AFX (musician)
| Aphex Twin | |
|---|---|
James performing in Turin in March 2007
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Richard David James |
| Also known as | AFX, Polygon Window, Caustic Window, Blue Calx, The Dice Man, GAK, Power-Pill, Q-Chastic, The Tuss |
| Born |
18 August 1971 Limerick, Ireland |
| Origin | Lanner, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, remixer, DJ |
| Instruments | Synthesizer, piano, softsynth, turntables, drum machine, sequencer, sampler, laptop |
| Years active | 1985–present |
| Labels | |
| Associated acts | Universal Indicator, Mike & Rich, Squarepusher, Luke Vibert |
| Website | Warp page |
Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), best known by his recording alias Aphex Twin, is a British electronic musician, known for his influential and idiosyncratic work in styles such as ambient techno and IDM in the 1990s, for which he won widespread critical acclaim. He is also the co-founder of Rephlex Records with Grant Wilson-Claridge.
Initially releasing acid techno music under aliases such as AFX and Polygon Window, James first received widespread acclaim for his 1992 album Selected Ambient Works 85-92. He rose to mainstream popularity with his 1997 EP Come to Daddy and his 1999 single "Windowlicker". After a period of relative inactivity following the release of his 2001 album Drukqs, James returned in 2014 with a new album titled Syro, which won him a Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album.
James was born in Limerick, Ireland, and grew up in Lanner, Cornwall, UK, with two older sisters, in a "very happy" childhood during which they "were pretty much left to do what [they] wanted". He enjoyed living there, feeling apart from nearby cities and the rest of the world. James attended Redruth School in Redruth, Cornwall, and claimed to have produced sound on a Sinclair ZX81 (a machine with no sound hardware) at age 11:
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.
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