Watch APHEX TWIN’s Full 2hr Printworks London Performance Now

Richard D James remains not only one of the most influential and iconic electronic music producers in history, but also one of the genres greatest enigmas.  In fact, the impact of his work as Aphex Twin (not to mention under monikers like AFX, Bradley Strider, Polygon Window, Power-Pill, Blue Calx, The Dice Man, GAK, Caustic Window, Q-Chastic, PBoD, The Tuss, etc.) extends well beyond any particular niche or even the medium of music itself.  There’s honestly no telling how far or to what degree his influence has reached or what it has seeped into (we know that Kanye is a “fan“).  The man has become so revered that it’s hard to say when the last time was that the UK artist/producer/composer had anything to prove to anyone.

When they’re quiet, artists like this can often appear as if they’ve stepped away from creating anything for large periods of time.  Just as possible — and with Aphex Twin, much more likely — is that they are simply producing freely, and even prolifically, yet simply without any urgency to share anything with the public.  When he dropped Syro in 2014, it marked the first full length that he’d released since the 2001 double-album, druQs.  In other words, he’s in no rush to do anything.  There’s no telling how deep the Aphex Twin vaults are or if “new” material being released was ever even recorded recently, or just something that he pulled off the shelves which was produced well ahead of its time years before.  In fact, James has even been known to purge material by releasing large dumps of tracks online for free download out of the blue.  It’s this sort of timelessness and the fact that he is never really competing with anyone but himself that allows him to pop back into the public eye at will and do so without missing a step.

Although he’s played select dates in recent years, it’s been a full decade since there has been a legitimate Aphex Twin club show.  That is to say that it had been 10 years, since that streak was put to an end on Saturday, September 14th, when James took the stage at Printworks London, proving that he can still fully throw down and fuck people up on a dance floor for 2 hours straight.  If there’s one thing that people know Aphex Twin for beyond the music that he produces, it’s the unsettling and, often aggressive, imagery that he has paired his work with through collaborations with artists/directors like Chris Cunningham.  For the Printworks show that aspect was handled soundly by frequent visual collaborator Weirdcore.  But while all of this sounds nice and great, I wasn’t there to witness any of it and the odds are that you likely weren’t either.  The good part is that the event was recorded and can be viewed in its entirety below.