Aphex Twin - The Analogue Dreams of the Invisible Man

Most people remember him for the deformed, demonic-looking face that appeared on the covers of many of his records, as well as for two promotional videos — steeped in horror-film tension, deformed monsters and sexually charged imagery — made for two of his less interesting tracks. But the importance of Richard David James, better known by the main one of his countless pseudonyms, Aphex Twin, in the invention and development of the 90s electronic scene is absolutely fundamental.

Irish but raised in Cornwall, with no formal musical training whatsoever, James started working as a DJ at the age of 16 in a few venues in St. Ives, at the far tip of the English peninsula. In his spare time, his passions were tinkering with electronic keyboards, modifying them and using them to make music. Very young, he began recording extremely tense tracks, which he then used in his live performances, which had in the meantime shifted from the club circuit to the rave scene. This shift heavily influenced his earliest recordings, starting with the two EPs that marked his debut on the scene in 1991: the never-really-surfaced Bradley's Beat, released as Bradley Strider and probably containing some spin-offs for his DJ sets, and Analogue Bubblebath Vol.1, initially released under the Aphex Twin alias (reissues would instead appear under the name AFX). These were followed, in order, by Digeridoo (1991), Xylem Tube and Analogue Bubblebath Vol. 2 (both 1992, the latter under the AFX alias), each released on various minor labels (chiefly the Belgian B&S) and strictly on vinyl.

In these early releases, there's little hint of what James would deliver on his debut album: these are small collections of pieces rooted in hardcore-acid, on which he experiments with rhythms and melodic lines that are hard to digest; the tracks are split evenly between murky techno-rave screams and icy, horror-tinged pieces. Even at this early stage, James's creativity is evident in the way he hybridizes influences from the widest range of experimental electronic music: the most extreme kosmische (Amon Duul, early Tangerine Dream), the wildest rave music, acid house, the noisiest industrial, even arriving at results not too far removed, sonically, from musique concrète; all of it coalescing into a style still catalogued today by most media and critics as acid house, even though it is in fact quite far removed from musicians of that scene like the early 808 State.

A good selection of the best material from these EPs would later make up the compilation Classics, released in 1994.

Having forged, at the highest level, a style of his own — extreme from every angle and hard to pin down — James, after founding his own label, Rephlex Records, released his debut album in 1992, Selected Ambient Works 85-92, under the name Aphex Twin (from Aphex Systems Limited, a signal-processor company, and the word "twin", in memory of his brother Richard, who died at birth).

This is a work profoundly different from anything the artist had put out up to that point: moving away from the jagged, experimental sounds of the earlier EPs, James, relying exclusively on analogue synthesizers, various sound modulators and an already pronounced use of sampling, forged a perfect fusion of the ambient music of Brian Eno and Harold Budd with deep-rooted techno (Detroit pioneers like Kevin Saunderson, but also the likes of Carl Cox and, later, Richie Hawtin).

Across its 13 tracks, officially composed between 1985 and 1992 but far more likely dating from the two years before the album's release, light touches of vintage-flavoured analogue synths blend with dance rhythms softened in execution by the use of ethereal, muted drum machines.

This record, together with the almost contemporaneous debut of Autechre, is the founding stone of a new genre and its various offshoots: so-called IDM, lounge music, and more broadly the application of ambient, tenuous textures to rhythms drawn from techno/house.

The opening of "Xtal", a dance track stripped of its lifeblood and reduced to a hazy mix of dreamy melodic layers, soft gentle drum machines and angelic choirs, is the perfect distillation of the style that from that point on would be known as ambient-techno, as well as the creative peak of the album and of James's entire ambient phase. Next comes the hypnotic mantra of "Tha", its synthetic expanses accompanying an almost dub-like rhythm. Then "Pulsewidth", an overdub of deep-flavoured rhythms and a looped, dance-leaning melody, "dirtied up" by the intervention of a seventies-sounding keyboard. And then again "Ageispolis", another deep watercolour built on an Eno-like melody, alternating with a looping electronic music box.

