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    How Do You Preserve a Vanishing Music Scene?

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    Five recent books collect photographs, memories and ephemera from the hardcore band Agnostic Front, the mysterious dance artist Aphex Twin, the rap collective Odd Future and more.Memories fade. Documentation disappears. Scenes vanish.When you’re busy creating a world, you don’t always think about how to preserve it for history. So old fliers and magazines get brittle and crumble, photos get lost, publications go out of business and websites get deleted. It falls to archivists — sometimes from a scene itself, and sometimes an avid follower — to fight that slipperiness. Each of these worthy and memorable books is the product of such work. What’s most startling is that the worlds they rescue are of the surprisingly recent past. Which means that even in this age of hyperdocumentation and rapid technological advancement, evanescence is always a threat.Roger Miret with Todd Huber, ‘Agnostic Front — With Time: The Roger Miret Archives’Roger Miret and Todd Huber; via American Made KustomThe early years of Agnostic Front, the scene-shaping New York hardcore band, were chaos incarnate: a Lower East Side life of ramshackle apartments, rumbles on the street and birthing an explosive, aggravated, pugnacious new sound. Somehow, amid all this, the frontman Roger Miret — who was picked to join the band thanks to his ferocious behavior in the pit — managed to hold on to everything. “Agnostic Front — With Time: The Roger Miret Archives” is part photo essay, and part documentation of ephemera primarily from the band’s tumultuous breakout period from 1982-86.There are oodles of fliers from bills shared with Reagan Youth, Murphy’s Law, Suicidal Tendencies, Youth of Today and more. Some were scrawled by hand and some pasted pastiche-style; some featured illustrated skinheads in suspenders, tight pants and stomper boots; and some memorably gory ones were mailed in from an Oxnard, Calif., illustrator named Chuy.Miret’s collection also includes margarine-yellow T-shirts, test presses of the band’s earliest recordings and show announcements from the Village Voice listings pages. And brief personal recollections from Miret and his bandmates capture the mayhem of the time: getting shows shut down by the police, then slapping stickers on their cars; and assembling copies of the debut Agnostic Front EP by hand, cutting covers from a large roll one by one and gluing them to order after shows.‘Liquid Sky’via Emperor Go!We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Beck and Phoenix’s Bouncy Synth-Pop Team-up, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Palehound, Jaimie Branch, Aphex Twin and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Beck and Phoenix, ‘Odyssey’Double bill challenge: write a song with the act sharing the tour to prove compatibility. Beck and the French electro-pop band Phoenix, who will hit the road together this summer, have done just that. Their collaboration, “Odyssey,” finds common ground in synthesizer-centered 1980s pop, specifically Talking Heads’ 1980 “Once in a Lifetime” plus a lot of marimba or xylophone overdubs. Homer’s “Odyssey” was a long, brutal journey home. This “Odyssey” is much more comfortable. JON PARELESMaisie Peters, ‘Run’“If the man says that he wants you in his life forever — run!” That’s what the English songwriter Maisie Peters advises after a relationship with someone who was “too good to be true.” It’s a brisk, beat-driven battle-of-the-sexes song that could be a slogan. PARELESAphex Twin, ‘Blackbox Life Recorder 21f’Brooding synthesizer chords and dependable but ever-shifting drumbeats run through Aphex Twin’s first official release in five years, the inscrutably titled (as usual) “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f,” from an EP due July 28. Melodically, the track is a dirge, but until the rhythm drops away at the end, the percussion is there to party no matter how grim the surroundings. PARELESJaimie Branch, ‘Take Over the World’The trumpeter and bandleader Jaimie Branch, who was 39 when she died last year, left behind raucous, defiant recordings that will be released in August as a posthumous album, “Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)).” Branch determinedly fused jazz, electronics and punk spirit, and in “Take Over the World” she starts out chanting “Gonna gonna take over the world/and give it back-back-back-back to the l-l-land,” whooping up high as she’s joined by pummeling, New Orleans-flavored drums and rhythmically droning cello and bass. She plays a taunting, growling trumpet solo; she puts her vocals through an electronic warp. Her fury gathers a fierce, joyful momentum. PARELESPalehound, ‘Independence Day’“We broke up on Independence Day, crying while the next door neighbors raged,” El Kempner begins on this single from indie-rockers Palehound’s forthcoming album “Eye on the Bat,” atop a chord progression that chugs wearily, like Wilco’s “Kamera.” That memorable line sets the scene for this bleary, blurred snapshot of a relationship’s end, full of wry humor and hard-won wisdom. “Even if I could, it would kill me to look back,” Kempner sings, musing on the sadness of the road not taken. “No, I don’t wanna see the other path.