A legitimate new Aphex Twin album (first in 13 years). I love it (everyone seems to love it), it's definitely got a lot of the same texture as the Analord stuff from 2005, but also a lot of other tricks both old and new, and does a great job of absorbing rhythm programming ideas from across his whole catalog (and some other newer outside influences too). Definitely sounds like Aphex Twin, but not a rehash of any specific thing from the past. That combined with it not being as willfully weird as it could possibly be (despite it still being pretty fucking weird at times) might be a bit disappointing for some. But it's great music, a bizarre and far reaching borrowing from many genres and subgenres with all the usual Aphex tics and sense of humor. Intended stylized capitalization included after track descriptions.

RIYL: Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada, Hyperdub and Hessle stuff, electronic music in general, catchy weird stuff


1: breakbeats and shuffling scratchy-textured percussion, with squelchy synth. a more shimmery synth comes in later, along with what sounds like something on tape being run backwards briefly. vocodored vocals throughout, which slowly become more prominet through the course of the song. breakdown with choirish vocals starts just before 3:00. this one's the single. 4:47 minipops 67 (source field mix)
2: squelchy synth, heavily reverbed piano. some drum hits are truncated with pretty much no decay, and some have a bit of reverb that trails off for a while. chimes and plinky keys later, along with some hushed and effected sped-up soul vocal samples. demented 80s-esque electro feel to the whole thing. 10:31 XMAS EVET10
3: FCC ("fucking") swaggering bassline and hip-hop flavored drum programming (drums remind me of clint mansell's hip-hop inflected tracks from the "requiem for a dream" score). funky pitch-bent casio harpsichord sounds and an assortment of ghostly synth pads. i think this song might have the only intelligible vocals on the album, a short sample about a bad interaction at a club (kind of buried, but not that buried). 5:03 produk 29
4: starts pretty acid-y, with squelchy keys and breaks, but takes on hints of synthy 80s R&B, and then hints of... something slightly more sinister i can't find a reference point for. closes on a few bars of just the R&B flavor. 4:28 4 bit 9d api+e+6
5: heavy 4/4 kick with no decay, descending/warping/smothering acid synth, quick snares and hats. gets break-y at points, but keeps going back to the 4/4. probably the most analord-like? this is what the aliens will play when they come to annex your rave. 3:11 180db
6: opens with chopped to hell vocal sample and stuttery kicks and congas. energetic but slightly melancholy and twangy synth comes in just after 1:00. growling bass. lasers later on, and that strobe effect where slivers of sound are rapidly sliced out, which fucks with your head in a really pleasent way if you're wearing headphones, like at the end of "Mt Saint Michel+Saint Michaels Mount" on "Drukqs". 6:00 CIRCLONT6A
7: mellow weird little interlude 0:58 fz pseudotimestretch+e+3
8: opens with slightly evil space-age moog, and ringing that sounds like wine glasses being played slowly morphing into pitch-warped BoC style stuff. growling burbling bassline. nonsense vocal samples (might be a filtered sample of one of his kids?). synths go shimmery and watery at points, things drop out and build back up around the halfway point. just the right amount of creepy (not overwhelmingly creepy like that one track with the kids laughing on "selected ambient works vol 2"). classic aphex with the frantic bass and laser and percussion rushes at the end. 7:21 CIRCLONT14 (shrymoming mix)
9: 16-bit racing game synths and dnb programming. calms down for a while around 2/3 in, then bassline gets progressively heavier, and things re-build, but not to the same crazy level. 6:33 syro u473t8+e (piezoluminescence mix)
10: bright, upbeat, shimmery synth. then skittering jungle-ish drums kick in, and a warm moderately spazzy bassline. aphex stays current with some footwork influence on the drum programming. 4:19 PAPAT4 (pineal mix)
11: echoed out skeletal drum and bass as the foundation, which gets gradually enveloped in ethereal pads and snaking lead synths. some shimmery textures, some squelchy textures. i kind of wonder whether it's all built out of samples since the title is a bunch of concatenated sampler model numbers. even though they don't really sound the same, 10 and 11 have the same feeling to me as the millie & andrea and special request stuff, and it's cool to see him reworking some of the same ideas as people who've been more prolific in recent times. 6:02 s950tx16wasr10 (earth portal mix)
12: quiet piano piece with the low but clear sound of birds chirping in the backround of the recording. "avril 14th" is the comparison point. 5:21 aisatsana


1, 10, 2, 5, 8 (and 12 is great but is hard to rank against the others)