Window-kicker: Aphex Twin's 'new' Caustic Window Kickstarter album

(See a 2014 album update here.)

It took mere hours for a budding entrepreneur to raise the $13.5k needed for a new Aphex Twin album.

Well. Kind of new. A bunch of old test pressings under the Aphex alias Caustic Window have been gathering dust since the 1990s. The owner has now decided to release the recordings, and with the permission of all concerned parties, a Kickstarter campaign has started for anyone wanting to own a digital copy.

BEGINNINGS.

The fundraising idea began as a speculative survey on the legendary We Are The Music Makers (WATMM) forum, and it's now the owner of that forum, Joyrex, who is coordinating the campaign for these lost recordings to see the light of day.

Joyrex, himself named after Caustic Window releases, said on the forum:

"I think any Aphex Twin fan (myself included) would dearly love for Richard to release any new material, and for whatever reasons he hasn't yet, this is an opprotunity for the fans to let Richard know there is a demand for even his older material.

"This may not mesh well with Richard's personal wishes (there was probably a reason he didn't commercially release this), but since this is fan-driven, if anything, it will convey to him and the labels the fans are willing to support their favourite artists in unique ways."

BLESSINGS.

Richard D James, aka Aphex Twin, gave his blessing to the project, as did Rephlex label boss Grant Wilson-Claridge. That in itself is remarkable: Grant himself told this blog two years ago that it would be nice if more attention could be paid to non-Aphex things. He's right, of course. Dave Monolith produced one of the best albums of recent years and Bochum Welt is rarely far from my earbuds.

The original idea was for the digital Caustic Window release to be limited to a few hundred backers, but that has now been opened up and the campaign is fast approaching the $20k mark. You can donate here. The original recording will eventually be auctioned, and there is a plan to split those proceeds between Richard James, the Kickstarter supporters and charity.

BURGERS.

It's a long time since I've been on the WATMM forum. I suspect my account's been deleted. But amid the in-jokes, image memes and (I seem to remember) huge numbers of ASCII pictures of burgers, is a dedicated community of electronic music lovers.

This campaign is a rather impressive outpouring of that bleepish, rubber-johnnied window-licking love. In the words of WATMM member, MisterE:

i thought
wow this is interesting
then i went to the rdj rare pics thread and printed like mad
surrounded myself
and wept
and now im here and everything is going to be OK

Further Fats: Ten absolutely fascinating facts about Rephlex Records