4. AFX – Analord Complete Set
I can honestly say that I love all of Richard D James’ music equally but Analord was a big turning point for me. Suddenly everything clicked. I believed all of a sudden that I would be able to make music with machines. I could see in my head what was going on, where it was more mysterious to me before that. Somehow it made me see in my head what it would look like to have a studio set-up that was based around a lot of machines being linked up together and all playing at the same time. It’s pretty much what I’ve been spending most of my life doing since that time.
Aaron Funk and I have met up many times over the years, often making music for least eight hours at a time. The Red Hot Chili Peppers never work anything like that. Out of the music that he and I made, it’s us, in our own way, doing something in the vein of Analord. It’s live, it’s using a lot of machines at once, it’s not knowing what the arrangements are going to be but making it up as you go along. When Analord came out, it was like what Sgt. Pepper’s was in 1967. For me, it’s that big of a turning point. Before it, I didn’t know what Din Sync was. I found out and made my own cable with the Chili Peppers’ sound man on tour. I then connected a 303 to a 606 and my life has never been the same since.
