Courtesy Warp Records
WORDS Brian Carroll
With nineteen pen names in tow, the most famous being Aphex Twin, legendary British DJ and producer Richard David James has been releasing electronic music for decades, and is easily the most influential electronic artist, period. Any dolt with a Bop-It! has the ability to call themselves a Techno musician, but unless said dolt is familiar with the music of Aphex Twin, you can rest assured they’re just spinning their wheels.
A hard-working and prolific early adopter for countless now-standard mechanized styles and sounds, James has never been terribly shy about pointing out the similarities between himself and classical composers. To wit, half of Aphex Twin’s previous tentpole release - a double album called Drukqs – was just recordings of James timidly exploring ways to control a harpsichord-sounding prepared piano with a laptop. Serene, but not exactly Mozart, two of the resultant pieces paired nicely with Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette, but Drukqs - its companion disc a wall of Chopped-n’-Screwed drum attacks more befitting his skill set - was to be considered more dandy “flop” than “fop.”
Fast forward thirteen years and all is forgotten. One day, a neon blimp bearing the Aphex Twin insignia appears over London. The same logo is discovered stenciled on the sidewalks of several of the world’s key music outlets, venue owners either shaking their fists in the air at that rascally AFX or deeply flattered, depending on their lucidity. Before long, a new album called Syro is announced on the seedy Deep Web. The official album art for Syro features a typed receipt tallying all the promotional costs and a list of gear used in the album’s creation. Transparency? Check. Hype? Double Check. Music?
Check. Unlike a dark swath of James’s enormous catalog, Syro appears to be a friendly handshake offered without hidden daggers or devious grins. Featuring non sequitur vocal snippets from James, his wife, and young son, this family affair comes beamed to us from their home in rural Scotland, where James has been quietly preparing as many as six new releases of material over the past decade. The album’s name, a nonsense word provided by James’s aforementioned six-year-old boy - budding Techno producer himself - sounds like “tyro,” but is even easier to say, making it simultaneously an apt title and Junior already out to be more gifted at naming things than George Lucas’ kids.
An open invite to novices and curmudgeons alike, Syro acts an intro guide not only to the world of Aphex Twin, but to that of electronic music in general. Acid, Jungle, and Breakbeat - genres considered dead as a doornail only yesterday - have been dusted off and put on the hit parade again in a single, confident masterstroke. Though a charming and educational host, James’s personality remains as loud, animated, and colorful as a Kandinsky painting, so noobs be warned, his music can be quite dominant even when it’s at its sunniest.
I could prattle on about the essential building blocks and alphabetical coloring books that make up its DNA, but as an album, Syro remains complex and unrelenting, having been built around a sputtering e-bass shot through countless signal chain processors. Its long, jittery jaunts, punctuated by the occasional modern effect and (softsynth or vocal) overdub, are both stifling and commercial - in such a way that makes you want to gasp for air and consume items at the same time. While listening, you feel like Kino at the outset of Steinbeck’s The Pearl, making long, strenuous dives in search of glimmering treasure.
Wisened by age, and perhaps sweetened by fatherhood, Richard D. James has placed up a cordon so that the teeth of his machine can no longer damage innocent passers-by. That he would take the middle path as opposed to the devilish bombast of old is a constructive move, but it can feel at times like an attempt to reclaim the glory stolen by James’s many notable peers and followers, especially those who sit closest to him in the music tree. As such, it might not feel great to be Boards of Canada or Amon Tobin right now, because regardless of whether or not he has made his best album (as some have claimed), he has come very close to making theirs.
In closing, Aphex Twin is such a beloved counter-culture figure that his return would merit a hooray even if Syro was composed entirely out of sampled goat bleats. Considering that it is instead a generous helping of personable, fluid, jazzy music, it can be highly recommended – even to the person who is generally repelled by modern art. Casual listeners may require a break while digesting the lengthy album, as Syro’s constant barrage of musical Seussisms tend to drown out all external speech and thought. It’s action music, the sound of verbs, so if you find yourself in the zone, doing something creative or set to a task, it’s a wonderful pick. To those of you who have never been into Electronic music before and wouldn’t know where to start, consider Syro your once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity to jump on board. Bop it!