Review: Aphex Twin - Syro
By Eli Schoop, Contributor
[Warp; 2014]
Rating: 9/10
Key Tracks: “XMAS_EVET10(thanaton3 mix),” “180db_[130],” “PAPAT4 [155]”
This is a new Aphex Twin album. His first in 13 years, to be exact. Some might say that means Syro is a comeback album, or a ploy to get back into public consciousness. But Richard D. James, although eccentric, has always been first and foremost about the music.
What has been brewing in his mind for the last 13 years is all bare on this album and it's a sound to behold. Meticulously structured yet flowing and loose, Syro is a testament to the paradigm of Aphex Twin and his genius.
It's surreal how well James has adjusted between his long hiatus to the musical landscape of 2014. No one really ever tried to imitate his style, lest they be branded a copycat to a genre legend, but considering how different EDM is in the modern era, the sheer inventiveness of what Syro brings is astounding.
Revamping his old techniques is a brilliant measure, yet it plays across as nothing like Selected Ambient Works 85-92, ...I Care Because You Do or any of his other highly regarded works. There's footwork/juke influence and similarities to contemporaries like Lone, Boards of Canada and Fennesz, but nothing is wholly borrowed.
Immediately notable about this record is the way it layers and unravels throughout each song. “XMAS_EVET10 [120](thanaton3 mix)” alone feels like a bustling city or the relationship between cells drifting around your body.
You could grasp Syro and put it in a petri dish, it feels that alive. James is so purposeful in each of his little electronic squeaks and grunts in order to create a feeling of urgency and unique sensation; no sound comes out of left field.
Due to the extreme depth of the songs, everything is not initially revealed on the first listen. What winds up happening are grooves and rhythms, seeming subtle at the beginning, forcing a distinct response to evolutions that occur during the tracks. There's almost a chopped and screwed element to the rearranging and repetition that may seem coincidental, yet it is very deliberate in nature. “CIRCLONT14 (shrymoning mix)” has these aspects in bulk, the song twisting and turning, almost liquid in its approach.
In an interview with Pitchfork, James said he wishes he could “bloody keep the same setup for more than about five minutes, because then I would actually get good at that setup. But I just get bored and swap things out.” This is a perfect example of how he works as a musician and how Syro works as a piece in general. It's constantly changing, fluid one minute and rigid the next. More than any other artist in music culture right now, James made an album free of any context and pressures and the result is a sweet blend of old and new.
