Riding high off the back of the acclaim lavished on Selected Ambient Works 85-92, the Aphex Twin, Richard D. James was ready to unveil his Polygon Window side project via an album called Surfing on Sine Waves. Audax Powder mixes both the soothing (the deliciously mellow sine waves of sound which are the foundation of the track) with the assertive (there’s a percussive synth beat throughout which sounds like someone drumming on industrial plastic tubes with table tennis bats.)
For myself, I think there are better tracks from the record which Peel could have played. I particularly like Supremacy II and Quoth, which was also released as a single. However, Peel appears to have been drawn to Audax Powder due to its title, which he felt sounded like a remedy for athlete’s foot and his views on the subject generally chime with mine:
I like having athlete’s foot. I was trying to persuade somebody the other day of the pleasures and the virtues to be derived from having athlete’s foot. They thought I was nuts of course, but I’ve hours, weeks even, of innocent pleasure out of that.
The version of Surfing on Sine Waves that Peel was playing was a limited edition, numbered, double album pressed on clear vinyl. His copy was number 27, which led him to think that he might get £15 to £20 for it if he lived to be 110. Well if, as we all wish, he had lived to 83, then going by this morning’s prices for that version of the record on Discogs, he could have got over £700 for it.
Audax is a form of long distance cycling race, so it’s possible that powder gets used to deal with saddle soreness. When James returned to the Polygon Window name on a 2001 12-inch white label, he discarded the enigmatic track titles for the slightly more prosaic likes of Portreath Harbour and Redruth School.
Video courtesy of God Bless Electronic Music
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