After I sent out Wednesday’s issue (just for paid subscribers), it occurred to me that a lot of readers come to Disquiet.com and to This Week in Sound from my book about Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Bloomsbury 33 ⅓, 2014). Due to that connection, I figured I’d reprint here one item of the three from Wednesday (the other two were about Brian Eno and Anton Lukoszevieze), as this relates to Aphex Twin’s just announced release, and the first track available from it:
DARK STAR: Aphex Twin has a new track out today, the first from a forthcoming EP due on June 28. “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f” is less frantic, less redolent of EDM excess, than has been much of his output since he returned from something akin to professional stasis back in 2014 with the album Syro. It’s been five years, though, since he last released anything (that was 2018’s Collapse). The imagery accompanying this release appears to be a 3D mishmash of musical instrument interfaces. I have had my impression of Buchla synthesizers in the mix confirmed by an informed friend. Here they look like Buchla was absorbed by the Borg from Star Trek. That cube structure aligns with some of the visuals from Aphex’s set last week at the festival Sónar in Barcelona (full video on YouTube). This new track, very much to its credit, doesn’t end where it starts. What begins as a welcomingly sedate, fairly straightforward Aphex song — mellow melody hovering above a slightly broken beat — blossoms into something far more rhythmically complex and melodically florid. And then it veers again, slowing rapidly to close with extended phrases of what sound like sampled or synthesized voices: 21st-century Gregorian chants for chill-out rooms.