The purely Eno-esque ambient interlude "I" introduces "Green Calx", a liquid rush of sound and beat very much in the style of "Incunabula" (here, telling Aphex apart from Autechre becomes almost impossible). The closing "Actium" is also worth noting, its proto-cardiac pulse seeming to try to break free from the keyboard cage enclosing it, never quite reaching the explosion the whole track seems to promise, replaced instead by a soft, almost Jarre-like melody.

Very few, as already mentioned, are the echoes of his earliest work, all contained in the hazy acid reverbs of "Hedphelym" and "Delphium" and in the (at times) martial mood of "We Are The Music Makers".

A true manifesto of a musical movement that would only keep growing (just think of current exponents like Eluvium, Loscil or Taylor Deupree) and equally seminal for the development of a generation — the one tied to the Warp label, which James himself would join shortly after — Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is a cornerstone in the evolution of electronic music, and indeed of its own history.

After the release of SAW 85-92 and after signing a deal with Warp Records, James set about putting his back catalogue in order, reissuing his early EPs — again on vinyl only — through his own label, Rephlex Records: from this point on, the Aphex Twin moniker would be used for almost all the releases put out on Warp, with AFX reserved almost exclusively for those on Rephlex. Even so, he would still use a great many other pseudonyms, especially for minor releases. This separation of paths allowed him to carry on his work in ambient-techno without abandoning productions closer to his earliest material: notable among these are the four EPs Joyrex J4, J5, J9I and J9II, released under the name Caustic Window (later compiled onto CD, in an operation similar to Classics, as Compilation in 1998), all released in 1992 with a pronounced acid edge; another, pointless, ridiculous and limited extended play titled Pac-Man, containing a few remixes of the sound backdrops from the eponymous video game, released under the name Power-Pill in 1993; a series of collaborations with Mike Dred ("Universal Indicator Blue", "Yellow", "Red" and "Green", released between 1992 and 1993 in a limited edition under the name Universal Indicator, nowadays unavailable and about whose true authorship little is known); and the last two instalments of the AFX series Analogue Bubblebath (Vol. 3 and Vol. 4), released respectively in 1993 and 1994 on vinyl only, later reissued together on a single CD by Warp in 1995 under the title Hangable Auto Bulb.

Also in 1993 comes the EP On, the first trait d'union between the various sides of James's work: the title track, and the record's centerpiece, is a piece built on a fast, sweet piano melody, set against a cascade of convulsive beats with a particularly abrasive sound.

That same year brings James's debut on Warp, Surfing On Sine Waves, released under the name Polygon Window: a hybrid of the ambient character of Aphex Twin's debut and the experimental hardcore of his early EPs, the record comes out as part of the Artificial Intelligence series (the same series that gave us, among others, "Incunabula" by Autechre), and is once again a seminal work — not so much on its own merits as when considered alongside the other albums in the collection. It mixes nods to various strands of Aphex-style sound as well as to contemporaries Autechre: "Polygon Window" could easily be mistaken for an outtake from "Amber", while the SAW-derived blueprint dominates tracks like the seductive "Audax Power, If It Really Is Me", the polyrhythmic "Quixote" or the trip of "Portreath Harbour". By contrast, hardcore-rave influences come through clearly in the pounding bursts of "Quoth", in the hard-edged acid of "UT1-Dot", and again in the icy rhythmic undergrowth of "Untitled".

Surfing On Sine Waves is something of a stylistic summation of the first part of James's career: it doesn't yet offer hints of the sonic evolution to come, but it contributes decisively to "codifying" and consolidating the various facets of his sound, producing a whole that would keep developing until reaching its balance on 1994's …I Care Because You Do, before continuing to evolve from there.

