Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin's first album since 2001's Drukqs is sixty-five minutes of highly melodic, superbly arranged, precisely mixed, texturally varied electronic music that sounds like it could have come from no other artist. Syro absorbs many different sounds, from loping breakbeat to drum’n’bass to techno proper to hints of disco, but it has a way of making other genres seem like they exist to serve this particular vision.
It’s 2014 and there is a new Aphex Twin album, which means the most conspicuous musical drought this side of My Bloody Valentine has ended. Syro, unlike the Caustic Window LP released earlier this year, is not a collection of material cut during Richard James’ prolific 1990s heyday and shelved. It’s a new album of new music recorded in the last few years, and it’s said to be the first of more to come. Unlike MBV, it’s not that James went away entirely—in 2005, he released a series of Analord 12" EPs as AFX, and there were a couple of low-key EPs as the Tuss. But with many-monikered electronic musicians, branding is everything: it’s not an Aphex Twin release unless it’s presented as an Aphex Twin release.

Syro is an unusual album to contemplate because its overall approach is not particularly unusual. Older fans of electronic music who followed along with James’ shape-shifting in the 1990s may need to adjust their expectations slightly. On the evidence here, he has no interest in re-inventing his sound. Syro has few extremes, no hyper-intense splatter-breaks or satanic “Come to Daddy” vocals or rushes of noise. On the other end of the spectrum, Syro doesn’t cast James in a quasi-classical light; there's no “serious composer” tracks like “4” or “Girl/Boy Song” that beg to be arranged for string quartet. And there are no “Windowlicker”-like nods to pop, no attempts to smuggle some truly weird music onto the charts.
(more on Pitchfork.com)