Richard D. James, he of many monikers, recorded an LP’s worth of music under his alias Caustic Window in the early ’90s that never saw release. Now — twenty years and a slew of Aphex Twin, AFX, and The Tuss releases later — it may see the light of day.
A crowdfunding campaign to purchase one of the four test pressings of the LP that allegedly exist and release it to everyone who donated money has raised $42,000 — well over its $9,300 goal — at the time of this writing. Anyone who donates $16 or more gets a copy, with the legal blessing Rephlex Records and Mr. James himself. The organizers write on Kickstarter:
Of course, the main issue with doing such a thing is distribution – individuals (even lots of individuals) don’t have the right to copy and distribute music they don’t have the rights to – then, an idea came to me – why not raise the funds for the record, buy it, then strike a deal with the record label to purchase the rights for everyone who chipped in a digital copy of the tracks?
A few emails later, and such a deal had been struck – the label and Richard James himself agreed to offer one-time distribution rights so the people contributing to this Kickstarter would have a once-in-a-lifetime to own tracks from arguably one of the rarest electronic music (non) releases of all time (and some damn fine music too).
The label has no plans to do a commercial pressing of the record, so if you want one (legally), chip in your 16 clams here. You have 25 more days.
