Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin

Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), aka Aphex Twin, is an electronic musician who has been described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music." He founded the record label Rephlex Records in 1991 with his friend Grant Wilson-Claridge.

Richard David James was born to Welsh parents Lorna and Derek James in St. Munchins Limerick Regional Maternity Hospital, Ireland. James grew up in Lanner, Cornwall, United Kingdom; he enjoyed (along with two older sisters) a "very happy" childhood during which they, according to James, "were pretty much left to do what wanted." He "liked growing up there, being cut off from the city and the rest of the world". James attended Redruth School, located in Redruth, Cornwall.

According to musician Benjamin Middleton, James started producing music at the age of 12. As a teenager he was a disc jockey at Shire Horse in St. Ives, with Tom Middleton at the Bowgie Inn in Crantock, and also along the numerous beaches around Cornwall. James studied for a National Diploma in Engineering from 1988 to 1990 (aged 16 to 18) at Cornwall College. When talking about his studies James has said that "music and electronics went hand in hand." James passed college although he would, according to an engineering lecturer, quite often have his headphones on during practical lessons, "no doubt thinking through the mixes he'd be working on later".

In 1989 James met and befriended Grant Wilson-Claridge when working as a DJ on alternate weeks at the Bowgie pub, near Newquay in Cornwall. Wilson-Claridge was intrigued by James's sets and was surprised to discover that James was playing tapes of his own music.

James's first release was the 12-inch EP Analogue Bubblebath on Mighty Force Records in 1991. It was first released under the moniker of Aphex Twin, later changed to AFX. The track "En Trance to Exit" was made in collaboration with Tom Middleton, also known as Schizophrenia. The EP got on the playlist of Kiss FM, an influential London radio station, which helped the release to become a success.

In 1991 James founded Rephlex Records with Wilson-Claridge to promote "innovation in the dynamics of Acid—a much-loved and -misunderstood genre of house music forgotten by some and indeed new to others, especially in Britain".

Between 1991 and 1993, James released two Analogue Bubblebath EPs as AFX, and an EP under Bradley Strider, Bradley's Beat. James moved to London to take an electronics course at Kingston Polytechnic, but at the time admitted to David Toop that his "electronics studies were already slipping away as a career and the techno business took precedence." After quitting his course, James remained in London and released a number of albums and EPs on Warp Records and other labels under many aliases including AFX, Polygon Window, and Power-Pill. A number of James's tracks (released under the aliases Blue Calx, The Dice Man, and others) appeared on various compilations. Local legend has it that James lived on the roundabout in Elephant and Castle, South London during his early years in the capital.

The first full-length Aphex Twin album, Selected Ambient Works 85-92, was released in 1992 on R&S Records. It received high ratings and praise from critics, John Bush of Allmusic described it as a "watershed of ambient music". Rolling Stone wrote of the album: "Aphex Twin expanded way beyond the ambient music of Brian Eno by fusing lush soundscapes with oceanic beats and bass lines." Pitchfork's review quotes: "among the most interesting music ever created with a keyboard and a computer." Critics also noted that the songs were recorded on cassette and that the sound quality was "relatively poor". Tracknames and are terms from electronics.

In 1992, he also released the EPs Xylem Tube EP and Digeridoo (first played by DJ Colin Faver on London's Kiss FM) as Aphex Twin, as Power-Pill the Pac-Man EP based on the arcade game Pac-Man, and two of his four Caustic Window EPs. The song "Digeridoo" reached #55 on the UK charts, and was later described as foreshadowing drum and bass by Rolling Stone. "Digeridoo" was recorded initially for the benefit of FIZZ-BOMB (at the Shire Horse, St Ives, Cornwall). These early releases came out on Rephlex Records, Mighty Force of Exeter, and R&S Records of Belgium.

In 1993, James released Analogue Bubblebath 3. He also released a single titled "On"; his second Bradley Strider EP, Bradley's Robot; two more Caustic Window EPs; and his first releases on Warp Records, Surfing on Sine Waves and "Quoth" under the alias Polygon Window.

