Alright, so you’ve got this weird little electronic wizard from Cornwall who goes by Aphex Twin—real name Richard D. James—and he’s been making people scratch their heads and nod along since the early ’90s. The guy’s basically the electronic music equivalent of that friend who’s really into obscure stuff but actually knows what he’s talking about. He’d already dropped some ambient masterpieces and was starting to mess around with more aggressive beats when 1996 rolled around and he decided to name an album after himself, which is either really confident or really weird.
The Richard D. James Album is basically what happens when someone takes jungle and drum’n’bass, feeds it through a computer, and then decides to add some genuinely beautiful melodies on top. It’s only about 30 minutes long, which is perfect because honestly, any longer and your brain might start leaking out your ears. The opening track “4” hits you with these frantic breakbeats but then throws in some gorgeous string arrangements that shouldn’t work but totally do. Then you’ve got “Girl/Boy Song” which samples kids’ songs and somehow makes it not creepy, and “Logan Rock Witch” that closes the thing out with what sounds like someone having fun with slide whistles and children’s toys. The whole thing is like if someone took a kid’s toybox, fed it through the most expensive studio equipment available, and then hired a classical composer to make sense of the chaos.
Look, this isn’t gonna be for everyone—it’s still pretty abrasive and weird in places—but if you want to understand what electronic music can actually do when someone really knows their stuff, this is a pretty good place to start. It’s got enough melody to keep you hooked and enough strange rhythmic stuff to keep your brain engaged. Plus at 30 minutes, even if you hate it, you haven’t wasted your whole afternoon.