Following a few days of characteristically-cryptic advertisements, enigmatic electronic music icon Aphex Twin is gearing up to release a brand new EP.
Just last week, fans of Richard D. James’ Aphex Twin project began to get rather excited about new music after a series of advertisements featuring the iconic Aphex Twin logo began appearing around the world.
While the first advertisement was noted in the London Underground, close to a former residence of Richard D. James, further advertisements began to appear in Turin, New York City, Los Angeles, sending fans into a frenzy as they attempted to work out when new music might be appearing. Now, it seems that their wait might be over.
Taking to Twitter earlier today, Aphex Twin’s record label, Warp, shared a press release which is ostensibly an announcement for a new EP named Collapse.
While the press release is partially obscured with a similar-looking effect to the previous advertisements, some fans have decoded the message, and have remained just as confused.
In addition to an array of cryptic messages (one such highlight includes defining ‘collapse’ as “a series of movements that match the speed and rhythm of cake”), the press release also gives a strange retelling about the history of Richard D. James. However, it does end with information regarding the track-listing of an upcoming project.
Since this message was shared, fans have done even more digging in hopes of finding more information about the release, with some dedicated diggers on Reddit uncovering information from Amazon that reveals the new Collapse EP will be released on September 14th.
— Warp Records (@WarpRecords) August 5, 2018
As it stands, Aphex Twin’s last major release was the Cheetah EP, which followed on from 2014’s Syro, his first full length in thirteen years. Syro was also announced by a rather cryptic method, which saw strange advertisements appearing all over the world before the record was ‘officially’ announced via the dark web. Needless to say, Richard D. James doesn’t do things by half measures.
More recently, the BBC released a short documentary which attempted to shine a light onto some of the most puzzling aspects of Aphex Twin’s history.
“Does he really write songs while asleep after training himself in the practice of lucid dreaming?” the documentary questioned. “Does he drive a tank round Cornwall? Did he once live in a bank vault in the middle of the Elephant And Castle roundabout? Does he own a submarine? Does his DJ tech rider include a food processor and sheets of sandpaper? Does he move among his many fans on electronic dance music forums online, often trolling them and stirring up these very myths?”
The documentary is still available for listening here, so maybe it might be the perfect time to learn a little bit about the enigmatic electronic icon before Collapse drops on September 14th.
Check out Aphex Twin’s ‘Windowlicker’:
