‘Fresher + Cleaner’ (The Best Aphex Track Ever!) = ‘Fresher + Cleaner’minus the intro hi hats ‘Dance To The Beat’ = ‘dance2thebeat’although the tape version is speeded up noticeably so that it clocks in at under 4 minutes. ‘- ” -–‘ = ‘Untitled’, track 5 from the officially unreleased ‘Analogue Bubblebath 5’ EP ‘The one that makes you shiver’ = ‘8 Utopia’ + scanning by R.James = ‘Phone Pranks’ (Part 1 & 2) from the original Caustic Window LP that was finally released via a Kickstarter by WATMM. ‘Bradley Styder’ = the first track from ‘Bradley’s Robot’ from the Strider B. ‘unreleased Ventolin’ = ‘phlangebeat’ although a lot slower on the tape Uziq’= ‘Giant Deflating Football’ from the Mike & Rich album on Rephlex ‘Mantra’ = the track known as ‘Humanoid Must Not Escape’ from the Caustic Window ‘Joyrex J9’ picture disc (303 side), you can hear a sampled voice say what sounds like ‘Mantra’.Īfter ‘Mantra’ comes a short 30 second piece of electronic glitching with the sample, “I had to kill Bob Morgan because he made a mistake”, the same as on the ‘Bob Morgan’ track included in the uploads.
‘Epic Breakbeat’ = not uploaded to Soundcloud ‘Untitled Jungle tune’ = track 10 from the Joyrex tape that was uploaded a few years ago, although faster ‘-?-‘ (’94)= track 11 from the Joyrex tape that was uploaded a few years ago, although at a faster speed ‘AFX vs UZiq’ = not uploaded to Soundcloud Here’s how the original tape titles match up (and bear in mind that the cassette titles could be wrong in the first place): A total of 5 out of the 17 tracks from the tape appeared, with another 7 having been heard on RDJ-related records elsewhere since the tape was made, leaving me no doubt that this was Aphex.
As more tracks were uploaded I started recognising more tunes with even a couple of titles matching. As you can see from the track list above, the compiler wasn’t 100% sure on a lot of the titles but the track that starts side 2, ‘The one that makes you shiver’, was the same as ‘8 Utopia’, albeit in far worse quality.
Way back in the mid 90’s I was made a ‘best of’ tape of unreleased work by a friend of Richard’s on the condition that I kept the content to myself. I was suspicious at first but when a track named ‘8 Utopia’ was uploaded I knew that even if the person uploading and commenting wasn’t Aphex then the music was. As more and more tracks appeared and comments started appearing from the user it became apparent that this was indeed the real deal and Xmas had either been delayed by a month or arrived ridiculously early.
Very quickly speculation spread that this was actually Richard and these tracks were selections from his mythical archive or thousands of unreleased tunes, some dating back from before he broke through in the early 90’s. James has, did it really have to? It’s still an astounding collection of beautiful, intricate material that’ll live on long after the dust settles and a poignant reminder of the relevance of one of the most important artists of our time.Few can’t have heard that earlier this month user48736353001 started uploading copious amounts of old tracks to their Soundcloud account claiming that they were a fan of Richard D James aka Aphex Twin and had made lots of tracks in his style. Whilst some may argue Syro doesn’t advance the Aphex Twin sound in any particular direction, when one has already revolutionized electronic music the way Richard D. James for instance the pensive melodic interplay on ‘XMAS_EVET10 (thanaton3 mix)’ or the brittle micro detailing on ‘CIRCLONT14 (shrymoming mix)’. What followed was 12 pieces of lush, detailed electronic music that could only be attributed to Richard D. Syro will be the first new Aphex Twin album since 2001’s Drukqs.Įasily the most highly anticipated LP of 2014, the announcement of Aphex Twin’s latest LP Syro since the seminal Drukqs LP in 2001 promoted mass hysteria and excitement in equal measure. The first Aphex Twin release on Warp would be 1993’s On EP, which was followed by four studio albums for the label, as well as numerous other EPs. His first full-length album, Selected Ambient Works 85-92, came out in 1992 through R&S Records. James has been releasing music since the beginning of the ‘90s. Aphex Twin made his 2014 return to Warp with the album Syro.