Aphex Twin – Drukqs

Featuring 30 songs in total, Drukqs was met with a lot of blowback from critics and journalists. Many simply just didn’t seem to understand its brilliance at the time, or took the title literally and figured that James had been too high while making it. James himself was said to have rushed the release of Drukqs after leaving an MP3 player loaded with more than 180 of his tracks on a plane. Fearing they would be leaked, he said he might as well get an album out there before the tracks landed on Napster or Limewire.

Prior to Drukqs’s release, James was known for making music through modulated synths using software he created, and a unique recording processes that sometimes included tracking direct to cassette tape over and over. My best guess on why critics panned Drukqs is that they had their own expectations of what it was meant to sound like.

The first time I listened to Drukqs was on vinyl. When the first track, “Jynweythek,” started I remember thinking that it wasn’t what I expected. It’s not that I didn’t like it, but the opposite. I knew immediately that I would be on an adventure if I allowed myself the focus to follow along…

Read the full writeup here: https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/aphex-twins-drukqs/

– Bryan Ling

Recommended – E 04 Avril 14th, C 02 Bbydhyonchord, Full Listen