Aphex Twin - Syro

Aphex Twin

Syro

19 September 2014

Warp

 

4 stars out of 5

 

 

Along with Squarepusher and Autechre, Aphex Twin (sometimes known as Richard D. James) was one of the Holy Trinity of the ‘90s. Almost as famous for his antics as for his music, the man who owned a tank and threw a microphone in a blender while scratching sandpaper at live performances—all the while grinning maniacally—created some of the most innovative electronic sounds of the decade. And then, following the release of his last LP, the critically divisive drukQs, in 2001, he basically disappeared. Thirteen years later, presumably in an effort to raise some funds to pay off his accumulated parking tickets as a result of double-parking the tank, he returns with Syro, an LP which makes it seem like no time has passed at all.

 

James has been recording the whole time he was “away,” and Syro is one of a half-dozen albums he has completed (but not released) since drukQs. Instantly recognizable as an Aphex Twin record, its bleeps and bloops recall most closely his looser material from the Analogue Bubblebath EPs rather than the more frantic and claustrophobic later LPs such as Richard D. James Album. He’s also ignored the last thirteen years of trends in electronica, isolating himself in rural Scotland and producing an album that doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck about what anyone else is releasing these days. Syro is a unique, stand-alone mountain, within sight of the larger range of peaks of the electronica community, but neither paying much attention to what is happening over there nor caring much what the other mountains think about it.

 

James is still clearly a madman. What kind of electronica artists moves out into the Scottish countryside and see more goats and sheep than people? Mad ones, that’s who. And yet Syro is a very accessible and user-friendly record that doesn’t indicate madness at all. Which in itself is clearly mad. Obviously. And while it’s not always as readily apparent here as on his previous albums, James retains his sense of humour: “s950tx16wasr10 [163.97]” is basically Squarepusher’s “Come on My Selector” mixed with a microphone thrown in a blender and some sandpaper scratching.

 

reviewed by Richard Krueger