Warp Records pressed and released a follow-up to Selected Ambient Works 85-92, Selected Ambient Works Volume II in 1994. The sound was much less beat and melody-driven than the previous volume. All of the track names were described with pie chart symbols, each of which was meant to be paired with a corresponding image in the album jacket, with exception for one song, which was definitely named "Blue Calx". To decipher song titles, listeners had to pair each numbered symbol with the correct image (for example, the first title, which is often labeled cliffs, is realized by pairing the first symbol with the first image, which is that of a rocky cliffside). James claimed in The Wire magazine and other media that these songs were inspired by lucid dreams and synesthesia. Other releases are a fourth Analogue Bubblebath; GAK, derived from early demos sent to Warp Records; and Classics, a compilation album that includes "Digeridoo" and the Xylem Tube EP.

For his 1995 release, ...I Care Because You Do, James used an image of his face for the album cover; a motif that would continue on many of his later records. The album was a compilation of songs composed between 1990 and 1994 and represented a mish-mash of Aphex Twin's various music styles. This was James's last record of the 1990s to use mostly analogue synthesizers. He commissioned Western classical-music composer Philip Glass to create an orchestral version of one of the songs from this album, “Icct Hedral,” which appeared on the Donkey Rhubarb EP.

In 1995 (primarily with Hangable Auto Bulb, a near anagram of Analogue Bubblebath), James began releasing more material composed on computers, combining a jungle sound with nostalgic childhood themes and computer-generated acid lines.

James's early adoption of software synthesizers predated the later popularity of using computers to make music. In late 1990s, his music became more popular and mainstream, as he released Richard D. James Album (which included the previously released Girl/Boy EP in its US release) and Expert Knob Twiddlers, (a collaboration with fellow dance producer µ-ziq). In 1996, "Come to Daddy" in 1997 (#36 on UK charts) and "Windowlicker" in 1998 (#16 on UK charts), two pop songs that heavily use digital signal processing/DSP techniques, both of which were shown on MTV and became cover features for music magazines such as NME. The videos for both singles were directed by British artist Chris Cunningham and caused controversy on release because of their disturbing images and themes.

In 2001 Aphex Twin released drukqs, a two-CD album that featured prepared piano songs influenced by Erik Satie and John Cage. Many of the tracks' names are written in the Cornish language (e.g., 'jynweythek' translatable as 'machinemusic'). Also included were abrasive, fast, and meticulously programmed computer-made songs. Rolling Stone described the piano songs as "aimlessly pretty". Some reviewers concluded that drukqs was released as a contract breaker with Warp Records—a credible guess, as James's next big release was released on his own Rephlex label. James claimed to interviewers he had accidentally left an MP3 player labelled "Aphex Twin—unreleased tracks" on a plane, containing a large set of new songs, and rushed the album release to preempt an Internet leak. He also released a short EP titled 2 Remixes By AFX the same year as Drukqs. It featured two remixes, the originals being from 808 State and DJ Pierre. In addition, there is one untitled third track that consists mostly of high-pitched sounds.

In late 2004, rumours of James's return to an acid techno-based sound were realised with the Analord series, an 11-part series of LPs with 42 total tracks, averaging 2–4 tracks per LP. The series was created by playing and sequencing analogue and digital electronic music equipment such as synthesizers and drum machines. The series was recorded on magnetic tape and then later pressed on vinyl.

James was meticulous about the whole process of recording, mastering, and pressing. James has said Rephlex Records was strict on quality control, trying out various pressing-plant companies until they felt it sounded perfect. To James's ears, vinyl or tape is better than digital, as no two copies are the same. However, label co-owner Grant Wilson-Claridge convinced James to release a digital CD, Chosen Lords, which included 10 selected songs from the Analord series, with some tracks slightly altered to improve the flow of the album. For the Analord records, James used his collection of Roland drum machines, bought when they were still at bargain prices. Some of the record labels display pictures of rare synthesizers like the Synton Fenix, and the notoriously difficult to program Roland MC-4 sequencer (a sequencer with a reputation for excellent timing), as well as the legendary Roland TB-303.

Media reports indicate Aphex Twin is now recording under The Tuss. Rephlex Records has denied that Aphex Twin is the Tuss, but Aphex Twin fans and the media have ignored Rephlex's denial and the Tuss is treated as yet another Aphex Twin project.

The name Aphex Twin is derived from Aphex Systems Limited, a brand of audio signal processing equipment. It is used with permission, as was recognized on the back sleeve of his Richard D. James and drukqs albums. He has explained in interviews that the Twin is in memory of his older brother, also named Richard James, who died at birth.