1994 brings the second album under the Aphex Twin name, the disorienting Selected Ambient Works Volume 2. Once again, James uses his long-form works to pursue paths that are entirely different, both from one another and from those charted in his EPs: the album, a double LP, is a collection of untitled tracks (though Warp itself has attached some hypothetical titles to them) united by a minimal-ambient style. Gone are the technoid beats, gone the rhythmic reverb and deep atmospheres: in their place, desolation and silent torpor, a musical style particularly close to the neo-cosmic ambient scene that was beginning to spread at the time (the likes of Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny, Michael Stearns, Thom Brennan). James himself describes the album as a musical chronicle of some lucid dreams he had.

Any trace of rhythm disappears entirely: the opening "Cliff", for piano, vocal samples and synthetic, cosmic-tinged reverb, points directly to the late work of Michael Stearns; in the following "Radiator", by contrast, the kraut influence is clear, mixed with James's typically acid-tinged melodicism.

The album moves through evocative, dreamlike images, at times almost paradisiacal (the masterpiece "Rhubarb", indebted both to late Popol Vuh and to Steve Roach; the intense, ethereal "Blue Calx", not far from the best of Brian Eno; the melodic, dreamy "Z-Twig", with a minimalist unfolding in the style of Robert Rich), at other times dark ("Mould", with melodic samples close to the most experimental Harold Budd; the abstract, claustrophobic "Tree", almost a tribute to the Tangerine Dream of "Zeit") right up to cathartic peaks on both fronts (the terrifying trilogy of "Blur", "White Blur" and "White Blur 2", extracts of musique concrète in an atonal key, set against the Edenic calm of "Lichen" and the closing "Match Sticks").

Yet another shift in sound leads James to produce another thoroughly successful album, though decidedly less groundbreaking than the first (even if it can be seen as a small preview of the future drone music that would later find its leading names in William Basinski and Tim Hecker), one that places him at the very top of the 90s music scene, on an altar shared only with a handful of his Warp-stable "colleagues" (Autechre, Squarepusher, Boards Of Canada) and a few other groups from the same period, such as Orb, Orbital, Meat Beat Manifesto and his disciple µ-Ziq.

In the years that follow, James focuses entirely on his main project, which once again evolves gradually. A turning point for this new shift is the EP Donkey Rhubarb, which shows the first signs of his new interests: ethereal melodies ("Ittch Hedral") alternating with near-divertissements (the title track), both of them steamrolled by the subsequent arrival of blazing-fast acid beats straddling industrial and drum'n'bass.

This same style also characterizes the 1995 album, his third as Aphex Twin, preceded by the EP Ventolin and titled …I Care Because You Do. Its cover art, together with that of Donkey Rhubarb, is the first example of the visual collaboration between James and artist Chris Cunningham: the former's face is portrayed distorted, in vivid colors, with an almost satanic grin courtesy of the latter.

…I Care Because You Do temporarily retains the ambient-techno influences, while breaking away entirely from the experimental hardcore of his early work (with one exception) and embracing sounds typical of acid house: "The Waxen Pith" could pass seamlessly as an outtake from SAW II, with the addition of a rhythm section; the same could be said of the opening "Acrid Avid Jam Shred", a genuine trait d'union between the James that was (ambient expanses over muted rhythms) and the James to come (near-catchy melodies, surrounded by disorienting, claustrophobic rhythms).

Overall, the album's style is fairly consistent across most of the tracks: ambient undertones keep seeping out of "Wax The Nip", "Wet Tip Hen Ax", "Mookid" and "Start As You Meant To Go On", tracks in which the melodic-ethereal core nonetheless begins to give way to the force and drive of increasingly dominant, complex rhythm sections.

Then there are tracks that break away completely from all previous styles, like "Ventolin" or "Cow Cud Is A Twin": a cascade of slow, heavy acid beats over a non-melody made of a shrill, lobotomizing whistle that rises and recedes at a fixed cadence in the former; a jazzy melody over a hypnotic dub rhythm à la Kode9 in the latter.

The album is rounded out by an acidic rework of "Ittch Hedral" (already heard on the Donkey Rhubarb EP in an orchestral version with Philip Glass), a raw hardcore interlude nostalgic for the early James ("Come On Your Slags") and, to close things out, a successful experiment for synthetic orchestra ("Next Heap With"), which would nonetheless remain an isolated episode.

