Aphex Twin

Advantages Great skills from a master of the trade
Disadvantages difficult to pick up and listen to

...Now, lets not beat around the bush here. AFX is Aphex Twin under a different, yet not very secretive, name. This means that this will be an Aphex Twin album underneath with all the strangeness that goes with an Aphex Twin album. From what I know AFX is a side project that has been going around for awhile and this album is a selection from the Analord EPs. After drukqs was released and Aphex Twin was hounded for putting in a commercial effort, a real step up was needed to convince his fans that he was still about what all of us had come to love him for. A weird blend of his musisc that can only be defined by adding him to the very exclusive genre, Aphex Twin. Coming in at 56:42, this album is a fairly decent length and is bound to set the ears bleeding at some point. CASE: The case on this is a very simple brown cardboard... Read review

Advantages Classic. Cult. A few good tracks.
Disadvantages Weak compared to other Aphex Twin releases. Bland techno.

...Aphex Twin is one the most respected electronica artists ever. He has brought so much to the I.D.M, experimental and even musique concrète scene that it would be fair to consider placing the "-master" suffix in front of his name, Richard D. James. Polygon Window was Aphex Twin's nickname back in 1993; you can add Power Pill (1992), Caustic Window (1992-93-97-98) and AFX (1990-91-95-97-2000-03-05) to the patchy lists of self-appointed names. Under his exotic Polygon Window alias, he would release 2 major works, both in 1993: Surfing on Sine Waves and the Quoth Ep. Both of these are fresh but somewhat lacking works, typifying Richard's Analogue Bubblebath series (1990-91 to 1995) as well as his AFX-ish style; in other words, not his best work. Latter on, Richard would move onto more composite and genre-defying releases. But his... Read review

Advantages It's prbably like nothing you've ever heard before
Disadvantages A lot of arseing around

...Aphex Twin is meant to be at the vanguard of intelligent electronica. It's always seemed vaguely ironic to me that a lot of so called 'intelligent' music sounds like a load of pointless pissing around and stupid noises to the average listener. Some people would say that this is because the average listener is just not intelligent enough to understand it, but then it never occurs to these people that they might be the ones being totally suckered into spending £15 on albums of disjointed white noise in order to prove how 'alternative' or 'intelligent' they are. Regardless of all that if something is interesting and sounds good too you then i don't see why you need to understand it. This is what this mini-album is like. Basically it's a collection of VERY weird and sometimes beautiful tracks of electronic noises which does on occasions... Read review