Few electronic music artists have built as cryptic a brand around themselves as Aphex Twin. The avant-garde UK producer became so ubiquitous a name in electronic music over the course of the ’90s that he came to influence the likes of The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kanye West – and then inexplicably faded into obscurity before re-emerging over the past couple years with enough new music to win him a Grammy (the ceremony of which he famously didn’t attend).
Keeping with his listener-be-damned distribution methodology, Aphex Twin has spent the past year uploading ambient productions through a revolving door of SoundCloud accounts. Through the most recent of them, he’s released “Avril Altdelay,” an eery variation of the piano tune “Avril 14” from his 2001 album, Drukqs. An ethereal pitch oscillation adds a chilling dissonance that wasn’t present in the original, as if the piano were out of tune yet still following some extraterrestrial scale.
While his work on last year’s Syro proved that he would remain a fixture in the rapidly growing electronic music landscape, Aphex Twin‘s diligence suggests that he might not keep fans waiting for a follow-up to the effort either. While it’s not exactly his style to announce an official release date (or any other information which might make his music accessible to the layperson, for that matter), we’ll keep you posted with any updates from his camp.