With …I Care Because You Do, together with the EPs that preceded it, James shifts direction once again toward what would become the style he's remembered for today — one that would, however, end up dulling the innovative edge of his music. On the whole, another excellent album, though not on the level of the first two, nor of its successor, where the metamorphosis would be completed in the best possible way.

1995 also brings the already-mentioned Classics: listening to it alongside the almost contemporaneous album, you can hear just how total and deep-rooted James's transformation had been, even though only four years had passed between his debut release and his third full-length. The selection on this compilation highlights the best moments from his early EPs: the title track of Digeridoo (a relentless, slow, dark hardcore serpent built from the sampled sound of the instrument of the same name), the pounding vintage rave of "Flaphead", "Phloam" and "Dodeccaheedron", the dark melody over a frantic acid rhythm of "Isoprophanol", the sunny interlude of "Polynomial-C" (a synthetic ride with near-new-age Jarre-like echoes, over an odd-time rhythmic base, and perhaps the only nod here to the ambient-techno of the two SAW records), reaching its peak in the disorienting, multifaceted electronic cacophony of "Tamphex", echoed once more at the close in the two mixes of "We Have Arrived".

1996 saw the release of three works: a bizarre collaboration with his friend Mike Paradinas (aka µ–Ziq), titled Expert Knob Twiddlers and credited to Mike&Rich, a world away from either artist's best work, sounding like a lackluster exercise in analog-sound that amounts to a collection of pointless divertissements; another compilation, 51/13 Singles Collection, which instead gathers the Eps that preceded …I Care Because You Do; and his fourth studio album under the Aphex Twin name.

Dedicated to the memory of his older brother and namesake, who died at birth, again preceded by a promo Ep (Girl/Boy) and marked by another chilling cover courtesy of Chris Cunningham (this time the object of the demonic tinkering is a photo of the artist himself), Richard D. James Album is once again a step forward, once again an evolution, and this time pulled off to perfection. The harsher, more jagged sounds disappear entirely, giving way to a more "canonical" ambient drum'n'bass that edges close to Idm (this time there are plenty of parallels with the Warp crowd, especially Luke Vibert and Autechre's "TriRepetae++"). The acid references also thin out, surviving only in a few sporadic moments. In their place, clear, almost catchy melodies now prevail, set within a frame of frantic drum'n'bass rhythms, all metallic sounds and pronounced speed. These rhythms would come to dominate entirely on Aphex Twin's next, and to date last, album.

The album's overture is entrusted to the Autechre-esque "4", the record's creative peak and among the highest points James ever reached: a crystalline melody surrounded by a complex, hammering rhythm that periodically bursts into a veritable downpour of beats. The album continues at an extremely high level: "Cornish Acid" and "Peek 824545201" are the last remnants of the acid-house style of …I Care Because You Do; this tie to the past is offset, once again, by glimpses of the future, embodied in the complex rhythmic structures of "Corn Mouth" and "Yellow Calx", which here overwhelm and devour the melodic lines, foreshadowing the direction James's later work would take. The balanced fusion of these two elements instead reaches extraordinary heights in what stand as two masterpieces of his output, almost on a par with opener "4": the semi-divertissement of "Girl/Boy Song", reminiscent of "Donkey Rhubarb" and "To Cure a Weakling Child", and one of the most emotionally charged tracks the Irishman ever composed, built around a child's vocal sample that repeats hypnotically while the melody and rhythmic base undergo a metamorphosis (the former turning from sweet to anguished, the latter from soft to explosive).

The album also contains purely melodic flashes, another novelty compared to his earlier work: the playful music box of "Fingerbib" and the heavenly backdrop of "Goon Gumpas". The album closes instead with one of James's most old-school tracks and another successful experiment, "Logon Rock Witch", a bouncing rhythmic carousel set against a backdrop of organ chords.

