We Care Because He Does
Much has been made this year of the strength of music released 20 years ago. In 1994 we saw many legendary “alternative” albums released, yet hidden from nostalgia for the likes of Dookie and Superunknown is acknowledgment of just how important the year was for beats. These were the first days of Nas and Biggie, of Portishead and Outkast. Beck announced his presence with three albums, anchored by the slacker grooves of Mellow Gold and “Loser.” Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor rose from the depths with The Downward Spiral, Natural Born Killers, and a memorably muddy set at Woodstock’s 25th anniversary. But 1994’s real winner may have been English electronica madman Richard D. James: He produced two EPs under lesser aliases, made the recently unshelved Caustic Window LP, put together a compilation of early singles and, most importantly, released the groundbreaking Selected Ambient Works Volume II as Aphex Twin.
Especially in this best-known persona, James established a reputation for taking the piss out of acid dance beats and giving spacey, synthetic atmospheres new legitimacy, often using extremes of comfort and discomfort. But Aphex Twin output dropped off noticeably as the 2000s broke, and fans were left with spare and ever-shrinking threads of his legacy—a live DJ set here, an almost-anonymous EP there, the canonical sounds and images of “Windowlicker” and “Come to Daddy” and “Nannou” becoming less satisfying with time. The brand returned with little warning this year, James continuing to subvert tradition (through deep web promotion and album graphics breaking down the cost of making his art) in the face of the musical history he made 20 years ago. Now Syro is here. What does it do for Aphex Twin, and for us?
Before James pumped the brakes on Aphex Twin 13 years ago, he was all about things that sounded like treated pianos and muted orchestras. Now he applies that same sense of technological control to, well, his techno. James claims he worked on these tracks over the last seven years, using close to 200 pieces of equipment to perform and manipulate them. From the cyber-cipher song titles forward, Syro is kitchen-sink electronica that feels amazingly accessible. Hints dropped in the first leaked single “minipops 67 (source field mix)” are carried through the album: Syro hews much closer to the pleasantries of the breakthrough Selected Ambient Works 85-92 than to the eerie inventiveness of SAWII or overstuffed releases like Drukqs that followed.
The results revisit the forward-thinking acid of James’ early work and side-project concerns like The Tuss or Mike & Rich, dulling some of its hardest edges before adding heaping amounts of masterful hip-hop breakbeats and twisted interpretations of Minneapolis funk. Everywhere we hear pitch-shifted and stuttering synths compressed like juiced oranges, powering the failing-machinery jam “180db” and potential Chris Cunningham video vehicle “syro u473t8+e (piezoluminescence mix).” This is also likely the most vocal Aphex Twin album, with James and his family transformed into everything from cut-up pastoral gibberish to filtered ooohs to ladies’ room gossip.
Every time you think a song or rhythmic passage will end, having seemingly exhausted a particular loop or phrase, it mutates into something else. Even sudden shifts of mood and tone, like the album’s closing meeting between the ghosts of jungle (“s950tx16wasr10 [earth portal mix]”) and James’ piano love song to his wife (“aisatsana”), feel natural and refreshing instead of car-crash inconvenient. These works suggest everything good about electronica’s future, present, and past—anonymous Bandcamp producers, a Ghostly label megamix, even four great old Aphex Twin tracks layered and played at once, Zareeka-style. Syro isn’t just visionary; it implies the music is remixing itself, and damn near self-aware.
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