Aphex Twin
Richard D. James

THE REVIEW

After listening to this album at least twenty times in a row and realizing I'm absolutely not tired of it, a question arose in my mind: what does Richard James have in his head? How is it possible for someone to create an album so perfect in terms of sound, melody, and rhythm? And how is it possible to combine such diametrically opposed sounds without falling into banality?

The answer is called talent. Obviously, Richard has also had his share of missteps (I’m referring, for instance, to certain albums under the pseudonym AFX), but after producing two monuments of ambient music like SAW and SAW2, finding a gem like this in our hands means only one thing: talent and love for music. And having listened to a lot of it, in a varied way. Diametrically opposed sounds like those violin tunes intertwining with purely obsessive drum‘n’bass lines created on the synthesizer (“4”, “Girl Boy Song”); an organ-like sound rising over frantically acidic bases almost at the limit of break core (“Corn Mouth”); the acidic lullabies (“To Cure a Weaklin Child”); but also the amazing airiness of a harmonic keyboard surrounded by something undefined, twisting upon itself (“Yellow Calx”). The enchanting “Fingerbib” is a triumph of simplicity (perhaps the best episode) and brings out the more "dreamy" side of Richard; acknowledging his acid origins, we find a dancing “Cornish Acid” and a sharp “Peek”; “Goon Gumpas” is the ideal soundtrack for some journey of a medieval hero in search of his princess. “Logon Rock” and its liturgy close the album.

Put like this in two lines, the album doesn’t give the idea of how it was truly composed. The meticulous attention to every detail and every level of sound ensures that the songs remain well etched in the mind, as if they were engravings on granite. Let's add that in 1996 no one had these ideas yet and even years later electronic artists are still inspired by this album (and also much of Aphex's discography)….. A milestone of electronics without any shadow of a doubt.