spacey_seraphim

Richard's most vibrant studio album. A lot of his previous releases often include harsher percussion and grating, in-your-face basslines; *Syro* sounds like a psychedelic bounce house in comparison. It's pleasant, smooth, and so dense with its idiosyncratic electrofunk-esque melodies that a handful of relistens isn't going to let you catch all the details.

Richard's said that *Syro* is "[his] pop album, or as poppy as it's going to get," and it's easy to ... read more

Incredible. Just incredible. It's rare to find projects like these that are so capable of flawlessly spinning the double album formula -- endlessly intricate, almost labyrinthine Drill 'n' Bass intertwined back-to-back with jarringly gentle piano cuts, a dissonant track list that rips you into a hundred different scraps of distinct, contradictory feelings, and the most important part: The alphabet soup of inarticulate track titles!

For me, this album is a multicolored mirror ... read more

Richard D. James's Drill 'n' Bass era has some of the most eye-twitchy, percussion-rich, and roller coaster-esque tracks I've ever got my ears on -- an apt way to describe this project in particular would be an exceedingly enjoyable case of an irregular heartbeat. This project speaks to me with a charm Richard's previous studio album *I Care Because You Do* fell short of reaching: It still has the same grating percussion contrasting gorgeous string & synthesizer ... read more

This is a really odd project from Richard for me. It indulges in both grinding percussion and softer, warmer synthesizers to complement them in a satisfying way, but a lot of the tracks lack a lot of the rhythmic complexity I can really sink my teeth into from the likes of *Richard D. James Album* and *Drukqs.*

A lot of the cuts here remind me of earlier Aphex Twin releases, like the *Analogue Bubblebath* series, his releases under the *Caustic Window* moniker, and other assorted works of his ... read more