Check out Frank Macari’s latest blog post!
Back in the 1990s, Richard James, better known by his stage name of Aphex Twin, released a series of electronic albums that took the world by storm. The Guardian described him as one of the most influential figures in contemporary electronic music, and his debut album, Selected Ambient Works 85-92, is considered by many electronic fans to be one of the best albums of the 1990s. However, after 2001, when Aphex Twin released his most recent album, Drukqs, he seemed to put away the Aphex Twin persona. There’s speculation that James has been recording under another persona, but nothing’s been confirmed. However, it looks like there’s a new Aphex Twin album coming out soon.
Speculation started this weekend after there was a blimp sighted over the London sky with the Aphex Twin logo on the side of it. Across the pond in Manhattan, there was an Aphex Twin logo stenciled onto the sidewalk. Then on Monday, James tweeted a deep web address, which is only accessible through the web browser TOR through a huge amount of work. Those true fans that made it through, however, found references to an album called SYRO, accompanied by a supposed track list. Like many of Aphex Twin’s other albums, the song titles are made up of various jumbles of letters and numbers, such as “CIRCLONT6A” or “fz pseudotimestrech+e+3”. Later in the day, a new, .com website was posted, which had the same information, but with the track titles X’d out. It appears the trackback information points to the efforts of Stereogum to access the information, which is followed by about fifty screens worth of blank space until the text “More information as it becomes available” appears at the bottom of the page. Fans of Aphex Twin, who have been waiting for over 10 years for this day, must be shivering with antici…………pation.
Frank Macari 