Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works 85-92

In an article of Future Music Magazine, written in April 1993, the author claims that Aphex Twin used the Casio FZ10 sampler on 80% of his tracks.

Key portions of this interview have been reprinted by MusicRadar here for easier search/reading... enjoy!

The FZ-10 and FZ-20M are also listed in the Syro gear list and Richard is still talking up the Casio FZ line more than a quarter century after his first FZ tracks in this archived 2014 interview.

The official and extensive Syro gear list mentions "Roland R8/R8M", which stands for two pieces: The Roland R-8 Human Composer and the Roland R-8M Total Percussion Sound Module, respectively.

To the right of him is clearly an Atari Mega ST 2 or 4 with Atari monitor taken from a performance in Paris circa: 1993. Likely he was sequencing with it, but it's unclear what software he might have used as the monitor is turned off.

In this Computer Music article last updated November 10, 2022, author Dan Carr shares a quote from Richard James, clarifying that the Alesis Quadraverb was used on all SAW85-92 tracks:

To achieve the uniquely grainy reverb sounds that characterise the record’s sound, James made use of the Alesis Quadraverb, a rack-mounted digital reverb from 1988. In a 2014 interview with Noyzelab, James mentioned that the Quadraverb was “used on all tracks on SAW85-92” and praised its “dark and muddy” sound, along with “nice arrangement of subtle pitch shifting, delays into reverbs”.

"I don't want to use pre-programmed drum sounds. I've used modified [Roland TR-]808 sounds on Ambient Works, but that's because the tracks are around four to five years old. And the Polygon Window tracks use updated 808 sounds because the original recording quality is so abysmal."

'The SH-101 didn't survive the surgeon's screwdriver: "It doesn't look like a 101 anymore – I use the sliders, but for different things."'

Part of this 1993 interview says that his gear includes a Roland TB303, a Yamaha DX7, an old Korg analogue sequencer, an ST and monitor, CD player, DAT machine and loads of his own creations.

On the Syro gear list, the Yamaha DX100 is mentioned. It is important to note that it is not a regular DX100, but a modded one.

Per this excellent post from Oct. 2020 on the Lanner Chronicle blog, Richard James (AKA Aphex Twin) used a Nakamichi CR-7E to encode some of the master tapes from Analog Bubble bath, and likely others.

The post directly references and dates Soundcloud posts Richard James had made at the time:

“here is a download gift / sneak tease for the fans, to show the kind of quality I’m extracting from my old cassettes using mega high quality cassette decks. Because I’ve customised the decks with vari-speed, I get to choose what speed I encode them at, I’ve done a few different speeds for my fave ones and it’s usually just what I think sounds good at the time or just different to what I’m used to. This one is from a That’s cassette labelled copy III , i used a lot of the VX90 tapes in that period of my life. It is the 12th track on side a. Even though I used to write COPY *.number, they were actually the original masters. Think was one of the first tracks that a small section with intentional microtuning, [harmonic series sec] .Encoded with customised Nakamichi CR7e cassette deck.

+added, it cuts out at the end coz the tape ran out 🙂 I remember sometimes recording tracks to cassettes, I’d be looking at the cassette nearing the end and try and finish the track before the tape ran out 🙂 bit different from todays recording methods .”