If Syro wasn’t about Aphex the innovator, then we got something just as good – Aphex the virtuoso
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Thirteen years separate the previous official Aphex Twin album, 2001’s Drukqs, and Syro. But Richard D James never really left us. In these years, the enigmatic Cornishman dropped 11 volumes of rampant analogue acid via his Analord series, not to mention Rushup Edge, an album of squelchy countryside rave snuck out as the Tuss. He’s been a frequent live presence, too, DJing at festivals across Europe, or performing a specially commissioned remix of work by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.
So why did Syro feel like such an event? It wasn’t merely the brightly coloured blimp afloat one morning over the canals of east London, but more to do with history: Syro found James back on Warp, the label behind his best-known albums, and came packaged – like many Aphex releases before it – in a sleeve by the Sheffield graphic studio the Designer’s Republic. Styled to look like a receipt, it fastidiously itemised the album’s production budget, right down to “outdoor postering in Brussels/Antwerp and Ghent”. In its mischievous self-sabotage, its contempt for convention, the whole affair felt quintessentially Aphex.
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by Louis Pattison via Electronic music | The Guardian
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