Aphasia is the name Richard Johnson adopted in the mid-1990s for his electroacoustic sonic-collage position. Johnson was born in Abu Dhabi to British parents and later relocated to the United Kingdom, working mainly from Scotland through the 1990s and 2000s. The name is precise: aphasia is the medical term for the inability to make or understand verbal communication, and the position's method (the deliberate dissolution of recognisable sonic-source material into electronically-processed collage) operates as the analogue of the name's clinical referent.
The method: Johnson's position runs through location recordings, found-sound source material, analogue electronics, tape manipulation and the electroacoustic tradition. The documented working-source mode on the 1996 Brume vs. Aphasia position is indicative: location recordings, analog elec., old people playing cards, street, bagpipes, public interiors, noise, reservoirs, samples, twigs, old tape reels, paper, radio, melting snow, Dachise material. The method is deliberately accumulative: the position assembles sonic working-source material from the sonic environment and processes it through electroacoustic method into composed positions.
The founding partnership is with Brume (the long-running French experimental noise release operated mainly by Christian Renou). The Brume vs. Aphasia · Series One: Round One CD (1996) constitutes the founding partnership; Aphasia composed and recorded his contributions from August through December 1995, with Brume completing his contributions at Brume Records in January and February 1996. The partnership is one of the 1990s UK / French experimental tradition's productive collaborative documents. Track 4 of the position carries a documented volume-warning notation.
The partnership with Dachise is documented on the Brume vs. Aphasia position through the acknowledged Aphasia source-material credit (Dachise material) and the thanks acknowledgement to Paul D. Knowles. The partnership constitutes one of the 1990s UK noise tradition's documented source-material partnerships: Knowles' Dachise position supplied sonic working-source material to Johnson's Aphasia position, which was later processed through the electroacoustic method into the Brume / Aphasia collaborative document. The UK noise tradition's network across the mid-1990s is documented through this partnership.
The documents are Stereoisomerism (1998, Staalplaat) and Mesospheric Breaks (1999, Noise Museum, the French partner). The Staalplaat partnership is significant: the partnership documents the partnership between Johnson's position and the Dutch experimental partner across the O Yuki Conjugate / Rapoon / Illusion of Safety tradition. The Noise Museum partnership extends the vein into the French experimental tradition.
The later release: from about the early 2000s onward Johnson renamed the position to Aphasia Group, following a documented name-conflict with an American punk band also working under the name Aphasia. The Aphasia Group lineup later extended the position to include collaborative partners; the Aphasia Group document is Jungle Green Memes (2004, Tigerbeat6), the collaboration with Uprock Rhizome (the Californian experimental partner). The Tigerbeat6 partnership is distinct from the earlier-period Staalplaat / Noise Museum tradition: the imprint operates within the Kid606 / Mike Paradinas-adjacent electronic and breakcore tradition rather than the experimental-noise tradition the Aphasia position mainly inhabited.
The Bureau's editorial reading: Aphasia is filed at Tier II as Richard Johnson's electroacoustic sonic-collage position and the British partner in the Brume / Dachise / Staalplaat lineup of the mid-1990s. The partnerships across the 1995–2004 period (Brume, Dachise, Michael Prime, Staalplaat, Noise Museum, Uprock Rhizome / Tigerbeat6) constitute the position's significance. The medical-term name and the deliberate dissolution-of-source method constitute the position's signature; the idiom sits in the electroacoustic and musique-concrete tradition rather than the power-electronics or harsh-noise tradition.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Dark Ages · last revised c. the Reformation