Aphex Twin Richard D. James Album

In a career full of brilliant, groundbreaking music, the Richard D.
James Album remains Aphex Twin’s drill ’n’ bass masterpiece. It
was James’s fourth and most widely popular full-length to date upon
its original 1996 release, and reinvented the artist as a commanding
influence on like-minded groups such as Radiohead who were tiring
of the guitar / bass / drums format.
Moving even further away from his ambient and acid house beginnings,
the album matches James’s trademark fragile, slow-moving
melodies with harsh, quick breakbeats. When it was released, fellow
electronic artists such as Orbital and Underworld had just begun
to filter moderate amounts of drum ’n’ bass in their work, but the Richard
D. James Album was more extreme than virtually all jungle at the
time.
Autobiographical in nature, it employs electronic sounds, pulsating
rhythms and non-musical samples to convey the author’s feelings on
childhood innocence, evidenced in tracks like “To Cure a Weakling
Child,” “Boy/Girl Song” and “Cornish Acid” (a nod to his Cornish
background and upbringing). Chicago Sun-Times critic Jim DeRogatis
said of the album: “James has turned inward for inspiration, painting
aural pictures of real and imagined scenes from his West Country
childhood.” Stylistically, the Richard D. James Album is in the
mode of “elektronische music” and relies only on sounds generated
electronically, while continuing James’s implementation of “musique
concrète” ideas by manipulating human voices, physical instruments
and environmental sounds via sampling, distortion and looping.
The album continues to gain high marks from music critics, ranking
40th on Pitchfork’s Top 100 Albums of the 1990s and 55th on NME’s
Top 100 Albums of All Time. A peculiar and personal work, the
Richard D. James Album is a modern classic which offers the same
thrill on the first listen as the hundredth.