Tues. March 2, 2021

I recall seeing the above flyer posted a few years ago on an incredible little Instagram archive of Vancouver dance music ephemera called @pnwelectronicarchive. Curious about the fact Aphex Twin performed in Vancouver & after a little sleuthing, it turns out Mr. Richard D. James gave one of his longest recorded interviews (that exists on the internet, anyway) which happens to be laid to both tape and text, all while in Vancouver on the very day of the above show (September 25, 1997):



The show took place at “The Rage”, which to my fellow Vancouverites has otherwise been called “Plush” and more recently “Harbour Event Centre” situated in the Plaza of Nations. It isn’t necessarily apparent whether Richard is either committing a world class troll job on this interviewer or actually just “telling it straight”, but it’s all very entertaining to say the least. Also big kudos to this guy for actually getting him to sit for this long as he clearly had some shit to get off his chest.

Key excerpts from the above interview were also transcribed into print in the magazine Space Age Bachelor (the archive of which, shockingly, still exists): http://www.space-age-bachelor.com/archives/aphex-twin



Among the topics covered are Mr. James apparently caking it from commercial music syncs, buying a tank and a submarine, his take on dating women and then totally shitting on The Crystal Method (an artist he was curiously sharing the bill with on this particular tour):



“I tried really hard yesterday to not hear them, and I managed to do it, which was pretty good. But yeah I hate them. They’ll be totally shit. I won’t listen to it today either. I’ll go sit on the bus.”

Love me some Aphex Twin.


Credit to @iamelectro on Twitter for the ticket stub.