RX-101 - Like Yesterday
Rediscovered retro-sounding Aphex-style tunes
Oh no! Not another Aphex Twin sound-alike I hear you say? Don't worry, this one's pretty good.
Suction Records, one of the first North American IDM-leaning labels, run by Jason Amm and Gregory de Rocher (aka Solvent and Lowfish), present a trio of archival releases by a new producer going by the name RX-101. The fifteen tracks, made between 1997 and 1999, using equipment like the Roland Juno-106 and SH-101, now form two EPS and a long player.
The man behind the music is the Dutchman Erik Jong. Here's some background info:
From childhood I loved dance music and was fascinated by synthesizers. It was 1991 when I started listening to techno from labels like Underground Resistance, Transmat, Metroplex, +8 Records and Warp. That was the time I knew that I also wanted to make electronic music and build a studio. With my musical background and love for synthesizers, everything fell into place.
When I heard Aphex Twin’s “Digeridoo” in ’92, I was completely hooked on Aphex Twin and soon discovered his label Rephlex. I almost bought every release. In ’92 (when I was 16) I bought my first synthesizer, a Roland Juno-106. Then I started to buy more stuff, and two years later I had a small studio with some synths, a drum machine, a Quadraverb fx unit, an Atari computer and a mixer. My Roland SH-101 is still my favourite synth.
After buying some more stuff in the years following, it was time to start making tracks. It was 1997 then and I was 21 years old. I started to like it very much and I was very productive then. I wanted to make music all the time. I was a student then and had plenty of time to make music. I made a lot of tracks and recorded everything to cassette between 1997 and 1999. In the early ’90s I dreamt of releasing music on a record label, but in the years after that dream ebbed slowly away. I’m not sure why... I think that’s the reason I never have sent tracks or a demo to a label.
In 2000 I quit school and I found a full time job. Because of this I also had less time to make music. It was a new step in my life. My passion to make music then became less. At one point I saved my tapes with my tracks in a box. In 2013, I discovered that box again and uploaded about 15 tracks of that old stuff to Soundcloud. About a year later I started to upload more and more stuff. I received many nice comments and I was a little bit surprised that a record company was also interested.