An Alternate-Universe Aphex Twin Album Curated From His Massive New Rarities Compilation
Somewhere within the imposing two-and-a-half-hour sprawl of ‘Music From the Merch Desk,’ there’s an Aphex Twin album that stands up to the best of his work.
Just before the holiday break, Warp Records released Music From the Merch Desk (2016-2023), a 38-track, two-and-a-half-hour compilation of Aphex Twin music that was originally available only on vinyl sold at particular live shows. It’s a daunting collection to take in, even for a fan of electronic music’s prankster king, not just for its length but also for its organization. The tracks are ordered chronologically by their original vinyl release date. In typical latter-day Aphex fashion, their titles read like arcane metadata: “T08 dx1+5,” “ZT01 [sketch1],” and so on. By happenstance of timeline, the compilation is frontloaded with a long stretch of its most difficult, least inviting music, with several astounding highlights buried deep in the middle. Much like the trove of tracks Aphex Twin dropped unceremoniously on SoundCloud about a decade ago (under the name “user18081971,” naturally), Music From the Merch Desk comes across more like a data dump than an album.
I’ve spent a lot of time listening to it over the last several weeks, and it bummed me out to notice the way the Spotify play counts peter off gradually from track to track, with about 181,000 on the first one and 24,000 on the last one. Without any curatorial presence to guide them, people are starting from the beginning, understandably, and tuning out when they get bored. Which is a shame, because somewhere inside Music From the Merch Desk, nestled among tracks that sometimes resemble half-finished sketches or AFX-by-numbers exercises, there is a great new Aphex Twin album.
Below, in a playlist for paying Hearing Things subscribers, I’ve put together one version of what that album might sound like. One hour, 16 tracks, organized loosely into two sides. The first half should appeal to anyone who’s ever loved the work of Richard D. James, with synth chords hanging like sunrise mist over rushing breakbeats or four-on-the-floor thumps. Even when he’s keeping listeners at arm’s length or more, James can’t help but craft these moments of delicately kinetic beauty. The second half is stranger, darker, and more playful, showcasing the side of his musical personality that loves to cajole and unsettle: warm analog sounds and uncanny MIDI instruments tensely sharing space, synth-funk wiggles emerging from nowhere, melodies that are menacing and whimsical at one.
The music on Merch Desk has a wide range of provenances. Some tracks are truly hitting the internet for the first time; others were previously available from Aphex Twin’s web store and/or the aforementioned SoundCloud dump, but not major streaming platforms. At least one of them actually dates to well before the 2016-2023 timeframe in the compilation’s title. I tried not to think too much about stuff like this, and instead focused on making it all hold together as an album-like listening experience. I spent way too long tweaking the track sequence, which ignores the original chronology in favor of musical narrative, and omitted one of the original vinyl releases entirely: Houston 12.17.16, which opens Merch Desk, and whose two 10-minute tracks of Container-esque noise-techno are interesting but too imposing for my purposes, drawing everything around them into their gravitational pull.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that this imaginary new album, which I’m calling MFTMD, stands up to the best of the Aphex Twin catalog. Without spoiling too much about the contents, it contains one of James’ greatest-ever tracks in “Spiral Staircase,” which—again, in typical fashion—is the one that seems outwardly most like an offhanded prank: He submitted it pseudonymously in a remix contest held by his friend Luke Vibert, won, and only then revealed himself to Vibert and the public as its creator.
One of the narratives I tried to draw out is what happens when a musician who once defined the bleeding edge of his field settles into the role of venerated elder: no longer innovating as furiously, but burrowing deeper into his own now well-established idiosyncrasies, finding new emotional richness within them; and occasionally absorbing, reacting to, and commenting upon the newer sounds that now occupy an avant-garde that once belonged to him. The percussive curlicues and gothic reverb of “T05 tx16w marion MT***,e [sketches]” (I’m not kidding about the titles) sound, to my ears, like homages to the Midwest footwork experimentalist Jlin, whose work James clearly admires. But the alien synth melody that arrives atop them halfway through is pure Aphex.
Paying subscribers will find my alternate-universe sequencing of a new Aphex Twin album via Spotify and Apple Music playlists below. For everyone else—why not consider signing up? Your contribution will help to finance more nerdy deep-dives like this one, along with reviews, essays, investigations, and more.
