Advice to Clever Children

Radio 3 reporter Dick Witts: “Can we talk about the music we sent you? It was very good of you to listen to it. I wonder if you could give some advice to these musicians.

Stockhausen: I heard the piece Aphex Twin of Richard James carefully: I think it would be very helpful if he listens to my work “Song Of The Youth,” which is electronic music, and a young boy’s voice singing with himself. Because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it were varied to some extent and if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations.”

(…)

James:  “Mental! I’ve heard that song before; I like it. I didn’t agree with him. I thought he should listen to a couple of tracks of mine: “Didgeridoo”, thenhe’d stop making abstract, random patterns you can’t dance to. Do you reckon he can dance?”

Karlheinz Stockhausen, “Advice to Clever Children…” The Wire, November 1995.

Filed under: Aphex Twin  Karlheinz Stockhausen  The Wire (magazine)