Album Review: Aphex Twin - Syro

The artist's latest album displays his command over the genre.

Aphex Twin's latest album, Syro, is a mix of electronic experiments and dance-floor destroyers. Courtesy Warp

Aphex Twin

Syro

(Warp)

Four stars

Aphex Twin is arguably the single most influential electronic-music producer alive today. Across his two-decade-plus career, artists from stadium- packing superstar DJs to rock royalty – including Radiohead and MGMT – have lined up to pay tribute to the man, born Richard D James.

Recently, that status has been multiplied by a perceived hiatus – much talk ahead of this sixth Aphex Twin album has focused on the gap since the Cornishman's last album under the guise, which was 2001's Drukqs. In reality, James has scarcely been away, with releases under his alternative alter egos – The Tuss, Caustic Window (via a Kickstarter campaign) and, most prolifically, AFX.

The evolution of James's music will make much more sense to devoted listeners privy to those interim releases. Syro can largely be split into two categories: shimmering electronic experiments and twisted dance-floor destroyers in the mould of his own patented "Aphex acid" (a squelchy, mutated strain of acid techno, which was itself indebted to the nascent 1980s acid-house movement).

The more energetic excursions are undoubtedly where the fun is, particularly where his playful mischief explodes into downright aural malevolence.

The warped rave of 180db_ [130] and the title track (well, as near as James gets: syro u473t8+e [141.98][piezoluminescence mix]) are the pick on that front. The former comes off like a night out in Ibiza while experiencing some sort of debilitating aneurysm, the latter is memorable from the moment it opens with a distorted speech sample to its breakdown into addictive, surround-sound electro-funk.

Sometimes, James fights on both fronts almost concurrently – s950tx16wasr10 [163.97][earth portal mix] enters the world as a lowdown jungle workout before shooting off at a skittering tangent. Immediately after that, Syro's hour of exploration ends with fitting finality via aisatsana [102] – a disarmingly pretty piano passage that listeners of his ambient works will welcome with open ears.

The physical act of reviewing Aphex Twin has often been the sonic equivalent of describing a hitherto-undiscovered chemical element, and not only because James has a penchant for titling his tracks as if labelling quantum-physics laboratory notes. That’s a trait that’s certainly present and correct here – advance kudos to anybody shouting out requests at a live show.

But while Syro won't, as James has often claimed the ability to do, alter electronic music as we know it, even at half-capacity he is still an idiosyncratic head and shoulders above almost any artist operating in 2014.