The Electronic Composer in the Modern Age

Here are some things you can hear on the new Aphex Twin EP: prepared piano, crackling breakbeats, low wooden rumblings, crunchy metallic percussion, ringing cymbals, high triangle pings, patterned rhythmic mini-motifs, dissonant harmonic juxtapositions, pseudomelodies that keep getting interrupted by drum clanks, plinks and plunks all over the place, sudden changes and disruptions in pitch, repetition repetition repetition, an anomalously corny solo-piano piece (“Piano Un10 It Happened”), and an anomalously wry percussive contraption that evokes the winding and ticking of a giant grandfather clock (“DISKPREPT4”), with nervous twitchy tension and stark, ascetic minimalism everywhere. And here are some things pointedly absent from the record: tunes you can hum, beats you can dance to, anything digital-sounding, the jiggly rubbery synthesizer tone that dominated 2014’s Syro and the goofy sense of play that came with it, instruments that don’t make your ears feel like they desperately need a drink of water, any kind of concept beyond computer-controlled acoustic instruments, and any discernible emotions.

The Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 EP, out since January, is the second Aphex Twin release in a recent period of renewed activity. Largely silent for over a decade, the English techno producer otherwise known as Richard D. James emerged from hiatus in September of last year with the full-length Syro, an edgy, restless collection of hyperactive drums and giggling keyboards all clicking into a living robot that moved and walked and jumped and said hello. It was a well-timed comeback — since 2001’s Drukqs, his last official album, the subtle attenuation of James’s signature relaxed, ambient drift has made its mark on all sorts of modern electronic genres; while he started as a cult figure in the house/jungle-crazed ’90s, his critical reputation grew at about the same rate it took for the quiet, contemplative brand of Intellectual Dance Music he invented to become fashionable. With significantly increased tempos and a higher hook quotient than before, Syro was also his most conventionally accessible record, and it garnered instant critical acclaim. Now that he’s followed it so quickly with Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 (there is no pt1), it seems like he’s keeping the promise he made in Rolling Stone shortly before Syro came out: to release a series of albums and brief, EP-length experiments, hopefully returning to the state of constant and prolific production he kept up for years in the ‘90s.

James is an astoundingly creative craftsman. The sheer number of cool, weird, novel, synthetic, mind-boggling noises he cranks out of his machines, cassettes, analog synthesizers, and further equipment must be five or ten times that of the average DJ, and within the world of electronic music he demonstrates immense musical range — compare the percussive, energetic miniatures on Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 to 1995’s whooshy, burbling Donkey Rhubarb EP, or the shimmery free-floating gossamer petals on 1994’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, or the haunting, glitchy, more danceable drum tracks on 1999’s “Windowlicker” single, and conclude that what his various records have in common isn’t any particular instrumental signature or shared, innate cadence, but a general ethos of detached, cerebral minimalism and hence a devotion toward ever-higher and ever-odder peaks of pure sound invention. Showing zero interest in the ironic relationship with industrial/digital/futurist technology often explored by more outgoing producers (who program humor or glee or melancholy or any feeling at all into their beats), and never attempting the traditional avantronica project of constructing a physical space with sound, James’s music is remarkably content-free even by the standards of a solitary techno artist, but this doesn’t mean it’s empty. His interlocking textures can get quite complex, and elsewhere he’s proven himself a master of the meditative minimalist pattern; the end goal is always a display of compositional skill. In fact, he shares rather a lot with contemporary classical music. Perhaps instead of Mike Paradinas or Christian Marclay, we should compare him to Glenn Branca or Michael Gordon. Not without justification did the experimental chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound release an album of Aphex Twin covers in 2005.

Poky, silly, mildly amusing, and Very Serious In Its Tonal Innovation, Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 is easily imaginable as a “new music” piece, perhaps vaguely associated with Bang on a Can, premiering at, say, Merkin Hall, where various drums, slabs of steel percussion, and maybe three physically altered pianos are dragged onstage and played by intense, solemn-looking twenty-year-olds, each wearing the same black undershirt/sweatpant/balaclava combo. The whole idea behind the EP is in the title: every track features a variety of nonelectronic instruments operated externally from an electronic vantage point. The Disklavier, an acoustic Yamaha piano with an electromechanical playback function (whereby one can program into the instrument a specific combination of key and pedal movements, thus playing piano music untouched by human hands) features prominently, as do drums with similar capacities. The pianos rarely play actual melodies, working instead as pitched percussive devices, and the drums patter and roll and thud. Every staccato element locks into its own calculated pattern, forming small meticulous bits of gearwork that flaunt their mechanical precision. There are thirteen tracks, most clocking in at around a minute or two; the whole jitters by as abruptly and disjointedly as its fragmentary parts. In theory, the combination of acoustic texture and exact electronic control forms a clever musical paradox that techno musicians have always delighted in, with the thick, dry sonic tones undercutting the machine-like regularity behind the rhythms and vice versa. Yet this achievement is fully intellectual — no matter how inventive the concept, the resulting music feels doubly contrived; the pathologically careful exactitude inherent in their electronic origin lends only dinkiness to these piano arpeggios, and the record’s minimalist composition becomes a vehicle for a certain kind of harsh musical austerity that might be relieved by some lusher, juicier synthesizers, maybe.

I know now why Syro went over my head last year. Charming and playful though its bleeping computer noises may be, the album is organized like a miniature pocket symphony, perfectly foldable, disposable, and banal, with suitable rests and climaxes in all the right places per proper compositional structure. By contrast, Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 plays out much more weirdly and unpredictably with the jumpy flow of a postmodern collage/suite while nevertheless skimping on the musical substance. These records make it clear that Richard D. James has an absolutely fabulous sonic imagination. They also prove he doesn’t have much of anything else.

Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 and Syro are available from Amazon and other online retailers.