Curating The Week: Aphex Twin And Tatsuya Takahashi, Nils Frahm, Bob Marley

• Electronic musician Aphex Twin speaks with ex Korg engineer Tatsuya Takahashi.

“Of course us musicians always look at something new and we see if it does what we expect it to. And this is OK. But we shouldn’t overlook something before actually trying it out, try and get into the head of the designer first. I try and do this. It’s difficult sometimes to push your ego and expectations out of the way for a while, but if we don’t do this we won’t learn anything new. That’s not to say that every designer’s head is worth getting into, but we gotta give it a go sometimes.”

• An interview with Nils Frahm.

“You need to warm up. It takes at least half an hour to arrive at a point where you’re in the music, in this mindset where all the ideas come from, where you don’t think too much—you simply feel. The piano is my therapy. I let the piano heal me. I don’t hide it. Without it I would be horribly depressed or in prison. It is something I have to do and the more I do it, the better I feel. Synthesiser or piano, it doesn’t matter: get the aggression and emotion out, start fresh. It is hygiene for my mental state. It doesn’t come quickly. I need time to get into this world, and I can’t really describe exactly what is happening, but sometimes it brings me to tears. Not because it is beautiful, but because sometimes it’s good to cry. And I see it in others too, at the concerts. They need an output.”

• An article about Bob Marley.

“In the seventies, [Chris] Blackwell marketed Marley to white, college-educated rock fans and maturing hippies, who were drawn to reggae as earthy and authentic. But in return for performing with the Commodores, Frankie Crocker, arguably the most powerful black-radio d.j. and programmer of the late seventies, promised that his station would play Marley’s new single, ‘Could You Be Loved,’ every hour on the hour for three months. And Marley, who was sandwiched on the bill between Kurtis Blow and the Commodores, was confident that his live show would eviscerate everyone else’s. He was right. As Alvin (Seeco) Patterson, the Wailers’ drummer, recalls, ‘I remember when Bob finish, everybody walked out.’”