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About Drukqs
Amazon.com Often proclaimed as electronica's one true genius, Richard James, a.k.a. Aphex Twin, returns with a double CD that showcases his cleverness as well as his inevitable inscrutability. Still, amid macabre birthday songs, unsettling screams, and other bizarre touches, Drukqs offers the most technically accomplished and beautiful tracks of Aphex Twin's career. Every aspect of the Aphex brain is on display here, from stark pieces performed on sampled piano and zither to Squarepusher-styled drum & bass implosions, all informed by that peculiar Aphex treatment of bittersweet melody and unparalleled programming. For an artist once engrossed in homages to his dead twin brother and grotesque videos, Drukqs shows James getting by purely on music alone. "Mt. Saint Michel Mix" starts as maddening drum & bass, but is soon transfixed by glowing tones, hand drums, and police sirens. "Vordhosbn" is all acid beats and mad synths matched with fart-bombs and haunted cries. "54 Cymru Beats" sounds more like the tweaked-out, goofball techno of Wagon Christ than Aphex, while "Taking Control" goes metaphysical with cerebral synth-drums and muddled vocals. If Drukqs is the result of medication James has been imbibing during his three-year hiatus, then this is indeed better living through chemistry. Regardless, his music is still as beautiful and frothy as ever. --Ken Micallef Product Description Aphex Twin, aka, Richard James is the original electronic artist. He's DJ'd from the top of Mount Fuji all the way to the Dead Sea, paving the way for today's mainstream dance/electronica acts such as Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and Radiohead. In the five years since his last full album, his profile has risen exponentially on the U.S., largely due to video exposure on MTV for "Come To Daddy" and "Windowlicker." drukqs is perhaps his most "acccessible" work to date, exciting not only his hardcore fans, but bringing in new fans through the raves this album is receiving in the press. Review It would seem that Richard D. James has undergone a radical cystectomy. For those of you not in first-year med school, that means his bladder has been removed. While URB staffers are hardly qualified to make such diagnoses, there's no other way for us to explain why James' latest Aphex Twin release, Drukqs, sounds the way it does: He's not taking the piss! All recent Q&As aside - absurd non sequiturs about 70-percent royalties from Radiohead, inventing Napster and mixing records by "smelling the grooves" - Drukqs is the most sincere album the thirtysomething godfather of IDM has released since 1995's I Care Because You Do. In many ways, these old-school electro melodies and rakishly basic 303/606/909 drum machine-constructed rhythms eclipse his last two singles (the horror-extraordinaire drum & bass "Come to Daddy" and its sparkling glitch-hop doppelganger "Windowlicker"), for on Drukqs' 30 tracks, there's barely a hint of James' self-reflexive idolatry. Where much of his recent material has been all pretense and character, gross creative liberties built around his own captivating Chestershire grin, Drukqs is, once again, Aphex Twin as musical substance. Explanations for such a change seem fairly consistent: This is old music. James has long claimed to record in bulk and release the bare minimum of material to meet contractual obligations, and pre-release Internet newsgroup bitching was very much (and continues to be) about how dated the album sounds. URB suggests this has not one thing to do with the price of tea in China, for regardless of when these gobbledygook-titled tracks were made, Drukqs is right-fine material. First, that James would make good on the Erik Satie suggestions of his earlier work by including mellow, contemplative piano-, harpsichord- and glockenspiel-toned tracks is novel and alone worthy of further investigation. No, they are not mind-altering concertos, but then who in their right mind would expect James - who reportedly possesses on
