You may be wondering why I would write a review of a 2 song EP when there are so many full length albums out there that I'm not getting around to. Why? Because it's Aphex Twin, that's why. I freely admit that I pirated these two songs and I don't feel the least bit guilty. Why? Because Richard D. James (Aphex Twin) is an asshole. The songs are only available (at least at the moment) on a sold out, limited edition vinyl release that costs somewhere around $75 (depends on the exchange rate from pounds). Granted, the fact that he's a jerk is old news. That always was part of the whole cult of personality, the multiple recording monkikers, that overdone scary grin of his pasted on album covers, etc. The fact that he's messing with everyone is kind of a given, in fact part of the charm. Being that his output has been rather sparse since his heyday in the mid 90's, that image has become slightly more tiresome. His last official release, a double album that had just as many boring piano interludes (whether or not they are filler is another discussion) as the electronic music he's known for, made you wonder whether the two CD set was a financial choice instead of a creative one. A compilation of remixes amusingly called 26 Mixes for Cash didn't exactly dispute that impression. I'd personally gotten to the point where I assumed he'd run out of ideas and was simply milking the gravy train dry.

This Analord thing would have been the last nail on the has-been coffin except for one tiny little detail. The songs are damn good. They don't break any new ground or anything, they're just simply good solid songs. Oddly accessible too, they're not getting radio airplay anytime soon, but they're (relatively) easy to get into. I had gotten quite bored with the "let's see how many beats we can cram into a song with no structure" school of electronic music (I'm talking to you Squarepusher) and he sidesteps that nicely on these tracks. They actually seem to follow in the vein of the songs on Drukqs (previous album), but they're more cohesive. There's also some nice old school synth stuff going on in there, and I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. I know it's only two songs, but there's supposedly 9 more of these coming (it's apparently part of a series). If they're all like this and they come out on CD, I just might hand over more money to that smug bastard. I can just see that grin now...