
Radiator (Original Mix – Peel Session 2) – Aphex Twin (2019, Warp Records, Taken from ‘Peel Session 2’)
Radiator (Album Version) – Aphex Twin (1994, Warp Records, Taken from ‘Selected Ambient Work Vol 2’)
I saw the Aphex Twin play an unadvertised secret set at Glastonbury about twenty years ago. It was in a part of the festival called The Glade, tucked away behind a load of other stages. The DJ booth was raised off the ground in a sort of bubble dome thing, we’d sort of stumbled across The Glade by chance (it was of course, always there, it wasn’t lost or anything) as we wandered around the site, and it looked like a nice place to sit and eat some food. The music was chilled and relaxed and pretty enjoyable and we happened to glance across at the site’s line up to see that we were listening to some DJ called Mark, but it was the name at the top of the board that caught our eye because that as clear as day said : –
1030pm – 0000am Aphex Twin
We checked our glossy programmes – there was no mention of the Aphex Twin anywhere, the headline act for Saturday night in the programme said “Glade DJs until midnight”. I love Glastonbury unannounced sets, because sometimes they are unexpectedly brilliant (For instance -I saw David Essex do a surprise thirty minutes on the piano in a bar/stage called The Bimble Inn, and it was one of the best gigs ever and I saw Frank Turner play 35 brilliant acoustic minutes at a Bandstand in the Green Fields because the someone in the crowd saw him walk past and handed him a guitar).
Recovery – Frank Turner (2013, Xtra Mile Records, Taken from ‘Tape Deck Heart’)
The Aphex Twin in a bubble dome surrounded by fairy lights, glow sticks and the faint hum of the nearby kids field was no different. The really interesting thing was that in keeping with the surroundings he played a set that was chilled and full of ambient tunes, well, until the last half hour when he went mental and starting speeding up old discos records and then shoving breakbeats and drum n bass all over them. I have no idea what songs he played given that he claims to have over a 1000 in his vault, but I think he played this (let’s just pretend he did, even if he didn’t).
Meltphace 6 – Aphex Twin (2001, Warp Records, Taken from ‘Drukqs’)
In 1995, when, ‘Peel Session 2’ was actually recorded, a lot of the information around Richard D James was still shrouded in mystery. He was according to the information available, a man who could survive on less than two hours sleep a night. He claimed to be able to write music in his sleep and had the ability to control his dreams. He also said that he drove around the Cornish moors in a decommissioned tank and sampled himself digging tunnels with a jackhammer (which he then used on some of his Polygon Window work). Personally I always shrugged my shoulders because his music was too good to care about what was going on in the background
The Peel Session version of ‘Radiator’ is surprisingly similar to the version on ‘SAW II’ – it has those same clunking kettle drumish noises (which are probably a sample from when the plumber popped round to sort Richard’s dodgy pipes) which twist and turn atmospherically around your speakers. The Peel Session is slightly better in that the beats have been sped up a bit and general feel of it seems a bit more freestyle. Both are great though. Although the score is level again at 6 each.
Of the rest of the ‘Peel Session 2’ album, the industrial stomper ‘p-string’ is the track that really stands out. It was a track that James wrote specifically for the programme and it remained pretty much unavailable until 2016 (some twenty years later) and its one of Aphex’s finest moments.
p-string – Aphex Twin (2019, Warp Records, Taken from ‘Peel Sessions 2’)
You also get a neat version of ‘Pancake Lizard’, which is different from the track that first surfaced on the ‘Donkey Rhubarb Ep’.
Pancake Lizard – Aphex Twin (2019, Warp Records, Taken from ‘Peel Sessions 2’)
Pancake Lizard – Aphex Twin (1995, Warp Records, Taken from ‘Donkey Rhubarb EP’)
Tomorrow – Echo and the Bunnymen