The culmination of a varied but firmly connected path of steady, ongoing evolution, Richard D. James Album stands as the peak of "second James", as well as the best Aphex Twin album alongside the debut. It is also the last record on which James would opt for the rhythm+melody formula, sketched out on the preceding …I Care Because You Do and perfected here, and it also proves to be a turning point in the Irishman's career: first of all because, for the first time, he used digital equipment in place of the array of analog instruments employed up to that point; and secondly because, listening to his later work, the impression is that James poured everything he had left that was new into this album — it's no coincidence that from 1996 onward, his output, previously steady at a rate of one album and at least three Eps a year, would drop off drastically.

Between 1997 and 2000, in fact, only three Eps saw the light of day: Come To Daddy (1997) and Windowlicker (1999), both released as Aphex Twin, and the dismal final chapter of the Analogue Bubblebath series (vol. 3.1, 1997). Neither of the first two contains any musically "new" material, and the two most atypical tracks, their respective title tracks, stood out mainly thanks to their insane Chris Cunningham-directed videos, which went on to become James's most popular pieces. Both, in truth, seem to be pure divertissements, devoid of any ambition and produced solely to fill the discographic "void": James himself would admit to having composed Come To Daddy as a pointed parody of the spread of big beat and the success of its standard-bearers, Prodigy. This discographic void continues, with the only 1998 release being the Compilation credited to Caustic Window, gathering the best of the three Eps released under that alias back in '92, the last testimonies to James's old style. Collected onto a single, budget-priced CD, they gain in cohesion, even if they offer limited evolution compared to his earlier work (only the deranged, Vibert-esque jukebox of "Fantasia" brings anything new to the table).

After a year of silence, 2001 brought two more collaborative works with Mike Dred (Universal Indicator Ultraviolet and Innovation In The Dynamic Of Acid; the latter, the only one still available, contains a mix of tracks drawn from earlier Eps and sits closer to Dred's weaker output).

That same year saw the arrival of the fifth, and currently last, album released as Aphex Twin. Composed entirely on a laptop, DrukQs is once again a double album, as SAW II had been, and is certainly James's most eclectic work, though it sounds like an attempt to break away from everything done before — achieved not by striking out in a new direction again, but by reshuffling the cards of his previous experiences and reassembling them without particular care. It features a development (more technical than artistic) of the drum'n'bass rhythms already heard on some tracks of Richard D. James Album, the near-total disappearance of melody, barring a few instrumentals for harpsichord and prepared piano, quick interludes of musique concrète, dark-ambient brushstrokes even bleaker than those found on SAW II, samples of domestic accidents and answering-machine messages, and whatever else you can think of.

But the impression the album leaves is of a James who, for the first time, lacks particularly clear ideas, despite a handful of standout tracks: the drizzling drum'n'bass of "Vordhosbn", the downpour of "Cock/Ver10", the mini-suite "Mt. Saint Michel+St. Michaels Mounts", the sensitive and touching prepared-piano solo "Avril 14th", the harpsichord intro "Jynweythek Ylow", the tense dark-ambient of "Gwely Mernans". Elements that, in any case, are entirely lacking a common thread.

Overall, the album suffers from a series of problems that undermine its quality: first and foremost, the tracklist is padded with several repetitive, empty, at times downright pointless tracks that only weigh down the listening experience (the pointless, botched breakbeat makeover of "54 Cymru Beats", the 7 minutes of noisy musique-concrète samples on "Gwarek2", the b-side-grade polyrhythmic sketches of "Afx237 V7", the divertissement-interludes scattered throughout, and in general almost the entire second disc), the resulting excessive length, and the attempt to retrace his whole career within a single work, which leaves a sense of inconclusiveness hanging over all 30 tracks of the album. And finally, a meticulous attention to style that comes across as a clever ploy to paper over (unsuccessfully) the compositional shortcomings the work displays.

DrukQs stands as Aphex Twin's epitaph, an album full of ideas, some even remarkable, but never fully developed, and of experiments that often feel like ends in themselves — at times enjoyable and nostalgic, but a world away from the groundbreaking stature of his earlier work, and inconsistent with the slow, steady evolution his style had undergone album after album.

