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Image via Warp Records
We haven’t heard new material from Richard D. James as Aphex Twin in 13 years, so it’s to be expected that a rare interview with him comes with some golden nuggets of information. FADER and Pitchfork have shared shome choice highlights from their upcoming interviews with James, and they both promise to be intriguing reads. He discussed DJing anonymously, “The good gigs are always the smaller gigs,” and he promised that his upcoming album SYRO would definitely not be his last.
He also revealed his take on the “Avril 14th” sample on Kanye West’s “Blame Game.” There’s apparently the possibility that it wasn’t a sample at all. He says:
Is it a sample? I actually don’t know what it ended up being in the end, I’m so slack. I know that he tried to fucking rip me off and claim that he’d written it, and they tried to get away with not paying. I was really helpful, and when they first sent it to me, I was like, “Oh, I can re-do that for you, if you like,” because they’d sampled it really badly and time-stretched it and there was loads of artifacts. I was like, “I’ll just replay it for you at that speed if you want.” And they totally didn’t even say “hello” or “thanks,” they just replied with, “It’s not yours, it’s ours, and we’re not even asking you any more.” [laughs]
