[Toilet & Bowels]

Seems like news to me. The first track from it got released today, and it's pretty good. It's like something you've heard before, but a bit better.

[Genteel Death]

It sounds like too many other things I've heard by Aphex Twin before but unremarkable. Maybe it's just some stuff he recorded ten years ago and he's releasing it now. He can get away with it, being the David Bowie of electronica.

[Bytor Peltor]

Haven't heard the new track, but I've enjoyed the way the blimp started popping up on twitter a few weeks back. Not sure what to expect, but I do look forward to some of the remixes.

 

[Severian]

I've heard the album.

Well, half of it. Once. I decided that something like this only comes around once in a great while... A new release from an artist such as RDJ, who we thought we might have never have heard from again...

I really don't want to spoil it all for myself. It does sound familiar, like the completion of a thought from a generation ago. I want to be able to listen to it from start to finish while doing nothing at all... eyes closes, hands behind my head, smiling at the ceiling with someone else's devilish grin.

shit is real.

[foreverasskiss]

i liked it. the new song that is.

[SonicBebs]

Proper excited, but also preparing myself to be disappointed

I always wait for the actual album release for some reason. Hanging onto nostalgia and the excitement of youth

[SonicBebs]

Which is bullshit as the new songs online are the equivalent of releasing singles, and I used to love singles...

[Severian]

Originally Posted by SonicBebs

Proper excited, but also preparing myself to be disappointed

I always wait for the actual album release for some reason. Hanging onto nostalgia and the excitement of youth

Well, me too. I used to ONLY preview albums by artists in my "pantheon"; that is, that group of artists who surpass "favoritism" and instead just kind of float above all other musicians, untouchable, like gods... Titans at the very least.

But now it's more like the other way around. I will gladly download leaked versions or swipe promos by bands that I like who aren't in the pantheon; but when it comes to the very best of the best, I find that I can't bring myself to spoil the childlike Xmas morning giddiness of pulling cellophane off the long-awaited real deal LP.

That's why I stopped SYRO. It wasn't easy, believe me, but when I started thinking about how vacant these years of AphexTwinlessness have been, I decided that this was a momentous occasion, and that I was not going to fuck it up for myself.

Plus I think it brings bad luck. I listened to the Eternal so many times in the month before it's official release that buying the actual album was totally anticlimactic; if I'd known it was very likely my last opportunity to hear a new SY album, I wouldn't have done it.

Actually I'm talking a bunch of shit here.. I've pre-funked every Flaming Lips album since Yoshimi. That includes every goddamn one of their 2011 Ep's, as well as Heady Fwends itself, and later The Terror. I did the same fucking thing with both Songs in A&E and Sweet Heart, Sweet Light. And just in the past year and a half I've pre-funked Yeezus To Be Kind, the Kid is Gone box set by Unwound, Bécs, Lese Majesty... All albums by Pantheon artists, or prospective pantheon artists. I pre-funked M B V too. And Tomorrow's Harvest. Haha! I guess I really have no code of ethics to speak of when it comes to music released by my favorite artists. Or if I do, it can go out the window in an instant, especially if lots of people are listening early, because then I feel like the last to hear the new music from my own fucking pantheon!

In any case, SYRO is safe for now. Is it on my iPod? Why yes, yes it is. Could I change my mind any moment? Don't see why not. But right now, I'm taking it one step (one minute.. second) at a time, because I really do want to feel my heart race as I unwrap the album. It's as tempting as a loaded shot of heron sitting on my bedside table. Luckily I have Caustic Window to use as a kind of "methadone"/nicotine patch/[insert more easy craving-related metaphors here] to tide me over.

[Severian]

By the way, does anyone else think that Drukqs got an exceptionally bad rap? I just read the review Pitchfork wrote back in 2001, and I was shocked. It's probably my favorite Aphex Twin album, as long as SAW vol.2 isn't counted as a proper album.

It's fuckin Drukqs, man! A classic to me and my brethren. I didn't stop listening to that beast for weeks after it dropped.

[EDIT:] corrected misspelling of album that I am so publicly gushing over. Truth is, I've been making that mistake for years. Blame the damage I did to my own precious memory while listening to, you guessed it, DRUKQS, in the time immediately surrounding its release.

