Richard D. James has spent much of his career making electronic music behave in ways that seem faintly unreasonable. As Aphex Twin, he can make machinery sound playful, tenderness sound damaged, and beauty emerge from something that at first appears merely broken. Rhythm, when it is present, refuses to stay obedient; melodies arrive and vanish before they can become sentimental; sounds that ought to belong to different worlds are placed beside one another until the distinction itself begins to feel unnecessary. Even at its most violent or eccentric, the music pays attention to small details. A tiny change in tone can shift the feeling of a whole piece. James has never seemed particularly interested in choosing between the human and the mechanical. He is interested in what happens when they contaminate one another, when something programmed begins to feel vulnerable, or something intimate becomes strangely inhuman. The result is music that can be exhilarating, funny, frightening, and unexpectedly beautiful without ever settling comfortably into any of those descriptions.
appears in: essential ambient