My favourite albums of the decade #13

Tweet Oh lord. Oh lordy lord. January 31st, and less than halfway through this baleful undertaking. Cripes. A change of tack might be necessary at this juncture. I'm going to return to my usual dribblings about this, that, and whatnot, during the coming weeks and only return to this list (which has a life of its own and thinks it owns my blog now) when it calls out to me. In the meantime, here's a quickie - unlucky number 13.

#13 Aphex Twin - Drukqs (2001)

Drukqs is one of Richard D. James's masterpieces. But this status was hard earned. Prior to its release, and on the back of the excitement generated by the extraordinary Windowlicker single, fans and critics were expecting this double album to be some sort of psychedelic tablet from mount aciiiieeed - a towering work of electronic genius that was going to, like, fuckin redefine shit, maan. Yet, as far as I can remember, almost everyone felt let down by it. A lot of people became very angry about this album. Some found it too backward looking, others found it too unwieldy (it is perhaps deliberately ironic that Drukqs is in the Guinness book of records for being the world's 'heaviest' record after being pressed on mega-dense vinyl for some special releases), and yet others found it too all-over-the-shop, veering as it does between quasi-classical ambient piano, creaking musique concrete, and cortex-raping drill and bass.

Time, that most chaff-filtering critic, has been a kind judge of Drukqs, however. Freed from the nuclear levels of nerdlingering expectation that accompanied its release, it strikes me as an apt capstone for the catalogue of a shape-shifting uber-stylist. Not only that, but the music feels profoundly personal and emotionally honest. Aphex's melty grinning demon mask of old drops to reveal a mind preoccupied with creating moments of deep tenderness and melancholy. There is so much in Drukqs that stirs me. As ever with the man, there's an essential weirdness (in the proper Shakespearean sense of the word) at work too, a sort of striving towards something ancient and veiled, that same primordial brain-cave embodied by the hieroglyphic Aphex Twin logo on his second Selected Ambient Works album cover. Formidable stuff.

MP3: Aphex Twin-Jynweythek Ylow