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

ceremony: “And I think he probably said words along the lines of—I think it was to Rob, ’cause I remember Rob joking about it—‘You waste money on shit like that over my dead body.’” The arm’s length could also mean extended periods of limited contact. “Between us,” Gabriel said of himself and Warp’s Mitchell and Beckett, “we were checking each other out as to who had had any contact with him.”
    Gabriel had started at Chrysalis while a student at the London College of Printing, now called the London College of Communication, where he was pursuing a media studies degree. Being a scout meant attending lots of concerts and the occasional Chrysalis meeting, where he would report on potential signees. He was approached for the role when the president of Chrysalis had read his writing for the magazine
Lime Lizard
, an independent British rock and pop magazine, and noted that just about everyone Gabriel praised had not, in fact, yet signed a record deal. Gabriel was a devotee of Aphex Twin before joining Chrysalis, even in his initial freelance capacity. “I was just the sweaty kid hanging around his dancer a bit at the club,” he said. The dancer would be graphic designer Paul Nicholson, a fixture in those early shows at clubs like Knowledge, held in the SW1 Club of London’s Victoria district. “I remember going there a lot,” said Gabriel. “It was a very E scene, everyone was doing—what were they called?—Mitsubishis, taking these pills called Mitsubishis. Very frenetic. I think it was on Wednesdays. I used to go to that regularly because I just thought he was an amazing DJ.”
    Gabriel also said that while wayward discographer completists might have trouble with all the various monikers beyond Aphex Twin employed by Richard D. James, it was not a difficulty for the publisher or the record label. In the end, if it was his work, it was part of their collections purview. And beyond the major releases on Warp and, earlier, R&S the various more minor monikers did not sell much—and even if they did, many were on Aphex Twin’s own small record label, Rephlex. Which was to say, the musician was making money on them already. There was no need for Chrysalis to go pressuring Rephlex to sort out its finances: “We’d end up bankrupting our own artist’s label, which wouldn’t be a good move,” said Gabriel.
    If Gabriel helped Aphex Twin transition from the clubs to a situation in which he recorded toward his personal ends—in a chill-out room of his own—he also helped facilitate a major transition for both the musician and his main record label, Warp.
    ## The Jewel in the Crown
    By the time Aphex was being courted by Sire Records, he was already settled in at Warp, having made the transition from R&S, a Belgian label that had released initial singles and the full-length album that had cemented his reputation:
Selected Ambient Works 85–92
. At Warp, he joined Nightmares on Wax, LFO, and other groups at a time when the label was still defining itself. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Some entertainment realms are more label-conscious than others. Television production houses and book publishers do not have quite the level of consumer recognition as do video game companies and record labels. Musicians build labels as much as labels build musicians.
    Eventually, larger entities came knocking.
    Risa Morley, now Risa Morley-Medina, worked at Sire Records for over a decade. Between 1992 and 1995, the operational years that led up to and lingered in the halo of
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
, she was in the A&R department at Sire. Sire was a famed label long before she arrived: founded by Seymour Stein, it was the house that the Ramones had built, Talking Heads had expanded, Madonna had decorated, and Depeche Mode had—well, metaphors do not do justice to just how influential this small label, eventually part of the Warner Bros portfolio, was, especially in the years during and