures, but the music is “The Garden of Linmiri,” credited to the Caustic Window alter ego of Aphex Twin. Released in 1993, less than a year prior to
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
, and collected on the
Joyrex J9ii
EP (and later the
Compilation
compilation), it is a frantic track, suitable to fantasies of internal combustion. In the ad, Lewis runs so fast that he inevitably passes the shoreline, and then continues running straight across open water. Sooner than you can say “messiah complex,” he lands on an implausibly sandy beach and then races straight up the Statue of Liberty, taking a grand leap toward Manhattan and stopping momentarily atop one of the Chrysler Building’s chrome griffins. As the advertisement nears its closing mark, Lewis lifts his foot, revealing it to have a metallic tread. Caustic Window’s hard electronica provided the perfect score for another man–machine interface. The song also echoes in
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
, despite the album’s significantly greater interest in atmosphere over industrial percussion; that clang can be heard in the mechanized rumble of “Shiny Metal Rods.”
    For a first attempt at something in advertising, things certainly did go well. At the British Television Advertising Awards that year, the ad, which had the unremarkable title “Carl Lewis in New York,” won Best TV Commercial, and at Cannes it received the Bronze Lion. As gauges of merit, awards can mean very little, especially amid the complicated mixture of commerce and art that is advertising. What the award did incontrovertibly mean, however, was recognition, future work, and influence. That initial success led to an ongoing engagement for Aphex Twin with advertising, film, and television that endures to this day.
    As a small measure of the Pirelli ad’s influence, the British author Warren Ellis confirmed via email that Lewis’ tread foot inspired the design of a beloved character he created, Jack Hawksmoor, who is part of a super-powered team called the Authority. Ellis’ work has shown a deep affection for urban settings, for the street athleticism called parkour, and for inventive use of sound, all of which the ad touched on. His Hawksmoor character’s unique superpower is heightened municipal empathy, the ability to communicate with cities—to learn by touch, by sound. Besides being the celebrated author of such comics as
Transmetropolitan
and
Planetary
, Ellis has had his work adapted for the screen (the
Red
films, the third
Iron Man
movie), and published a pair of novels. He has also produced popular podcasts, one titled
4am
, and then later the ongoing
Spektrmodule
, which he has described as “haunted, ambient and sleepy music I compile for my own.”
    In delineating the commercial experimentation and the economic factors that formed Aphex Twin’s early financial success, Chrysalis’ Gabriel also explained the context in which the musician moved from DJ to recording artist, from performer to someone perhaps more happily at home in the studio. Key to the shift, though, was a disinterest in business. “Richard really kept the music industry as much at arm’s length as he possibly could,” said Gabriel. The
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
album went silver shortly after release. In Gabriel’s telling, when the musician learned that the cost of making celebratory, suitable-for-wall-hanging discs was recoupable from earnings, he declined the