James has done his own photography for some of his releases' artwork. Some artwork shows James's own face, grinning or slightly distorted in some way, as it can be seen in some of his video clips ("Come to Daddy," for example). Towards the end of the second track of the "Windowlicker" single (commonly referred to as "Equation") a photo of James's face is revealed when run through spectral analysis. The picture illustrates his famous toothy, evil grin (with a spiral also visible at the end of "Windowlicker"). In addition to this, the cover of "Two Remixes by AFX" is actually contained only on the CD, encoded in SSTV format.

Braindance applies to forward-thinking electronic music that can appeal to the mind as well as the desire to dance and party. Examples including Ed-DMX's Breakin' records label, µ-ziq's Planet-mu label, the Aphex Twin EP Come to Daddy and Astrobotnia Parts 1, 2 & 3.

At age 17, Richard D. James mentioned these influences: "Phonic Boy, Computer World, Mental Telepathy, Industrial Inc., Tomita, Tangerine Dream". Mixmaster Morris mentions on the "I Luv AFX" BBC Radio 1 Breezeblock session that James's preferred moniker while working as a DJ in Cornwall was Phonic Boy on Dope. More recently, he has said that he gets inspiration from "everyday sounds that can be emulated/reconstructed electronically, quality techno, especially from Europe, which overshadows the current hardcore pop crap." When asked about what is next for electronic music, he said "acid-techno, ambient-techno." Avant-garde music has been an influence on James, including artists such as Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, Conrad Schnitzler, Tod Dockstader, Xenakis, Piero Umiliani, Bernard Parmegiani, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and the French composer Erik Satie for his piano works and his ideas for furniture music.

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop influenced Aphex Twin, and he released a compilation of music recorded by the pioneers of that studio, for example Delia Derbyshire, called Music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop on his own Rephlex Records label.

Many songs include sounds from and references to the ZX Spectrum. For instance, "Carn Marth" from Richard D. James Album includes the tape-loading noise of the game Sabre Wulf.

The term 'intelligent dance music', or IDM, was coined in August 1993 by the (then popular) IDM mailing list based at hyperreal.org, as a convenient term to describe the emergent sound pioneered by the Warp Records 'Artificial Intelligence' series. The series prominently featured Aphex Twin tracks, as well as early productions from labelmates such as Autechre and LFO. The usage of this term spread, and although common now, the term is still a source of controversy and derision amongst many fans.

Perfect Sound Forever: Another term that's been used to describe your work is intelligent dance music.

I just think it's really funny to have terms like that. It's basically saying, 'this is intelligent and everything else is stupid.' It's really nasty to everyone else's music. (laughs) It makes me laugh, things like that. I don't use names. I just say that I like something or I don't.

Future Music: What pisses you off about the current music scene? Aphex Twin: Too many sheep and not enough shepherds. Let's all sit back and have a long hard think, then make something different! We can all do it, surely?

James said he composed ambient techno music at the age of 13; he has "over 100 hours" of unreleased music; he made his own software to compose with, including algorithmic processes that automatically generate beats and melodies; he experiences synesthesia; and he is able to incorporate lucid dreaming into the process of making music.

He lives in southeast London in a converted bank, which was formerly the Bank of Cyprus and then HSBC. Contrary to popular opinion, however, he does not own the silver structure in the centre of the roundabout at Elephant and Castle. This is, in fact, the Michael Faraday Memorial, containing a power transformer for the Northern Line, which James jokingly claimed to be buying in an interview with The Face magazine in 2001. Some of these rumors are hard to confirm as he has been known to spread mistruths in the prankster tradition, making such claims as only sleeping two to three hours a night.

In November 1995, The Wire published an article titled "Advice to Clever Children." In the process of producing the interview, a package of tapes containing music from several artists, including Aphex Twin, was sent to Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Aphex Twin responded: "I thought he should listen to a couple of tracks of mine: 'Didgeridoo,' then he'd stop making abstract, random patterns you can't dance to".

When I was 11, I won 50 pounds in a competition for writing this program that made sound on a ZX81. You couldn't make sound on a ZX81, but I played around with machine code and found some codes that retuned the TV signal so that it made this really weird noise when you turned the volume up.

By displaying patterns that induced excessive sidebands in the video signal, the lower sideband was forced to spill over into the audio portion of the TV signal's spectrum. While the ZX81 was designed to filter the lower sideband of the video signal out, its simple circuitry did not remove all of it, and James's software was able to overcome the filtering.

