Aphex Twin played his first NYC show since the '90s at Avant Gardner (pics, full set video)
Legendary electronic musician Aphex Twin played his first NYC show since the ’90s at Avant Gardner on Thursday night, which was also only his third U.S. show in the last 11 years. Needless to say this was a highly anticipated show and the 3000 tickets sold out instantly (including the BrooklynVegan presale.) After this, he heads to Coachella.
He went on around 11 PM last night and played a 90 minute set with an awesomely trippy light show that included stuff from the ’90s up through his most recent album, Syro, and unreleased material. The crowd was very into it, and part of Aphex Twin’s visuals included projecting audience members’ faces onto the video monitors on stage. Sensory overload. Richard D James didn’t say a word the whole night, not that anyone expected him to, but he did come back right after his intense set to give the crowd a thumbs up. Reddit user RAZRr1275 had this to say:
The crowd was not bad, the light show is the best thing I’ve ever seen and the progression in djs was insane. Ambient techno to open bridging into Aphex’s ambient side which gets more intense until Aphex is playing jungle/breakcore which transitions into soundmuderer who just throws down straight jungle which somehow managed to crank up the intensity after you’ve just been blown to bits by Aphex’s light show and the subbass that Avants speakers can put out which is the kind of subbass that makes a breeze. The reasons it was insane wasn’t just aphex it was that the entire thing was a multisensory assault from start to finish. It’s everything you think a show should be. Everyone from the crowd just looked fucking exhausted when they left because it was the kind of show that’s designed to be hyperstimulating in order to suck you in and it delivered.
Swiss producer Aisha Devi opened, and pictures of her set and Aphex Twin are in the gallery above. (Soundmurderer closed but we didn’t stay for him). Full set video of Aphex Twin’s set is below.
UPDATE: A Reddit user also posted the full set to Soundcloud, along with the (mostly complete) tracklist. See below…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOIOJ4E1Jz8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Je9LNz7Hv4&feature=youtu.be
Tracklist
0:00:00-0:03:30 [Unreleased AFX 1, Ambient]
0:03:26-0:07:00 [Unreleased AFX 2, Ambient, similar to sounds debuted at Turin]
0:06:55-0:10:21 [Unreleased AFX 3, alt. mix of Turin track1]
0:09:30-0:15:47 [Unreleased AFX 4]
0:15:50-0:18:40 [drum n bass ???]
0:17:56-0:21:13 Forces – Donor Trust
0:20:00-0:23:17 [Tzusing – The Whistle] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqf7YI-E_bM)
0:22:39-0:24:48 Aphex Twin – Harmonicom 13
0:23:47-0:27:13 Sunareht – Saga
0:25:20-0:26:13 Lorn – Burdens
0:26:13-0:30:20 [bass ???]
0:29:35-0:32:20 [heavy ???]
0:31:00-0:34:10 Renick Bell – Create a Channel
0:33:15-0:35:40 Aphex Twin – 180db_ [130]
0:35:02-0:38:00 [bell melod ???]
0:37:25-0:39:52 [heavy acid ???]
0:39:38-0:42:12 Current Value – Consequences
0:42:13-0:45:47 [Unreleased AFX 5, chord stabs]
0:45:48-0:47:40 [drum n bass2 ???]
0:47:13-0:52:13 [pewpew, hard ???]
0:51:50-0:55:20 Aleksi Perälä – UK74R1721031
0:53:17-0:59:03 HVL – Enigma
0:58:25-1:02:00 [Unreleased AQXDM]
1:01:00-1:03:04 [metal perc ???]
1:02:50-1:04:00 Aphex Twin – Abundance10edit
[cut in audio at 1:03:04]
1:03:04-1:05:00 [metal perc2 ???]
1:04:36-1:06:52 [crying, bass ???]
1:06:41-1:10:15 [Unreleased AFX 6, “Brooklyn Track”]
1:09:55-1:11:20 [vocoder ???]
1:11:00-1:14:30 [delay kick ???]
1:13:57-1:16:44 Ueno Masaaki – Supersolid State
1:16:03-1:18:00 [beautiful ???]
1:17:42-1:21:44 Bay-b-kane – Hello Darkness
1:20:47-1:24:00 Freethinker – Needle In The Brain
1:23:29-1:27:13 Pete Cannon – Feel It
1:26:25-1:28-05 Amplicon – Triangular Funk
1:27:49-1:30:06 Venetian Snares – A Lot Of Drugs
1:29:36-1:32:26 Current Value – All Terrain
1:32:12-1:33:36 [wild ???]
1:33:11-1:35:30 Current Value – Certainty
1:35:16-1:38:07 [amen break glitched out ???]
1:36:48-END [modular/efx ending]
—
photos by P Squared
