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NME Albums Of 2014: Why Aphex Twin's 'Syro' Is Number 4

1,902 views · Published 27 November 2014 · 1:41 · Indexed 28 October 2026

Channel: NME · 2014 · Music

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NME writers talk through the surprise release of Aphex Twin's 2014 album 'Syro' and why it's so high on our end-of-year list.

We’ve binned 13 calendars since the last Aphex Twin album, 2001’s ‘Drukqs’, which raises an obvious question: why now? Forty-three years old and certainly a millionaire several times over, Cornish rave goblin Richard D James has nothing to prove. Over five years in the ’90s, he perfected psychedelic hippy rave (1992’s ‘Digeridoo’), recorded perhaps the best ambient album ever (1994’s ‘Selected Ambient Works Volume II’), then teamed up with director Chris Cunningham to realise your worst drill’n’bass nightmares with 1997’s ‘Come To Daddy’ and its horrifying video. Somewhere along the way, he decided his royalties would be well spent on a post-World War II tank. Aphex invented the archetype of the mad techno boffin, and if he decides to pack up his creaky old synthesizers and retire to a farm in Cornwall, who’s gonna stop him?

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