This would be a strong contender if I was pushed to choose an Aphex ‘desert island disk’, were it not for the fact it’s only half an hour long. The Richard D James Album is all the more impressive for its short duration, given the sheer breadth of creativity on display and how comprehensively James builds a self-contained sound-world that fizzes with contemporary influences yet exists purely on its own terms.
Every track represents a whole avenue of experimentation he could’ve gone down further; the spliced and diced breakbeats and giddy strings of Girl/Boy song, the lumbering acid-wonk of Cornish Acid, the serene synth pulses of Fingerbib etc etc. I won’t bother with song by song reviews, as surely anyone reading is familiar with this album- if not, rectify that!
As an impressionable teenager, the Richard D James Album carved a deep groove in my psyche, lodging itself as a musical touchstone. It brought a new perspective on what music could be for me: lush and beautiful without aspiring to overblown grandeur, playful without being twee, brutally percussive in a way that soothes, and somehow intimate yet lacking lyrical content.
Before I’d got my hands on the CD, I remember a classmate telling of a friend who’d listened to the RDJ Album on acid and felt the world fall into place. Needless to say my curiosity was piqued, and though I never had an experience I’d describe as such, it’s always conjured a special place – a secret garden – of warm familiarity and is a record I turn to if I want to come home.
Despite it being the first Aphex Twin album produced using a computer, there’s an inherent warmth and organicness to the music, which is laden with childhood nostalgia. Undeniably yet abstractedly autobiographical: the skipping melody of Goon Gumpas which could be from a half-remembered kids TV show, the snatches of nursery rhyme on Weakling Child, Richard’s mum calling him away from his machines on 4.
Pitchfork called it the closest Aphex has come to making a pop album. I don’t really agree with that, but it is a slice of musical perfection. And like the perfect surface of a mirror, reflects something different and unique for everyone who looks within.
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