In 2003 came James's definitive admission of what was by then a confirmed creative dry spell: preceded by an Ep that had already raised no small amount of concern (2 Remixes by AFX), along came 26 Mixes For Cash. To general disbelief, it really is a collection of remixes of other artists' tracks: among those honored are contemporary peers (808 State, Meat Beat Manifesto), a nod to industrial (Nine Inch Nails), one to minimalism (Philip Glass's "Heroes"), and, not wanting to leave anyone out, one to himself too ("Windowlicker" and an excerpt from SAW II).

Even setting aside the musical quality of the album and leaving aside any judgment on the very nature of the undertaking, there's no comfort to be found here: no spark, no attempt at reinvention, simply other people's tracks run through the DrukQs treatment.

Accompanied also by an Ep, Smojphace, released under the AFX name, 26 Mixes For Cash is a symptom of the artistic crisis of a musician who, after a decade of invention and insight, appears to have definitively run out of inspiration.

After two years of total silence, James returned in 2005 with a project comprising a series of 11 Eps titled Analord, most of which were limited editions available on vinyl only. All of them were released under the AFX alias, except for number 10 (not by chance, the best of the lot), which came out under the Aphex Twin moniker. Any illusion of rediscovered creative spark is shattered almost immediately: the music on these Eps sounds, once again, dated and stale. Where on DrukQs James had seemed to be questioning what to do with his future, on these 11 Eps he seems to have landed on the very answer one had hoped he'd avoid: quoting himself, abandoning once and for all any ambition to renew himself, settling comfortably instead on his name and on what he'd already done. It's neither the return to analog gear nor the reappearance of the rhythm+melody formula that changes the fortunes of a project burdened with the same problems as the previous album, amplified by a sort of serene acceptance of his own limitations — which, paradoxically, may also be considered the collection's greatest virtue. Here too there's no shortage of excellent tracks, the odd flash of light in the dark, though on the whole it never quite manages to shine through.

Most of the best tracks were collected by Warp in 2005 on the CD compilation Chosen Lords. What stands out, not so much for originality as for technical skill, are the extracts from the tenth EP (the opening, melodic “Fenix Funk 5”, which wouldn't have been out of place on Richard D. James Album, and the closing “XMD 5a”, a martial, acidic little march with an almost ambient feel), plus a few other effective hits, like the vintage ride of “Pitcard”, the spectral electronic mantra of “Crying In Your Face”, the synthetic carpet of “PWSteal.Ldpinch.D” and the by-now-familiar acid-house sketch, “Batine Acid”. This distillation of the best of Analord, stripped of its less interesting parts, ends up being more than acceptable, though marked by a sense of premature sonic and stylistic ageing.

James's last release under the AFX name is the AFX/LFO EP: not a collaboration between the two, but one side each of unreleased compositions, neither of which shines particularly (and judging by the sound, they're probably quite dated relative to the release date). Since then, Richard David James has definitively given up producing material, devoting himself only to occasional live activity, for a handsome fee. Various rumours have emerged and continue to circulate about his “disappearance”: some claimed he was shut away in his studio producing, rumours seemingly confirmed by the attribution to James of an album and an EP released by the mysterious group The Tuss on Rephlex (two works that are, on the whole, more than mediocre).

More recently, James himself reportedly stated that he already had 6 albums ready for release (later becoming 11), and that the delay in resurfacing was due to fear that his ex-wife, with whom he is involved in legal proceedings, might try to claim the rights to his tracks.

All of this, in any case, is hard to believe, and the most credible theory remains that James realised long ago he'd used up all his inspiration, and that now he simply has nothing new left to say.

After thirteen years of feverish anticipation – a bit less if we count the “Analord” series and The Tuss (let's stop denying it, it's his stuff) – Aphex Twin makes a surprise return with Syro (2014). A record on which he does Aphex Twin as if we were still in the days of …I Care Because You Do, but adding something extra: because “XMAS_EVET10 [thanaton3 mix]” could easily have come from those sessions, during which, however, he would never have dreamed of using a vocoder.

