A bold experiment which unveils a whole new perspective on our beloved Aphex.
Something potent is brewing over in the Aphex Twin camp. After years of silence he hits us with the phenomenal Syro and now barely 4-months later we have Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 and my what a different beast it is.
Billed as an EP the 13-track playlist immediately throws you off guard, has he just landed another full length album on us? Then you load it into iTunes and realize there’s actually only two or three items that run over the 2-minute mark. So what on earth is this thing you start thinking? Then you hear it and realize that it’s exactly what it says on the package. There is not a beep or filter to be heard and apart from a faded little girls voice and a couple of reversed snares the EP appears to be made entirely of acoustic instruments, presumably rigged up to digital sequencers. A bold experiment which unveils a whole new perspective on our beloved Aphex.
Although the actual contents of this release feel a bit lazy and rushed (many of the tracks are just loops that play for a few cycles then cut out) that seems to be missing the point. The work here has clearly gone into finding and creating the unique hybrid technologies which played this music. That said, there are certainly some magical moments, a few brief but beautiful piano etudes and plenty of clever polyrhythmic grooves picked out on anything from the junglish snarebot and cymbals of “hat 2b 2012b” to the gamelanish bell ensemble of “disk prep calrec2 barn dance[slo].”
Rather than being something that’s likely to end up on regular listening rotation however, this EP simply presents a concept, one that that gets you thinking. In a bizarre inversion of the Daft Punk live paradigm I can already imagine pony-tailed Richard on stage conducting a flashing army of phantom pianos, automated percussion beaters and elaborate chime matrices; a fully fledged robot orchestra led by a true maestro of the musical machine.
Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 is available on Warp.
[itunes id=”955440196″]
