That New Aphex Twin Track

Get it while it’s available. Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, aka AFX, aka the musician behind the Selected Ambient Works Volume II album I wrote the book about for the 33 1/3 series, having previously wiped clean his SoundCloud account, suddenly, yesterday, popped a new track up, “Diskhat ALL Prepared1mixed [snr2mix].” I tweeted the arrival at the time (twitter.com/disquiet), but am only now getting around to a post.

It’s a minor downtempo masterwork, the plinky pianos against loose-snare vaguely funky-drummer beats sounding more like early DJ Cam, or DJ Krush, or Funki Porcini for that matter, than like what folks might necessarily expect from Aphex Twin. Its appearance coincides with the release of the new EP Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt2, and this freely downloadable track appears to be a slight variation on the EP’s opening cut. After an album, the widely praised Syro, that sounded like it was recorded shortly after his 2001 Drukqs, it’s especially refreshing to hear something that sounds unlike him, even if, peculiarly, from a stylistic standpoint, it sounds like it was recorded before Drukqs.

Highly recommended. And, again, download now, because he’ll almost certainly soon enough again wipe clean that SoundCloud account. Speaking of which, does anyone reading this have a copy of the alternate version of “Avril 14th” he briefly had on his SoundCloud account?

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/richarddjames.