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Aphex Twin: Music from the Merch Desk (2016-2023) review – Santa’s sack overspills with AFX bounty
Compiling the highly sought-after limited vinyl releases sold at recent festival sets, this surprise 38-track release filled with bangers and beauty is a trove for fans
Aphex Twin live at Field Day 2023 – video (contains flashing imagery)If the Cornish producer was part of a British generation who, critic Dan Sicko wrote, “mutated, co-opted, and just plain misunderstood” this music’s origins in Detroit, this is hard to fathom in the voluptuous No Stillson 6 Cirk or the night-time drive of SOOG e. And while James was guilty of spearheading the “daft and undanceable” drill’n’bass movement, there are functional dancefloor-elevating bangers here to spare. One shining highlight is Nightmail, a late-90s hardcore battle weapon that places WH Auden into a breakbeat acid context, the hypnotic vocal loop – “This is the night mail crossing the border / Bringing the cheque and the postal order” – becoming chopped up like a processed Amen break as it completes its journey. The very jolly, extremely flanged hyperpop of T13 Quadraverbia N+3, is named for a cherished 1989 effects unit, and takes us back in spirit to James’s early days as a “bedroom bore” working in Lannerlog, his Heath Robinson-esque homebrew studio in his parents’ house in Lanner, when he was still only dreaming of changing the face of modern electronic music.
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