Exeye / Grim

Week Thirty-One: Aphex Twin – Richard D. James Album.

Favourite record openers of all time? Hard to say. They play this game in High Fidelity, and the main guy picks Nirvana – Nevermind as one of his top fives. It’s an interesting choice that I’m not sure I can disagree with on any fundamental level if that’s the way you want to live your life. But what actually makes a great opener? Thinking about my favourites, which probably include Brand New’s The Devil & God Are Raging Inside Me, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven, Romance Is Boring by Los Campesinos!, Contact! Contact! by Tellison, Jane Doe by Converge and I can’t be bothered to think of any more, they don’t really have a lot in common. Some blast out of the gate, some play the long game and build slowly. But they all grab you somehow, all send shivers down the fuckin’ spine.

I’ve mentioned a LOT already this year that Richard D. James Album is my favourite Richard D. James album, and it’s mostly down to the first few seconds of the thing. That snap, that whirr, it just feels so warm and you just wanna wrap yourself up in 4 and go to sleep.  It’s hard to believe that it’s the first major release after James moved away from purely using analogue gear – anyone who says that digital production can’t be as warm and natural as analogue obviously just isn’t as good as Richard D. James.

With added context I love it even more – compared to the rest of his discography, RDJ Album feels like his most self-assured record yet. I mean, yeah, the name and the cover are pretty fuckin’ self-assured: James’ attempt to spear the whole “anonymous creator” bullshit that goes with electronic music, hiding behind masks and psuedonyms, means it’s his most direct “product” still to this day. But you can hear that confidence in the music, too, particularly when compared to other releases. There’s no fucking around here – despite taking longer to make than any other record at that point, it’s half an hour long, short, direct, to the point, no padding, wall-to-wall bangers with some of his poppiest, most melodic moments without having to dial back the weird, esoteric quirks too hard at all. And despite being nearly 20 years old at this point, it doesn’t sound in the least bit dated. I still hear new electronic music that struggles to get anywhere near creating something that sounds as good as this.

I think a big part of the record’s strength and cohesiveness – and perhaps its brevity too – is that it’s without a doubt one of the first Richard D. James record that was absolutely, undeniably, without a doubt pretty much all made at the same time with the express intention of being on this record. I mean, of course, you can never be THAT certain with RDJ, and there are demo versions of songs on this record appearing elsewhere – Melodies from Mars, for example – but the switch to making music  purely on a computer means you can be sure that everything was pretty much made in 1995 or 1996. There’s no years-old tracks suddenly revived, like there was even on I Care Because You Do. It’s a serious statement of style, process and direction from an artist who’s always seemed readily willing to deceive, play coy, and hide behind this or that. And although he would go back to that persona again, RDJ Album feels like a strange bright spot of clarity.