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAmanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson, ‘Waltz Across Texas’The country artists Amanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson recorded the generation-bridging album “Loving You” shortly before Nelson’s 2022 death at age 91, and the result is a testament to the collaborative spirit and light, intuitive touch as a pianist that she retained up until the very end of her life. The album’s opening number “Waltz Across Texas,” the Western swing classic made famous by Ernest Tubb, showcases their easy musical chemistry: Shires’s fluttery voice is playful but reverent to the source material, and Nelson’s notes are as elegantly spaced and glimmering as stars in a night sky. ZOLADZFaye Webster, ‘But Not Kiss’Faye Webster trades in deceptive nonchalance. She brings her sly, sleepy voice to “But Not Kiss,” singing about the wary, ambivalent beginnings of a relationship: “I want to see you in my dreams but then forget,” she sings, “We’re meant to be — but not yet.” Each quiet, folky declaration is answered by a rich burst of instruments: physical responses outpacing rational decisions. PARELESThe Smile, ‘Bending Hectic’What would it feel like to drive off a Mediterranean mountainside? Leave it to the Smile — Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead with the jazz drummer Tom Skinner — to consider that possibility in this nerve-racking eight-minute track. “Bending Hectic” moves from contemplating the view to getting suicidal on curvy Italian mountain roads, from quiet guitar picking and contemplation to disaster scored by Greenwood’s dissonant string arrangements. Takeaway: Choose that van driver carefully. PARELESAmbrose Akinmusire, ‘Cora Campbell’Ambrose Akinmusire recorded his newest album, “Beauty Is Enough,” at Paris’s towering Saint-Eustache cathedral, without an audience or a band — just his trumpet and the natural reverb of the hall. He approached the album, which is entirely improvised, as something of a rite of passage: So many of his horn-playing heroes had done solo albums at crucial career junctures, he’d known he would at some point too. Akinmusire has a huge knowledge of jazz history, but he pushes himself to avoid relaxing within it; you’ll never hear him falling back on references. Instead he’s built one of the most ineffable styles in jazz, full of smoldering feeling, but with a startling quietness at its core. (The LP’s cover art approximates this well: a faint, almost bodily shape, barely emerging from an all-black background.) On “Cora Campbell,” the last of the LP’s 16 tracks, you’ll hear him squeeze his notes tightly, letting them tremor and wriggle a bit. Seventy seconds in, he turns the notes he’s been toying with into a steady pattern, then challenges himself to splice higher pitches and glissandos into its gaps. It’s not overloaded, but he’s never at rest. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More

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      The Long Tail of Aphex Twin’s ‘Avril 14th’

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      A song released 20 years ago continues to inspire curiosity and covers by classical, experimental and pop artists.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.On April 14, 2020, the producer and pianist Kelly Moran woke up in Long Island. She had temporarily moved back there the previous fall to work on her next album, but when the pandemic arrived, she got stuck. Looking for a challenge to fill the hours that Tuesday morning, she figured out how to play the Aphex Twin song “Avril 14th” and filmed the results on her cellphone.Like the original, Moran performed it on a prepared piano — a technique developed by the avant-garde composer John Cage where objects are placed in between the instrument’s strings. Moran’s interpretation is tender but eerie, like the sound of a music box that’s about to die. “I always picture a ghost playing this record,” she said in an interview last month.Moran put the video on Twitter and Instagram, where it became one her most popular posts. “Not everyone is going to like drum and bass or, like, really fast IDM,” she said, referring to intelligent dance music, “but I feel like every person likes a sentimental piano song in some way, shape or form.”Moran’s cover was one more blip in the strange and improbable life of “Avril 14th,” which turns 20 this year. An instrumental piece that barely lasts two minutes, it has been sampled by pop stars, inspired classical pianists and experimental artists alike, and once cost a major TV network over $100,000 (more on that later). On YouTube there are renditions of it performed on the harp, the pedal steel guitar and dueling vibraphones.“Avril 14th” was released in October 2001, the same week the first iPod arrived, on the first disc of “Drukqs,” a double album by Aphex Twin, the most common pseudonym of the English musician Richard D. James. The 30-song collection churns across dark ambient works, aggressive breakbeats and sparse piano interludes.At the time, James claimed he released “Drukqs” because he left an MP3 player filled with unreleased music on a plane. It was only a matter of time, he maintained, before someone figured out what it was and put it all online. There were rumors that James actually released “Drukqs” to get out of his contract with Warp Records, though when its follow-up “Syro” arrived 13 years later, it was on the same label.James only did a few interviews in support of “Drukqs.” There were no music videos by Chris Cunningham, who directed wickedly perverse treatments for the landmark Aphex Twin songs “Come to Daddy” and “Windowlicker.” There were barely any tour dates or festival appearances.James doesn’t disclose much about his creative process, or anything else really. (He did not respond to interview requests and representatives from Warp declined to comment.) From the faint mechanical sounds heard on “Avril 14th,” members of his devoted fan base surmised that it was made on a prepared Disklavier — an acoustic piano created by Yamaha with internal and external MIDI capabilities, which allows it to reproduce a composition without a human player but with incredible accuracy.