Week Fifty-Two: Aphex Twin – Syro.
I listened to Syro for the first time while on a lunch break at my old shitty job, walking to Asda, probably to buy houmous. I used to hate houmous. Couldn't stand it. I eat it a lot now. This isn't a metaphor about changing opinions, not really building to anything in particular. Just adding some colour.
It was a bright day in September. Ever since Syro burst out of the deep web via blimps and some graffiti here and there, I'd been dying to hear it. In the buildup to the album dropping, I got in to a bunch of lesser-known Richard D. James records. The Tuss, the Caustic Window kickstarted record, some AFX bits and pieces. Revisited some of the classic Aphex albums for the first time in years.
SAWII was a frequent sleep-time or burned-out day watching cartoons soundtrack but it had slipped firmly into the background until Caustic Window and then Syro in quick succession reminded me that Aphex Twin was a thing that existed and that I loved. I'm a fickle, forgetful person when it comes to music – I'm usually trying out something new, and old favourites get forgotten all too readily. When bands break up or release something new or reunite, or when someone dies, it's a reminder to go back to them. I'd be lying if I said I listened to everything all the time.
So the wait for Syro brought SAWII back into play for the last few mind-numbing months of that job, along with a few others. Richard D. James album was for the bus in the morning, at just half an hour it was the perfect length for the commute. But the ambient sprawl was the perfect, world-blocking, haze-inducing soundtrack for a job I didn't want to do, and was on heavy rotation when I wasn't just listening to the Smith Street Band and staring longingly at the door.
I was excited for Syro. A lot of people were. Possibly slightly disproportionately to the level I and others actually liked Aphex Twin at the time – but for a certain group of people it was a cultural event on the level of fucking Star Wars. Or, apparently, a new Adele album. Not down with Adele, though. Just beige, innit. Lowest common denominator trash. You could probably say the same about Star Wars, if you were being brutally honest, but I love Star Wars, so fuck it. You couldn't really say the same about Syro.
That first play, walking in the cold autumn sun with the record loaded on my iPod, I liked it straight away. Didn't try to over-analyse, just soaked it up and enjoyed. Slow-paced, subtle, effortless. Like nothing else he's ever done, but also kind of like all of it at once. A mature, self-assured return that was crowd-pleasing without compromising creativity or integrity. James gave some high-profile interviews full of baffling statements that, much like the record itself, invited us all closer while still keeping us typically at arms length.
The reviews were favourable, of course. I can't think of anyone who doesn't like the thing, although reviewers who slapped a perfect score on it sort of showed themselves up as hype-responders who didn't really understand what they were listening to. Because, as anyone who had any criticism at all pointed out, it's fairly unremarkable as Aphex Twin records go – beautiful, catchy, challenging to listen to at times, frantic, and ever-changing, yeah, but innovative? No, not so much. Given that I was pretty unfamiliar with Analord, and many of James' career "low points" (relatively speaking), I – and clearly many others – were still used to thinking of him as a constant innovator, always pushing the boundaries, always striking out into new territory. Which Syro doesn't do. It's probably his safest full-length record to date.
But still. The barriers he sits within are barriers that he himself built. Even if he's not pushing them, he's reaching every corner – you can hear flashes of 20-plus years of experimentation, development, and technological refinement all crystalise on songs written over the course of years but ultimately put together in a matter of months. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, it's just the pinnacle of fucking wheels. It's a full stop to a period of a career, a way of working – and you can tell that James still hasn't quite settled on what he's going to do next. Post-Syro releases have mostly been eventual releases of earlier work – the Computer Controlled Instruments thing is the only crop of newly-written material, I think, and shows most clearly the way he's thinking and the directions he's facing, even if he's not heading in them yet.
Back to Syro, though. There's no need to describe what it sounds like, because you probably already know. It's playful and teasing in the typical RDJ fashion, and then it's suddenly tender and emotional. It's poppy by James' standards in that it's fairly accessible, but it contains no outright Windowlicker-style pop hits. It's not quite James doing what he does best, because it plays it too safe for that. It's mostly just James doing what he does well, and doing it in a very confidently, self-assured manner. It is a comeback record after all, a reminder that he exists. "Remember this?" it asks. Whether we see his name again or not, it's the last time we'll hear it done this way. It's the closing shot of Return of the Jedi. It's the guy in Love Actually, when he's done angstily zipping up his turtleneck and refusing to eat pie, walking away saying "enough". It's not the best Aphex Twin, but we'll take it, because who knows when we'll get another proper one.
Syro really is fucking great, though – there's nothing like hearing a master at work, and there really isn't a bad note on the whole thing. That's the problem with pushing the boundaries – it doesn't always work. Syro is James playing it safe, but showing just how good it sounds when you do actually play his version of safe. And not in the same way that Analord plays it safe, either – that was new ideas with old tech, whereas this is old ideas and new ideas alike, played on well over a hundred bits of gear. The best of everything. Going back over everything he ever did, and getting it right this time. Perfectly arranged and mixed, it sounds incredible through headphones, and even though it slows right down in places it literally never sits still. The closer you listen, the more remarkable and dynamic it becomes. It soaks into the background like SAWII, or it can grab your attention like RDJ Album – the choice really is yours.
Richard D. James has been gone for a long time. Even since The Tuss came out, electronic music has changed a ridiculous amount – it's liable to do so more than any other, to be fair. James' peers have weathered the tides of Skrillex and EDM and so on and so forth with varying degrees of success, whereas he hid beneath the waves until the time was right to emerge. It wasn't surprising that Syro was nominated for the Mercury Prize – the token "legacy" artist with their first record in a while – and it also wasn't shocking that it won because something bland always does. But despite the Mercury's relative irrelevance, the inclusion of Syro in something of that profile, as well as its Grammy win, proved that all the mystique, and what has now become the quiet genius of Richard D. James, has something that few others can match, I guess.
In a way, everything Richard D. James released in his career built to Syro. That's not to say it's the pinnacle of his work, because it isn't. It's not the best thing he's ever released, but it may be the most consistent and digestible. It lacks some of his weirder, or more ambient, or more aggressive tendencies. You could even call it "middle of the road" for James were you so inclined, even if it's still far from middle of the road compared to a lot of his competition for the Mercury Prize this year. It's a typical Aphex Twin record, which isn't something you can really say about any of the others – as a result, it sounds more like Richard D. James than anything else. It finishes on a tender note, with a recording, or possibly a reconstruction, of a piano piece from 2012, named after his wife (in anagram form, of course), one of the most outright personal things he's ever recorded. This is it. This is Aphex Twin, this is Richard D. James, distilled into one record – something he could possibly never have done without a few years away.
I've not listened to anything he's released after Syro yet. I don't know when I'll get round to it. I won't be covering them here, though – I planned things up to Syro, and here's where I'm stopping. Partially because I've run out of steam on the project somewhat and want to go back to enjoying his work properly. Partially because this just seems like a good place to leave it. If he'd disappeared again after Syro, I don't think it would have been all that surprising. Syro makes a good full stop. You're on your own with the new paragraph.
