"He grew into electronic music's...misanthropic version of Paul Bunyan."
September 19, 2014 5:22 AM   Subscribe

 
What are they talking about when they say that the Syro website showed the user's own computer? Like, what exactly did the user see? It doesn't appear to do it any more.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:32 AM on September 19, 2014


Raygun lives!
posted by davebush at 5:56 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


Richard D. James is just 43 years old. The guy has been making music forever!
posted by Nevin at 6:06 AM on September 19, 2014


eftpp - The weblink returns a list of the viewer's operating system, browser, plugins, location, etc.

This appears to be it. If you used Tor, it would also return a tracklist for the album.
posted by erebora at 6:16 AM on September 19, 2014


Thanks. I viewed the site on my iPhone, and didn't realize that the text was the "trick" in question. Not actually that impressive; your browser freely sends this information to every web page it visits (or, in some cases, any page that asks for it).

Good interview, though. Probably the most verbose and sincere I've ever known RDJ to be.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:59 AM on September 19, 2014


Dear god, m-dashes that look like hyphens? wtf font guy?

Cannot read in this format. Makes my brain itch.
posted by fatfrank at 7:40 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


Article in “standard format.”
posted by mubba at 8:07 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


Relatedly, here's the complete list of gear used to make the album.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:55 AM on September 19, 2014


You've got so many machines, Richard.
posted by Cosine at 9:03 AM on September 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


Release is September 23, 4 days. A few new uploads titled "Syro" have shown up on pirate sites yesterday, around 120 megs of MP3 or FLAC. I wonder if it's the real thing?
posted by Nelson at 10:42 AM on September 19, 2014


Bleep is hosting the tracks now, so it's possible they're ripping it from the site. I think it'll take a while to grow on me. Though the Syro track itself is instantly my fave right off the bat. Some piano stuff, but mixed into the electronic, not as their own separate tracks.

If you wanna confirm, Nelson, go check out the tracks on the sites and compare to Bleep. I know I'm excited to get it :)
posted by symbioid at 11:05 AM on September 19, 2014


Oh huh, it's a free stream on Bleep now. I had no idea. That means it's effectively "released", at least as pirates go.
posted by Nelson at 11:10 AM on September 19, 2014


Whenever I want to listen to Aphex Twin I just pull out some Simian Mobile Disco.
posted by Nevin at 4:14 PM on September 19, 2014


Whenever I want to listen to Aphex Twin I just pull out some Simian Mobile Disco The Tuss.

(That said, looking up the latest on The Tuss - it does appear that he finally confirmed this year that The Tuss is his project (not really a doubt in my mind, because, I mean... How could it NOT be RDJ?))
posted by symbioid at 8:28 PM on September 19, 2014


I never knew if it was going to work or not, and everyone was like, “What the fuck is he swinging a piano for?” But when we actually got it going, we were just like, “fucking hell.” It was so extreme. My friends were like, “Are the strings stretching?” The pitch deviation is that big, it sounds like the actual frame is contorting. Maybe it is, I don't know!

<3<3<3
posted by dubitable at 9:07 PM on September 19, 2014


escape from the potato planet: "What are they talking about when they say that the Syro website showed the user's own computer? Like, what exactly did the user see? It doesn't appear to do it any more."

It's linked and seems to work just fine. It just shows you some basic info such as OS, referrer, ISP, etc.
posted by yaymukund at 8:18 PM on September 20, 2014


I really like that interview. He comes across as a pretty standard, nice bloke placed in a quite weird position given the rabidness of his fanbase. I've heard previews of the new stuff via Bleep and on he radio, and I'm definitely looking forward to getting the full album.

I interviewed him back in either late '96 or early '97 when I worked for the student paper at Glasgow University. He was definitely in the "I'm gonna be weird and grouchy" phase at that point - the interview took place on the back of the upper deck of his tourbus at 2am after a gig, and he spent the entire time with his feet on the seat, knees tucked under his chin, rocking back and forth, lit from behind by the sodium glow of the streetlamps outside, half of his face in shadow, fixing me with one illuminated, beady eye - but he was still pretty decent, friendly and talkative, from what I remember 17/18 years later.

Interesting that he talked about having a house in the country outside Glasgow; I seem to remember asking him about the difference between making tracks when out in the country versus doing so in urban environments, and he talked a bit about that. The transcript is probably on a floppy disk somewhere (unless I transcribed the whole tape by hand, which I may have done). I should dig the original article out from whatever box it's mouldering in, and see if I can put in online somewhere.
posted by Len at 11:16 AM on September 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yes please!
posted by STFUDonnie at 4:56 PM on September 21, 2014


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