Instead of trying to rehash his past career as Drukqs seemed to do, Aphex Twin looked ahead and focused on just one style on Syro (Warp, 2014): painstakingly sculpted, multilayered, hyperkinetic, scrambled, burbling, glitchy preludes for chopped vocal samples, fibrillating hyper-polyrhythms and looped eccentricities. I Care Because You Do (1995) cleaned up his act, offering atmospheric dance-music with occasional hints to his old virulent style. They were childish and antiquated (and perhaps a joke on music critics), but they increased James' reputation, making him the first star of ambient house. To further confuse his persona, Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 1985-92 (1992) and Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994) were experiments in ambient house and abstract electronic/concrete composition. In the meantime, the catchy singles credited to Aphex Twin, Quoth (1993) and On (1993), were fusing techno and pop, aiming for the charts, and Polygon Window's Surfing On Sinewaves (1992) was traditional, throbbing techno music, aiming for dancefloor appeal. The three EPs credited to AFX, starting with Analogue Bubblebath (1991, 19) contained harsh, abrasive dance-music, sometimes sounding like a disco version of Morton Subotnick's electronic poems (and they remained his most valuable musical statements). ![]() >The general impetus towards "intelligent" dance-music yielded the grotesque phenomenon of electronic musician Richard James.
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