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Classics (Aphex Twin album)

Classics is an electronic music compilation album by Richard D. James, more commonly known by his pseudonym of Aphex Twin (credited here as The Aphex Twin). The album was released in December 1994 (see 1994 in music).

The album consists of the Digeridoo and Xylem Tube EPs combined onto one CD with a handful of other songs. The album contains James' signature acid house sensibilities. It mostly features repetitive tracks performed on analogue synthesizers and drum machines, with some rather harsh-sounding remixes of Mescalinum United's "We Have Arrived". It was released by R&S Records following James' success on Warp Records.

A remastered version of the album was released June 2, 2008.

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Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound performs Aphex Twin

Acoustica is a 2005 album by American band Alarm Will Sound. The album consists of acoustic arrangements of electronic tracks originally composed by Richard D. James (also known as Aphex Twin).

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26 Mixes for Cash

26 Mixes for Cash is a compilation album of remixes produced by Richard D. James (better known by his recording alias of Aphex Twin) for various artists, plus four original tracks. It was released on March 24, 2003, by Warp Records.

26 Mixes for Cash was released on CD only, although a vinyl promotional disc entitled 2 Mixes on a 12" For Cash, featuring the two Aphex Twin originals exclusive to this compilation, was released in limited quantities in Japan only.

From as early as 1990, Richard D. James has been in demand as a remix artist, much to his reported dismay. James has said in interviews that he rarely listens to any music other than his own, although he has admitted listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin for breakbeat inspiration, as well as the music made by his close friends, including Luke Vibert, Tom Jenkinson, Mike Paradinas, and Chris Jeffs.

Upon being asked to do a remix for U.S. pop singer Madonna, James replied that he would produce the track on the sole condition that she portray a pig on it for him. In addition, according to an interview with Mixmaster Morris during the Breezeblock "We Luv Aphex" tribute show on October 31, 2005, when an unnamed female pop artist requested a remix a few years ago, she was flatly ignored by Richard. She then supposedly flew to London, tracked down Richard at a club, and was told that he'd only do the track if she "recorded a quota of noises with her genitalia" onto a DAT tape for sampling. Whether this is another variation of the Madonna story or just a flat out lie is unclear.

Another popular story, which has been confirmed by James, claims that a man showed up at Richard's home one morning, claiming to be the representative for the band The Lemonheads, to whom James owed a remix. Having completely forgotten about this agreement, James quickly went to his home studio, Lannerlog, and copied off an original piece completely unrelated to the original mix, which he handed over for several thousand dollars. Despite receiving payment for the track, it was never included on any album. This tale is not so unbelievable given that James is infamous for remixing tracks to the point that they become new musical works with little left intact from the original compositions.

Along with the 22 remixes on this release, four original Aphex Twin tracks are also included. Two are new versions of previously-released tracks: "Windowlicker, Acid Edit" and "SAW2 CD1 TRK2, Original Mix". The two others were previously available only on Further Down the Spiral, the remix album of US industrial band Nine Inch Nails's album The Downward Spiral: "The Beauty of Being Numb Section B" (originally the second part of the complete NIN track) and "At the Heart of It All" (originally 7:14 long, this version is shortened to 3:49 by removing a lot of repetitive loops). James allegedly claims to have never heard (and not wanting to hear) the original NIN album, so it appears he contributed two original pieces instead of remixes (duly tagged "Created by Aphex Twin"). However, the end of "The Beauty of Being Numb" does incorporate the compressed sound of the track "Eraser" from the original NIN album in the background, this is left over from Further Down the Spiral, when it fades into the Coil remix of Eraser. James later expressed a desire to tour with Nine Inch Nails and incorporated samples from the NIN track "Heresy" into a live set with Chris Cunningham.

The track "At the Heart of It All" may have been influenced by the 1984 Coil track of the same name: Coil's track is very different, a beatless and dark post-classical piece of piano and clarinet, but its melody and ambiance can be heard in the slow underlying melody that resonates as horns in the background of Aphex Twin's piece. Both Coil and Aphex Twin worked on the NIN remix album to which James contributed this track (Further Down the Spiral). Rumors say they have worked together on the song "The Snow (Answers Come in Dreams)" but it was indeed made by Coil and Jack Dangers (of Meat Beat Manifesto fame).