“Drukqs” received a mixed critical response, but it did have devotees. Not long after its release, the members of Alarm Will Sound, an adventurous group of classical musicians based in New York, decided to arrange Aphex Twin songs for their chamber orchestra’s 2005 album “Acoustica.” “It felt like a statement to say this is really serious music,” said Alan Pierson, the group’s artistic director. “Aphex Twin is a genius for color and timbre, and so much of ‘Acoustica’ is about that, but with ‘Avril 14th’ it’s really just the notes,” Pierson added. “The notes are really gorgeous.”Around the same time, the composer and music supervisor Brian Reitzell began work on Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film “Marie Antoinette.” Before shooting began, he compiled two CDs of contemporary music that captured the tone the director wanted, even though it was a period piece. Reitzell felt “Avril 14th” almost served as a bridge between the two eras.While James passed on Reitzell’s invitation to contribute new compositions for the film’s score (“Some artists are just not comfortable making their art fit into someone else’s art,” Reitzell said), “Avril 14th” does appear in a sequence where Antoinette, played by Kirsten Dunst, languorously walks through a field and up a palace staircase. Reitzell said that after an early screening for friends, the director Wes Anderson complimented him for including the song, and said he had considered using it for one of his own films, but now was bummed because he felt like it was off limits. It later appeared in the trailer for “Her,” the maudlin A.I. romance from Coppola’s ex-husband, Spike Jonze.The song’s life in pop culture spiked again just a year later thanks to a longtime fan, Jorma Taccone of the comedy trio the Lonely Island, a group that became famous from its musical digital shorts on “Saturday Night Live.” “I’m the perfect demo for liking that song in terms of I like a lot of electronic music and I’m also a totally emotional, romantic dude,” Taccone said in an interview.For years he kept a basic beat on his computer featuring a looped sample from “Avril 14th,” but never had the right opportunity to use it. In September 2007, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then the president of Iran, visited New York City and gave a talk stating there were no homosexuals in his country. In response, the Lonely Island created “Iran So Far.” Over Taccone’s “Avril 14th” beat, Andy Samberg performed a love song dedicated to Ahmadinejad, delivering lines like, “You say Iran don’t have the bomb, but they already do/You should know by now, it’s you.”Because “Saturday Night Live” is made at a breakneck speed, Taccone brushed off the legal department when asked if “Iran So Far” used samples that needed to be cleared, figuring they could deal with any problems later. That meant the network eventually had to pay the label $160,000, Taccone said, and the group couldn’t afford to put it on its own 2009 album, “Incredibad.”Kanye West ended up replaying a part of “Avril 14th” on “Blame Game,” a key song on his 2010 opus of hedonism and self-loathing “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.” Coincidentally, West was the musical guest on “S.N.L.” the night the Lonely Island short aired, and Taccone takes pride in the fact that they both saw the possibility in the same unlikely material. “It just made me feel like I was a genius,” he said.As the popularity of streaming music services rose over the past decade, the record label Silent Star approached the British pianist Martin Jacoby about recording covers for a catalog of tranquil pieces, including “Avril 14th.” Jacoby’s version appears on compilations with search-friendly titles including “Sleepy Baby Lullaby” and “Classical for Studying.” Spotify has included the Aphex Twin version on such curated playlists as “Peaceful Indie Ambient” and “Classical Yoga.”On the service there are now more than 30 covers of “Avril 14th” by electronic artists and classical musicians. Some have millions of streams of their own. There are jaunty interpretations and atmospheric ones. Others stay loyal to Aphex Twin. “It’s almost divorced from him as an artist,” said Jacoby, of the track’s originator. “It’s become one of those pieces that’s now exploded in its own right.”While this popularity may expose classical music fans to the sometimes overwhelming, occasionally terrorizing music of Aphex Twin, the exchange also flows the other way. “It’s a gateway to Debussy, or some of the other amazing piano pieces that are out there,” said Reitzell, the music supervisor. “If you like that piece, man, I’ve got 30 more for you. That is the most beautiful thing about music. That song will probably outlive Richard’s entire catalog in a way.”But Moran hears an even more fundamental reason modern listeners have turned a haunting piano piece with minimalist influences into a digital era phenomenon. Before our interview, she transcribed “Avril 14th” again to refamiliarize herself with it. Holding up the piece of paper, she noted its chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure. “Honestly,” she said, “this is like a pop song to me.” More