Album review: Aphex Twin
Aphex Twin has returned with an album of skittering flibbertigibbet electronic music that has a nice lightness of touch. But before you stick it on as background for your next dinner party, be aware: that brightness is only by comparison to his last album, drukqs, 13 years ago, which often sounded like a half-pound of nails and a broken bottle rattling around in a high-speed tumble-dryer.
Aphex Twin set out his template of sounds 20 years ago and the musical motifs in Syro are selected liberally from his past output, with the exception of the more deranged end of drum’n’bass. That is to say that Syro sounds like it could have been released before drukqs. And yet, to sound like old Aphex Twin is still to sound bracing and modern.