In addition to the remixes featured on this release, James has also remixed tracks by Beck, DJ Pierre, and Soft Ballet, as well as additional remixes of tracks by Seefeel, Gavin Bryars, Jesus Jones, Saint Etienne, and Mescalinum United.

Online orders of the compilation through Warp Records came with two silver-wrapped chocolate coins, featuring the Aphex Twin logo on one side and Richard's profile on the other (with "ELECTRONICA REX" written alongside it).

The album is popular television background-music fodder, with tracks appearing in an advertisement for Axe deodorant, the television programme Top Gear, and the BBC's 2006 Snooker World Championships coverage.

A remix notably missing from the compilation is "Richard's Hairpiece", a remix of Beck's "Devil's Haircut", which was cut due to the label's unwillingness to license the track. Additional remixes by Richard D. James that didn't make it onto this album are listed in the Richard D. James discography.

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Ambient music

Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses on the timbral characteristics of sounds, particularly organised or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality. Ambient evolved from the early 20th century music of the impressionists, composers such as John Cage, Morton Feldman and minimalist composers of the 1960s and 1970s to rock musician Brian Eno, who is responsible for coining the phrase ambient music in the manifesto liner notes of his 1978 album, Ambient 1: Music for Airports.

Ambient music has influenced many other genres, most remarkably some forms of rhythmic music presented in chill-out rooms at raves and other dance events, with the intention of creating an calmer, relaxed atmosphere for ravers to take a break from dancing.

Early 20th century French composer Erik Satie created an early form of ambient music that he referred to as "furniture music" (Musique d'ameublement), in reference to something that could be played during a dinner whose sound would simply create an atmosphere for that activity rather than be the specific focus of attention.

Brian Eno is generally credited with coining the term "ambient music" in the mid-1970s to refer to music that, as he stated, can be either "actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener", and that exists on the "cusp between melody and texture." Eno, who describes himself as a "non-musician", termed his experiments in sound as "treatments" rather than as traditional performances. Eno used the word "ambient" to describe music that creates an atmosphere that puts the listener into a different state of mind; having chosen the word based on the Latin term "ambire", "to surround".

Early albums such as Ummagumma by Pink Floyd and by the "kosmische Musik"-oriented krautrock artists, like Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, and Cluster have greatly influenced the genre. Among the first electronic ambient albums were Affenstunde (1970) and In Den Garten Pharaos (1971) by Popol Vuh. Other notable albums include Sonic Seasonings (1972) by Wendy Carlos and L'apocalypse des Animaux (1973; recorded in 1970) by Vangelis. Additional early artists, such as Klaus Schulze (a former member of Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel), Jean Michel Jarre, and Kraftwerk in the 1970s and 1980s, were influential.

By the early 1990s artists such as the The Orb, Aphex Twin, Slowdive, the Irresistible Force, Geir Jenssen's Biosphere, and the Higher Intelligence Agency were being referred to by the popular music press as ambient house, ambient techno, IDM, shoegaze or simply "ambient".

Early Warp records artists, (as well as later ones such as Aphex Twin), FSOL Future Sound of London (Lifeforms, ISDN) Autechre, (Incunabula, Amber), Boards of Canada, Massive Attack, Portishead, and The KLF all took a part in popularising and diversifying ambient music.

Chillout is generally linked to club culture and is sometimes used as a term which includes ambient music as a subset of itself. UK techno developed in particular at Warp Records in Sheffield, where previous electronic pioneers such as Cabaret Voltaire and Autechre laid the groundwork for ambient techno to develop, and for Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada to develop later. Intelligent Dance Music is another term synonymous with this scene. Glitch music is a subset of this work. Some club groups have created live ambient music, mixing dub techniques with ambient textures and dance grooves.

Several second-wave black metal artists (most notably Burzum) experimented with dark ambient textures on some of their albums. The two genres still remain linked, however loosely, to this day, as evidenced by the music of Xasthur.

Ambient music has been used in many video games, television shows and motion pictures and is notable for contributing to their atmosphere, or soundscapes. David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, for example, forgoes the epic sci-fi adventure style theme music popularized by Star Wars in favor of a more atmospheric music score by Toto and Brian Eno. Electronic musician Paddy Kingsland is noted for the music style he brought to several serials of the television series Doctor Who which had until then relied mostly on stock music cues or minimal music for much of its history. The video game trilogy Fallout and its spinoffs use ambient music that sometimes contains gentle rumblings to portray the bleakness of the post-apocalyptic world which the games are set in.

