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aphex twin: drukqs
The main question surrounding the release of drukqs seems to be, "What the fuck is Aphex Twin doing?" Reneging on a promise not to release any more music in his lifetime? Emptying out four years' worth of disparate song sketches? Ripping off Erik Satie? Or, as Rolling Stone so wittily punned when it lifted its lips from *NSYNC's dilznick just long enough to give the album one star, is drukqs simply a product of excessive drukq use?
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The answer to all of these is probably yes, and drukqs is all the better for it. It's Twin's most varied album to date, covering ground already tread—the computerized moans of Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II, the basic rhythms and airy instrumentation of I Care Because You Do, and the spastic drumbeats of The Richard D. James—as well venturing further. It's a difficult proposition, spread across two discs and organized so as to combine diverse styles side by side instead of giving each its own corner of the album. Nonetheless, Aphex Twin unites everything with a superb mixing job. Drum samples rebound from left to right, and many of the digital sounds that underlie the songs seem to emanate from adjacent rooms. During the quieter piano pieces, samples of hammers hitting strings pan from speaker to speaker under each note. Drukqs is so incredibly stereophonic it makes everything before it sound mono by comparison.
Each song on drukqs is just as impossible to pigeonhole as the album itself. In the past, Aphex Twin pushed pop and anti-pop to such extremes that he created both incisive parodies and entirely new sounds. The songs on drukqs, on the other hand, hang in the gray areas that lie in between moods. A candy-ambient line strives to emerge from the thrashing percussion of "Ziggomatic 17," while ominous piano notes threaten to derail the playful chimes of "Besk Au 3epnm." Even the "Come to Daddy"-esque robotic chant of "Taking Control," perhaps drukqs' best candidate for a single, gets undercut by some strangely cinematic synth-strings.
Maybe it's just White Album syndrome talking, but the uncertainty of mood and sprawling diversity of the album makes drukqs Aphex Twin's most personal effort to date. Honesty is quite a thing to deal with when it comes from a man who alters photos of himself into lecherous digital leers and gives his songs gibberish titles. While drukqs may provoke questions about what the fuck Aphex Twin is doing, it does go a long way in explaining who the fuck he is. (Sire) —Eliot Rose
All materials © 2001 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
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