In December 2016, Aphex Twin performed within the U.S. for the primary time in virtually a decade, at a pageant in Houston. By all accounts it was a memorable night time, full with a dramatic storm that hit throughout his set—the large screens have been lowered, revelers hid in porta-potties, and the rain appeared to drive Richard D. James to play tougher and tougher music. Eagle-eyed followers seen one thing else that night time: a brand new file, stamped with just a few logos and the easy title Houston, TX 12.17.16.
The music was ripped and on-line the following day. The EP—two 10-minute lengthy tracks of scuzzy damaged techno that switched gears as typically as Meshuggah change keys—was each awe-inspiring and befuddling. The identical goes for a lot of Music From the Merch Desk (2016 – 2023), a streaming compilation of the bodily releases he’s put out at his exhibits world wide since then. A few of his strangest and most difficult music is gathered right here, in a 38-track, two-and-a-half-hour package deal that feels each completist and incomplete (his really avant-garde Mt. Fuji cassette is lacking), filled with goodies for the musically curious however not well worth the slog of listening to during.
Not one of the music right here is new. There are already numerous Reddit threads debating the deserves of every launch, and Music From the Merch Desk affords no bonus materials or extras in any kind. A handful of those information have been already repeats, choosing out highlights from webstore-only releases, oddities like his inessential Korg demo 12″, and the well-known SoundCloud archive. One other good chunk of the compilation is taken from an LP also called Discipline Day, after the UK pageant James performed in 2017, that includes glimpses of brilliance overshadowed by fiddly noodling. For each spotlight just like the fuzzy, frantic “T20A ede 441”—as hyperactive as one thing off Drukqs—there’s an aimless experiment or a melody that doesn’t fairly land.
The remainder is hit and miss, with thrilling excessive factors. The Barcelona 12″, by no means formally launched on-line, is splendidly wiggly, significantly the psychedelic acid odyssey “rfc pt8.” And the London 14.09.2019 12″, cherry-picking tracks from the online-only EP Orphans, has essentially the most purposeful AFX work in a long time. Not often since …I Care As a result of You Do has his music been as straightforwardly fairly as his remix of Luke Vibert’s “Spiral Staircase,” which he submitted anonymously to a remix contest—that he received, naturally—in 2004. “Nightmail,” all scorched acid strains and feverish vocal loops, imagines what early AFX might need seemed like if he was steeped within the breakbeat hardcore scene of London moderately than tucked away in Cornwall. Better of all is “Soundlab20,” a retro electro monitor that conjures up James cruising down a beachside parkway in a convertible, with no facial distortions or bizarre imagery. It’s merely an ideal sunny-day jam, the likes of which he not often lets unfastened from his vault.
Tunes like these are value coming again to, however most of Music From the Merch Desk appears like listening to James determine his tools in actual time, stopping and beginning sketches with no discernible rhyme or purpose. You is likely to be pondering, “That simply appears like Aphex Twin,” however the materials right here is extra disparate and scattershot than common—particularly sequenced as it’s, chronologically in response to the discharge date of every tour EP, with no stream or build-up to talk of. College students of James will discover it fascinating, however they’ve in all probability heard it already. For everybody else, it’s a warts-and-all take a look at a musical genius in low-pressure mode—one other bout of oversharing from an artist who as soon as held his playing cards near his chest.
