As a recording artist, Aphex Twin has always seemed to mourn for his missing half. As if to fill the space where the name denotes another, Twin Richard D. James plays as if he has two minds. His music is characterized by its juxtaposed contrasts--flowing/disruptive, dissonant/melodic, truculent/sweet -- a schizophrenic split that made his tracks shine among the cookie-cutter techno created in the early '90s.
But then again, the Twin was different from day dot because he built his own equipment. His samplers sound like they are infected, wired to slowly rot away. Yet the only virus in the machine is he, the selector, pushing the boundaries of sound by pushing buttons -- his samplers, his own, yours.
On Richard D. James, the Twin bounces lysergic ping-pong beats into center-stage and scrawls brightly-colored analog sounds on the wall. His orchestrated sculptures of yesteryear are replaced with precariously-balanced structures of noise. Gone are the exquisite tonal beats overlaying melancholy strings; subdued is that lush classical element that offsets the burrowing pulses. Instead, the tracks are musically and mentally regressive. ""To Cure a Weakling Child"" pounds a boy's sing-song vocals with a tattooing drum'n'bass rhythm, while ""Girl/Boy (Red Ruth Mix)"" concludes a labyrinth of beats with a Darth Vader-esque voice stating, ""I would like vegetables with my cheese, if you please."" The piece de resistance is ""Milkman,"" where a frail male sings, ""I would like some milk/From the milkman's wife's tits.""
Playful? In a childish way. Listening, you can picture Richard snickering behind his sampler, a brilliant little boy who has been naughty but enjoyed it too much to stop. Sure, his fervent fans will salivate over the set, arguing on the Intelligent Dance Music mailing list whether ""Milkman"" should be played at 33 rpm (""funky"") or 45 rpm (""wicked off-kilter techno""). But for the rest of us, well, the benchmark is higher. The choices for inventive electronica are multiplying. So c'mon little Richard... get growing.
