The last time Aphex Twin released an album, 2001’s 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 scene’s up and coming producers were happy modelling that year’s fashion craze: nappies. If 13 years is a long time in pop, then it’s aeons when your forte is cutting-edge electronic music. Or at least it would be if your music didn’t already exist in a world so unique it’s practically imitation-proof.
As might be expected from an album that was announced via a fluorescent green blimp flying over east London, Syro is a strange album. It doesn’t 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 that’s been released over the last decade and a half.
The devilish humour that has always run through Aphex’s work remains here, not just on the ludicrously fat rave synths that run through 180db_ [130] or the cheesy opening of PAPAT4 [pineal mix] (already likened, in some quarters, to Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime), but every time he playfully mangles a rhythm or throws in a disorientating series of bleeps or robot gargles just to keep you on your toes. CIRCLONT6A [141.98] alone feels like a kind of tour through the most brain-bending avenues of Aphex.
In these upbeat surroundings, only the final track aisatsana [102] seems out of place, an ambient piano tune complete with birdsong that recalls the hanging silences of Eric Satie yet lacks the emotional hit of James’s best works in this vein (notably Avril 14th). Tacked on at the end, it seems to highlight the fact that this is less the “statement” some people were expecting – a twisted 2014 pop album! A drillcore record made entirely by robots! Something you can only hear by purchasing replacement ears on the deep web! – and more just a collection of things James has had lying around for release. Perhaps that’s why some critics have seemed mildly deflated at the lack of jaw-dropping moments on Syro. But hearing James do what he does best – and Syro is frequently him doing what he does best – is always a jaw-dropping experience, no matter how many times he’s made your jaw drop before.
