Best albums of 2014: No 4 – Syro by Aphex Twin

Thirteen years separate the previous official Aphex Twin album, 2001’s Drukqs, and Syro. But Richard D James never really left us. In these years, the enigmatic Cornishman dropped 11 volumes of rampant analogue acid via his Analord series, not to mention Rushup Edge, an album of squelchy countryside rave snuck out as the Tuss. He’s been a frequent live presence, too, DJing at festivals across Europe, or performing a specially commissioned remix of work by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.

So why did Syro feel like such an event? It wasn’t merely the brightly coloured blimp afloat one morning over the canals of east London, but more to do with history: Syro found James back on Warp, the label behind his best-known albums, and came packaged – like many Aphex releases before it – in a sleeve by the Sheffield graphic studio the Designer’s Republic. Styled to look like a receipt, it fastidiously itemised the album’s production budget, right down to “outdoor postering in Brussels/Antwerp and Ghent”. In its mischievous self-sabotage, its contempt for convention, the whole affair felt quintessentially Aphex.

The contents were just as special. Some would grouse that Syro didn’t reinvent music – a rather high bar that you had to regard as a compliment of sorts. But if we don’t get Aphex the innovator here, we get something just as good: Aphex the virtuoso. Much of Syro was rooted in an athletic 80s electro funk, typified by the inhumanly fast keytar runs of syro u473t8+e (piezoluminescence mix). But the album’s real hallmark was its generosity of melody. From the delicate tonal shifts and syrupy vocal ooze of minipops 67 (source field mix) to the wistful, cloudy synths that swirl beneath the pneumatic junglist breaks of PAPAT4 (pineal mix), Syro felt designed to delight and beguile.

The interviews conducted when Syro was released were as bizarre as ever, touching on drum-playing robots and 9/11 conspiracy theories. But on the album, perhaps, we hear a rather grownup, homely Richard D James. The extensive synthesizer list gave visions of James cocooned contentedly in his home studio, while if you listened close, you might hear the voices of his children, aged five and nine. The album’s moving solo piano closer went by the name of aisatsana: his wife’s Christian name, reversed.

And for all Aphex’s prankster reputation, Syro is a record that’s almost old-fashioned in its craftsmanship: see XMAS_EveT10 (thanaton3 mix), 10 minutes of misty yearning that even towards its close is still tossing in fresh sounds and little hand-programmed mutations. It’s often said, when a mysterious electronic producer lays out their wares, that perhaps this is Aphex Twin in disguise. But you’re reminded, on Syro, how nobody else on earth does it quite like him.

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