Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II by Marc Weidenbaum Page A

Cannot they exist in their own denoted spheres?
    The replies to such logic are no less considered. The most basic, perhaps, is simply because using the titles is practical: what better system is there for people with different versions of the same album to compare their thoughts?
    But before getting to the practical, it helps to look at the release in question itself, the operative word being “look.” While the tracks on the album, with the exception of “Blue Calx,” are often described as “untitled,” they are not untitled in the common sense of the word. Each of the tracks does have a title. To say they are untitled is to adhere to an even more literal point of view than do those who apply words to the tracks. A title is not merely a word or phrase. A title is, as even the antagonists might say, a point of reference. The centerfold for the album clearly displays a variety of images, framed like details cut from old Polaroids. They are grouped by circles that coordinate with the numbers of tracks on the various sides of the release. The sides themselves are coordinated by a second set of circles broken into pie pieces whose relative sizes correlate with track length. This wisdom is now taken for granted, but the early Internet message boards and discussion lists at the time of the album’s release displayed communal decoding. That effort has long since ended, and it has been quite clearly understood by subsequent generations of listeners that the images align with the music. Each picture is worth at most two or three words.
    Selected Ambient Works Volume II
was presented as a simple puzzle, complete with geometric clues, one to be worked on while the music played. Long in advance of our current era of touchscreen-driven, icon-oriented life, Aphex Twin saw fit to use images as symbols for his work. Is there any doubt that in the process of releasing the album as a standalone app today, Aphex Twin would have any reason to do anything more complicated than make those images clickable?
    ## Sonata in 60Hz
    Such fan re-namings are not new. The phrase “The White Album” is a reference ripe for a letter to the editor, but it is also ubiquitous in its usage, the common term for the record that the Beatles released in 1969. It is hard to imagine that at the time of the record’s release anyone actually called it
The Beatles
, given how long the group had already been together. It is for the same reason that Metallica’s
Metallica
(1991) is often called “the black album,” because referring to it as “Metallica” feels futile—but then again, Metallica had the Beatles’ precedent to build on.
The Grey Album
, Danger Mouse’s milestone 2004 mashup, combined the Beatles’
The Beatles
not with the Metallica album, but with Jay-Z’s purposefully named
The Black Album
.
    Likewise, The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” is regularly referred to as “Teenage Wasteland,” a result of the repeated chorus combined with the less-than-memorable given title. These things promulgate in unexpected ways. It’s hard to imagine Donna Gaines would have called her book about troubled youth
Baba O’Riley
. The “Riley” in the title is a nod to classical composer Terry Riley, a minimalist whose percolating rhythms are core to the track’s memorable keyboard part. Like much of Aphex Twin’s work, The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” was pop music with roots in burbling minimalism.
    Such renaming is all the more common in classical music, where compositions often bear generic formulations like Piano Sonata No. 23. The one by Ludwig van Beethoven was given the name Appassionata after his death by his publisher, while his Pathétique, Piano Sonata No. 9, Beethoven himself named. Frédéric Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” was also named by his publisher, intending it to be read as “brief,” not as “60 seconds.” Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata got its name from comments by a music critic after the composer had passed away. These