Aphex doing Aphex and having fun like in the good old days, but maybe with something new thrown in: hence “produk 29”, which is part funky, part alien, part charming and part unsettling. Aphex doing Aphex can't avoid acid, but since he already did Aphex Acid for years, something unprecedented is needed: et voilà, an instant 8-bit outfit is ready to make “CIRCLONT6A [syrobonkus mix]” something more than yet another “Peak”. Aphex is synonymous with frenzy, so of course there's no going without a fine plate of drill'n'bass for refined palates served up on “s950tx16wasr10 [earth portal mix]”, never stripped so bare in the past as it is this time. Aphex had left us with drukQs, among whose best moments were certainly the prepared-piano sonatas: there's one here too, “aisatsana”, but rather than John Cage it seems to draw more on the best moments of the Eno–Budd duo.

There are those unpronounceable, incomprehensible titles that have had their day, there are those mash-ups of melodies and acid that have been the same for twenty years. And all of this works as long as the refuge is nostalgia (“4 bit 9d api+e+6”), while it falls flat wherever escape is sought, as in the pointless, contrived “180db_”, in the dada-ish fragment of “fz pseudotimestretch+e+3” and in the “usual” contrast between angelic choirs and corrosion on “CIRCLONT14 [shrymoming mix]”.

Richard David James throws himself back into the chaos, and he does it with the attitude of someone who has nothing to prove to anyone, who isn't even all that keen on putting himself back in the game, but who simply wants to show, in an almost perverse way, that his sound can still make a difference even twenty years after the golden age of so-called IDM. And how can you blame him, faced with feats like “syro u473t8+e [piezoluminescence mix]”, a paradigm that contains within it much of the sound palette that characterises, to varying degrees, the most sophisticated productions of today's techno. His gospel, with Syro, now finally has a comprehensive, representative testimony to most of its thousand facets, one that tears down the barriers of time and places itself firmly in the present. And it does so through playful miracles like “PAPAT4 [pineal mix]”, grandiloquent essays like the long “MARCHROMT30A edit 2b 96”, offered only to the Japanese market as a bonus track, and restorations as ordinary as they are luxurious, like “minipops 67 [source field mix]”, chosen to launch the whole thing, on which James even tries his hand as a vocalist. It took thirteen years to get a glossary of the Aphex sound, but it was worth the wait.

Five years after the Collapse EP, released in 2018, Aphex returns with four tracks: three previously unreleased and one remix. And rather short in length. Fairly minimal at the starting gate, but, by contrast, lavish in its presentation, with an augmented-reality programme bearing the improbable name YXBoZXh0d2lu, accessible via QR code, making the wait for Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In a Room7 F760 more intriguing, at least on paper. Then there were a series of surprise festival appearances across Europe, including a Verona date on 14 July. And finally the arrival of “Aphex Twin: Every Album, Every Song”, the new book dedicated to his work, published on 15 July. Written by seventeen-year-old Beau Waddell, who in “just” 160 pages analyses every stage of the discography of the genius from Limerick.

Aphex Twin thus gets back on track in the manner of the last ten years, teasing – but not too much – an audience of die-hard fans ready to follow him no matter what. It opens with the lead single “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f”, which adds nothing new to the past, between drum 'n' bass skips and ambient-mode shadings that amplify its dark edges. It continues with “zin 2 test 5”, which follows the same path but aims for greater saturation of sound and rhythm in a clubbing vein. There's a bit of play with the third track of the batch, “in a Room7 F760”, between video-game-like breaks and almost forced pauses. While the “Parallax Mix” of the first track is just a vaguely wavering filler with a single variation on the theme. In short: little, very little. It's an exercise in subtraction, but without any bite. So, until next time, Richard. Let's hope it's not another five years from now, and with pockets still half empty.

*Contributions by Giuliano Delli Paoli (Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / in a room7 F760)

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