Ambient Dub was a phrase first coined by the now defunct Beyond record label from early 1990s in Birmingham, England. Their defining series of albums "Ambient Dub 1, 2, through to 4" inspired many, including sound engineer and producer Bill Laswell, who used the same phrase in his music project Divination, where he collaborates with different musicians on each album (though sometimes the same ones are on more than one of the albums such as Tetsu Inoue and others). Laswell also presented Ambient dub and Ambient house music on albums by his collaboration project Axiom Dub, featuring recording artists the Orb, Jah Wobble, Jaki Liebezeit and DJ Spooky.

Organic ambient music is characterised by integration of electronic, electric, and acoustic musical instruments. Aside from the usual electronic music influences, organic ambient tends to incorporate influences from world music, especially drone instruments and hand percussion. Organic ambient is intended to be more harmonious with nature than with the disco. Some of the artists in this sub-genre include Robert Rich, Steve Roach, Vidna Obmana, O Yuki Conjugate, Ma Ja Le, Neal Merrick Blackwood, Vir Unis, James Johnson, Loren Nerell, Tuu and Robert Scott Thompson.

Some works by ambient pioneers such as Brian Eno, Laraaji or Popul Vuh who use a combination of traditional instruments (such as piano or hammered dulcimer or hand percussion, though usually processed through tape loops or other devices) and electronic instruments, would be considered organic ambient music in this sense. In the 70s and 80s Klaus Schulze often recorded string ensembles and performances by solo cellists to go along with his extended Moog synthesizer workouts.

The music is composed from samples and recordings of naturally occurring sounds. Sometimes these samples can be treated to make them more instrument-like. The samples may be arranged in repetitive ways to form a conventional musical structure or may be random and unfocused. Sometimes the sound is mixed with urban or "found" sounds. Examples include much of Biosphere's Substrata, Mira Calix's insect music and Chris Watson's Weather Report. Some overlap occurs between organic ambient and nature inspired ambient. One of the first albums in the genre, Wendy Carlos' Sonic Seasonings, combines sampled and synthesized nature sounds with ambient melodies and drones for a particularly relaxing effect. The album Second Nature by Bill Laswell, Tetsu Inoue, and Atom Heart is an ambient album that uses processed nature sounds, with reverb and echo to create a hypnotic environment. Aquatemple has contributed to the hybridization of these genres with their debut album Opulent Oceanic Odyssey. Aquatemple has been credited for birthing "Aquatica" as a new sub genre within ambient music.

There are also a few black metal bands, such as Burzum and Beherit, who produce ambient music, albeit not always with such a dark atmosphere. Illbient is another kind of dark ambient music that has more of a beat but still creates the spooky disturbing feelings.

A rarefied, more specific re-orientation of ambient house, ambient techno is usually applied to artists such as B12, early Aphex Twin, the Black Dog, Higher Intelligence Agency, and Biosphere. It distinguished artists who combined the melodic and rhythmic approaches of techno and electro—use of drum machines; well-produced, thin-sounding electronics; minor-key melodies and alien-sounding samples and sounds—with the soaring, layered, aquatic atmospheres of beatless and experimental ambient music. Most often associated with labels such as Apollo, GPR, Warp, and Beyond, the terminology morphed into "intelligent techno" after Warp released its Artificial Intelligence series, although the music's stylistic references remained largely unchanged.

Ambient house is a musical category founded in the late 1980s that is used to describe acid house featuring ambient music elements and atmospheres. Tracks in the ambient house genre typically feature four-on-the-floor beats, synth pads, and vocal samples integrated in an atmospheric style. Ambient house tracks generally lack a diatonic center and feature much atonality along with synthesized chords.

Ambient industrial is a hybrid genre of ambient and industrial music; the term industrial being used in the original experimental sense, rather than in the sense of industrial metal or EBM. A "typical" ambient industrial work (if there is a such thing) might consist of evolving dissonant harmonies of metallic drones and resonances, extreme low frequency rumbles and machine noises, perhaps supplemented by gongs, percussive rhythms, bullroarers, distorted voices and/or anything else the artist might care to sample (often processed to the point where the original sample is no longer recognizable). Entire works may be based on radio telescope recordings, the babbling of newborn babies, or sounds recorded through contact microphones on telegraph wires.

