(Warp)
The last time Aphex Twin released an album, 2001s double LP Drukqs, the musical world was a very different place. Grime was still just something that gathered underneath your fridge, Apple was yet to release the iPod and several of the current dance scenes up and coming producers were happy modelling that years fashion craze: nappies. If 13 years is a long time in pop, then its aeons when your forte is cutting-edge electronic music. Or at least it would be if your music didnt already exist in a world so unique its practically imitation-proof.
As might be expected from an album that was announced via a fluorescent green blimp flying over Elephant and Castle, Syro is a strange album. It doesnt do what some fans will have been hoping, in that it does not completely reshape the sonic landscape in the way Richard D James repeatedly did through the 90s. Neither does it announce a radical divergence in style from the records he has been putting out on Rephlex over the last 13 years under his AFX and Tuss monikers (the idea that this is a comeback after a lengthy hiatus is only really true on a technicality). And yet by sounding simply like a series of Aphex Twin tracks, Syro is still utterly engrossing and remains, somewhat unbelievably, on a completely different planet to almost anything else thats been released over the last decade and a half.
Continue reading...
by Tim Jonze via Electronic music | The Guardian
No comments:
Post a Comment