One of the most shocking things about Richard D. James’s unexpected resurrection of his Aphex Twin moniker last September after a 13-year absence was how accessible his Syro album turned out to be. (It just won a Grammy.) It was one of the more perverse paths a musician so notoriously experimental could choose for a comeback. So when four months later he released the challenging and alien Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt. 2 EP, it was almost reassuring.
The title gives away the concept: it’s music made with James’s collection of percussion-playing robots and a modified Disklavier (essentially a high-tech player piano). While acoustically generated and devoid of any heavy electronic processing, the results are much darker and stranger than anything on Syro, with ominous detuned metallic percussion and mangled piano noises taking the place of bright, bubbling, acid synth lines. The deliberately ugly clanging, banging and scraping might put off some Aphex Twin fans, but if this is too much for them, James also just dumped over 150 more conventional songs on the internet for free downloading.
Top track: hat5c 0001 rec-4