Among the many artists who work in this area are Coil, CTI, Lustmord, Susumu Yokota, Hafler Trio, Nocturnal Emissions, Zoviet France, PGR, Thomas Köner, Controlled Bleeding, and Deutsch Nepal. However many of these artists are very eclectic in their output, with much of it falling outside of ambient industrial per se.

Space music, also spelled spacemusic, includes music from the Ambient genre as well as a broad range of other genres with certain characteristics in common to create the experience of contemplative spaciousness. Space music ranges from simple to complex sonic textures sometimes lacking conventional melodic, rhythmic, or vocal components, generally evoking a sense of "continuum of spatial imagery and emotion", beneficial introspection, deep listening and sensations of floating, cruising or flying.

Space music is used by individuals for both background enhancement and foreground listening, often with headphones, to stimulate relaxation, contemplation, inspiration and generally peaceful expansive moods and soundscapes. Space music is also a component of many film soundtracks, commonly used in planetariums, and used as a relaxation aid and for meditation.

Hearts of Space is a well-known radio show and affiliated record label, specializing in Space Music since 1984, having released over 150 albums devoted to the music style. Notable artists who have brought elements of Ambient music to Space music include Michael Stearns, Constance Demby, Jean Michel Jarre, Robert Rich, Steve Roach, Numina, Dweller at the Threshold, Deepspace, Telomere, Jonn Serrie, Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream (as well as the group's founder Edgar Froese).

Isolationist ambient music is also known as isolationism, could be differentiated from other forms of ambient music in its use of repetition, dissonance, microtonality, and unresolved harmonies to create a sense of unresolved unease and desolation. The term was popularized in the mid-1990s by the British magazine The Wire and the Ambient 4: Isolationism compilation from Virgin, this began as more or less a synonym for ambient industrial, but also inclusive of certain post-metal streams of ambient, such as Final, Lull, Main, Sleep Research Facility, or post-techno artists such as Autechre and Aphex Twin. It may be less appropriate to call Isolationist Ambient a genre than than using it to describe the style or "feel" of particular works by an artist working in an ambient mode. This is because many artists better known for other styles of work can occasionally create pieces that "sound" Isolationist. (For example; Labradford, Seefeel, Techno Animal, Voice Of Eye, KK Null, etc.) There are many labels releasing work that could be termed Isolationist Ambient, among these are Malignant Records, Cold Spring, Manifold Records, Soleilmoon, Dark Vinyl, and The Sombient label with the "drones" compilation series. Some of the artists known for this style of ambient music include Lull, Final, Deutsch Nepal, Inanna, Negru Voda, Sleep Research Facility, Thomas Koner, Robert Fripp and Chuck Hammer Guitarchitecture.

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R&S Records

R&S Records is an independent techno, jungle, and ambient record label. Based in Belgium, R&S Records maintains several subsidiaries including Apollo (ambient), Global Cuts (house) and Diatomyc (acid), Satori Records, Generations and others. They own two recording studios and license their artists' work in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and the United States of America.

R&S represents the initials of Renaat Vandepapeliere & Sabine Maes, the couple that created this label. The label was first named as Milos Music Belgium but just one 12" vinyl - Big Tony (Bubble Up) - was released on this label. Renaat also pondered calling the label Ferrari records - the R&S Records logo very closely resembles the Ferrari logo.

Releases on R&S and its subsidiaries include Jaydee (Plastic Dreams), Capricorn (20 Hz), Aphex Twin (Digeridoo, Selected Ambient Works 85-92), Biosphere (Microgravity, Patashnik), C.J. Bolland (Ravesignal III, The 4th Sign, Camargue), Sun Electric (O'Locco, Kitchen), The Source Experience/Robert Leiner (Visions Of The Past, Different Journeys), Model 500/Juan Atkins (Deep Space, The Flow), Silent Phase (The Theory Of Silent Phase), System 7 (Power Of Seven), Dave Angel (Classics) and Ken Ishii (Extra, Jelly Tones).

To celebrate its tenth anniversary in 1994 the label set up a pirate radio station, Radio Republica, for a whole week which aired broadcasts hosted by Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, CJ Bolland, Robert Leiner, Sven Väth, DJ Morpheus and many other electronic music artists. Gradually the label lost its importance in the world of dance music and is planning for a relaunch at the end of 2006.

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