[chocolate_ladyland]

I read a VICE review from the listening party and he said it sounded a bit like the RDJ album (crazed non-danceable mix of acid, jungle, techno etc). The author also brought up a good point by saying all of Aphex Twin's pre-2000 stuff sounds like RDJ trying to create music that sounds like the future. Now that we're here, his music doesn't really sound like the music of now so much as RDJ's vision of what he wanted the music of the present to sound like. I liked the single, but it definitely didn't sound revolutionary like how SAW Vol 1 must have sounded upon release.

[guest]

Originally Posted by chocolate_ladyland

I read a VICE review from the listening party and he said it sounded a bit like the RDJ album (crazed non-danceable mix of acid, jungle, techno etc). The author also brought up a good point by saying all of Aphex Twin's pre-2000 stuff sounds like RDJ trying to create music that sounds like the future. Now that we're here, his music doesn't really sound like the music of now so much as RDJ's vision of what he wanted the music of the present to sound like. I liked the single, but it definitely didn't sound revolutionary like how SAW Vol 1 must have sounded upon release.

I don't think being overly innovative is the purpose of syro at least, more richard clearing his head/archives and putting out a record which is most definitely sure to regain peoples' attention so he can mindfuck us all over again. apparently he has another record on the go for warp in the (very) near future, in addition to their being a load of more perceivably left-field stuff awaiting release.


anyways, who's having FUN with this lil baby?

[_slavo_]

I like the first three songs on this album a lot. The rest of them, not that much.

[davenotdead]

its wonderful. title track is stuck in my head all the time. specifically the last 2 minutes

[Genteel Death]

even though i didn't really like the first track released off the album i'm looking forward to listening to the album.

[chocolate_ladyland]

Originally Posted by guest

I don't think being overly innovative is the purpose of syro at least, more richard clearing his head/archives and putting out a record which is most definitely sure to regain peoples' attention so he can mindfuck us all over again. apparently he has another record on the go for warp in the (very) near future, in addition to their being a load of more perceivably left-field stuff awaiting release.


anyways, who's having FUN with this lil baby?

I wasn't necessarily blaming him for not being that innovative, just an observation. I heard some mags calling the song "the next trend shit" and was just like wtf no this isn't. Still a great album tho.

BTW guest have you heard the new Shellac? Prolly my fav release by them.

[chocolate_ladyland]

And anyways... innovation is overrated. If an artist develops their own "voice" within whatever genre/framework they work in then that's good enough for me. But developing that voice I don't think really counts as innovation.

[foreverasskiss]

heard the new album.

you know? can't dig fx twin. like some shit he's done and love the video for Windowlicker but. that kind of IDM 90's....... it's like Pink floyd....don't know what's the big deal. i find it corny and lame. if it wasn't for bands like Radiohead constructing it into song form, i wouldn't bother at all.

i understand he's innovative and talented but, fuck me.. it's boring and dull. great for hip hop samples and trance mixes.

sorry i insulted yr grand intelligence. fuck off.

[guest]

Originally Posted by chocolate_ladyland

And anyways... innovation is overrated. If an artist develops their own "voice" within whatever genre/framework they work in then that's good enough for me. But developing that voice I don't think really counts as innovation.

yerp right on, and at this point there is in no way any need for richard to conform to his listeners' expectations as to what constitutes him being 'innovative'. and he's most definitely plied a certain approach for so long a time as to have developed something really singular, really distinctive, which is why the innumerable imitators which have sprung up over the last decade or so (I mean the self-serious wankers, not the immensely underrated stuff which richard & GWC put out on rephlex) have fallen so short, and indeed why syro comes across as such a fucking belter. because on that really fundamental level, the production is incredible, like the tuss if it were properly mastered, and the tracks and their internal tangents are so well thought out as to give it that impression that it's intimately planned and exceedingly organic in its development.



metz massages my mental clitoris.

[foreverasskiss]

i like the new album. his best i think because i can sit through it all. it's his 90's compressed all over the map shit that i can't dig.

listening to it (Syro) today on my ipod while sanding and can't get the synth sounds out my head and itsseemse a good balance of analog and digital sounds and like Sev said it hasa good bottom end and besides being the funkiest thing he's produced or released.

why when i typed dand correct myselfends up like this???delete...now im gonna go write a song about.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by shirttail

I like the album & its Japanese bonus track.

Whoah there. I haven't heard the bonus track... Thanks for mentioning it. I shall scour the earth for it.

∞

But here's a question:

 

What the fuck is this all about, eh?