Album Review: Aphex Twin- Syro

I feel like I am doing it wrong when it comes to this new Aphex Twin album Syro. Like, everything is telling me that I need to like it, and be blown away by it, and the return of Mr. Richard D. James. Right now, it has an 88 out of 100 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim." But instead, I find myself growing restless when I listen to it, because to me, it’s just boring. It’s not unlistenable—but it’s also not very interesting and it is certainly very uninspired.

But in all this hubbub surrounding the announcement of a new Aphex Twin record (it involved blimps), the “clever” packaging of Syro itself, and then the music—what it has all done for me is to open up a larger discussion what makes some forms of electronic music “cool” and what makes others very “uncool.”

This might be a paper-thin argument, because I am a very busy person and I don’t have a ton of supplemental time to think things like this out. It’s just the kind of shit I think about when I’m driving across town to work, or aimlessly piling up my wife’s clean laundry for her to put away later. But here’s the crux of my thinking: Pitchfork has been pretty steadily been a proponent of Syro, giving the first track released from it “Best New Track,” and giving the album itself “Best New Music,” alongside a 8.7 rating.

But why?

What makes this album so special?

Compare this with another 90s “electronic” artist. Moby, primarily an electronic artist, most famous for 1999’s Play. He’s continued to release albums every couple of years, and the last three have been incredibly solid, interesting, and diverse. A site like Pitchfork did not even bother to review 2013’s Innocents, and gave very low marks to 2011’s Destroyed. It’s apparently incredibly uncool to listen to Moby, or to find anything worth liking about his latter day canon.

Do I even have grounds to make a comparison between Moby and Aphex Twin, though?

Maybe not.

Whatever.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a review of Syro, the album that is being dubbed as the first Aphex Twin release in 13 years, following up his maligned odds and ends collection Drukqs.Growing up in the 90s, I was always aware of Aphex Twin as an artist—I mean how could you miss the sinister looking portrait of James gracing the cover of his Richard D James LP, or the odd painting on the I Care Because You Do album.

Then there are also his most notable singles, strangely enough not found on any album—the slithering “Windowlicker,” and the horrifying and abrasive “Come to Daddy,” perhaps his most iconic, complete with the nightmarish video that went along with it.

With my knowledge of James’ work is somewhat limited, maybe I’m not in the best position to write a review of Syro that has any real basis in where it falls within his work.

My initial reaction to Syro is a tad mean spirited, and I don’t mean this as some kind of attack on the musical abilities of James, but many of the tracks sound like they could have been constructed by somebody with little or no musical ability, using the loops in Garage Band, or by playing around with the preset sounds on a microKorg synthesizer. I say this only because I have little to no musical ability, and I have created “songs” using both of those means before.

Despite my apparent negative attitude about Syro as a whole, that isn’t to say it doesn’t have moments that are slightly more engaging. “S950tx16wasr10 (Earth Portal Mix)”—a title that just rolls of the tongue—incorporates some very 90s sounding drum ‘n’ bass percussion. And early on, “Produk 29” shuffles along with enjoyable, wonky synth lines.

Then there is the closing track, “Aisatsana.” It’s a gigantic, and welcome departure from the very dated “electronic” music sound of the rest of the album, so it arrives as somewhat of a surprise. But it is akin to James’ well-received piano compositions—primarily taken from the Drukqs album, like “nannou2” and “Avril 14^th,” which eventually was sampled in Kanye West’s “Blame Game.”

I use the expression “dated electronic music” to describe a bulk of Syro, because despite the fact that this was all apparently constructed very recently, it sounds like it could have come from the mid 90s. Like I feel like this is just the soundtrack from a Sunday night block of music videos from the MTV program “Amp.” It’s an incredibly reserved album, rarely showing any of the aggression that James was known for in the past.

Richard D. James is in his early 40s now. Maybe Syro is the electronic equivalent of “cool dad rock.” It doesn’t feel like a forced effort, but there is practically nothing on here that really speaks to me. It feels incredibly flaccid, and despite the fact that it was made primarily by machines and gadgets, you’d think there would be some emotion to it, somewhere. And all of the beeps and boops and skronks and splorks that the synthesizers make are novel the first time around, but the repetition on many of these tracks left me feeling impatient and a little bored.

Maybe I don’t like electronic music as much as I thought I did. Maybe I’m wrong about this though. Maybe Syro is an incredible album and I’m just an idiot who doesn’t know “good music” when I hear it. I’ve been way off base before when I write these reviews. People are always so kind to point that out.

Syro is out now via Warp.