Philip Glass/David Bowie/Aphex Twin - Heroes symphony re-mix (1997)

PWS made a post recently mentioning an "ideal" music. He was writing about debussy, and if you know me, i live off the stuff. Basically anything he wrote after 1888 sends me into a quivering mess on the floor in fetal-position bliss. His late music leaves me speechless in its gorgeousness, but all this talk of an ideal, well, debussy's late music is certainly one, but another ideal of mine is this piece, aphex twin's collaboration with glass and bowie. Third times a charm- or an absolutely fucking masterpiece, its a work that leaves me just as speechless and blissful as debussy. This is my modern ideal, this is the kind of music i wish to write someday- or at least, music that achieves this effect or result for me.

This is postmodernism in its most hypnotic, frantic, lush and contemporary. Imagine some film like a further-technofied koyyanisqatsi, fragmented and expressionistic, accompanying this music- I can think of nothing that would be a better art to express the hypnotic, mechanical and frenzied pace of urban life (the orginal qatsi music pales in comparison). This is a dark beauty, full of menace and propulsion, full of energy and agony, hope and despair- all those emotions expected in some19th century romantic symphony, but rapped up in a five minute intense minimalistic/maximalistic piece. There are those echoes and emotions welling up into waves, cresting into points of great tension, almost seems as if musique concrete had a singing love child with philip glass.

While other works of aphex twin have impressed me, none have left me so happy, so enthralled with the sounds of a kind of music i'd never heard before.