One spin of ‘Syro’ is enough to leave your expectations splattered across a wall. Actually, it’s enough to have you questioning what those expectations were in the first place and, crucially, why you bothered wasting brain space on them. Richard D. James, 13 years removed from ‘Drukqs’, has rolled out an Aphex Twin record that double underlines in red his place in a league of his own.
So many times in the past, James has taken us to places that are both alluring and unnerving. His music has been both maddeningly addictive and frightening; the glimpse of something out of the ordinary at the corner of your vision. ‘Syro’ initially appeared set to follow that path, luring us in before disappearing down a rabbit hole. Traces of it popped up in everyday places - smeared on a plate - and in the skies above. It also lurked on the deep web.
In reality, it’s more like unwrapping a pass the parcel present. There’s an initial, giddy rush that we haven’t always been granted in the past, but beneath that there are layers of hidden delights. James has poured a lifetime’s worth of scattergun melody into these 12 songs, flexing his compositional muscles while still scratching the backs of audiophiles.
The sheer, ever-expanding variety of textures, tricks, bleeps, whirrs and thuds that make it up shouldn’t be this immediate and gratifying, but James is a special case and here he’s purring.
There aren’t any forays into uncharted waters and very little by way of genre-mangling pop rushes, rather a glutinous spread of melodies and beats suitable for the pick and choose approach or single-sitting, sloppy-mouthed devouring.
From the immediate, funk-infused minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix] to the skittering, rapidly modulating PAPAT4 [155]" (pineal mix), ‘Syro’ is a record that toys with form not to confuse, but to draw out its base pleasures. CIRCLONT6A [141.98]" (syrobonkus mix), then, emerges unbowed from a nightmarish intro with a wash of synth noise that creeps up in a manner that would be disconcerting if it wasn’t so easy to get swept away by it.
It’s a trick that’s repeated throughout and each time the effect is the same. 'Syro’ is endlessly inventive in its simplicity and comes complete with a sense that we’re not the only ones getting a kick out of it.
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