The New Aphex Twin Is Boring: 2024 Electronic Music Tops & Flops
5,0 / 5,0 | 
It might be heretical to say that the new Aphex Twin is boring but it just didn’t move me. That and five more electronic music tops and flops from 2024.
2024 Electronic Music Tops & Flops
Tops & Flops is a weekly series here at Gearnews where the editors take turns talking about the best and worst things from their personal life. I pretty much just sit in my studio all day long, writing, and I occasionally emerge to eat a bowl of ramen or maybe answer the door. My constant soundtrack is electronic music, and ambient electronic music more specifically.
Since I’m pretty much always working (or trying to relax after working), I need music that is floaty and vaporous, with no words or even hooks to distract me. Strict parameters, to be sure, but that’s my so-called ambient life.
Here are six of the albums that I listened to in 2024, four of the best and two of the… I won’t say worst because they’re not bad records, they just don’t work in the narrow context that I need them to. Spoiler alert: I think the new Aphex Twin is boring.
Tops: Skee Mask – Resort
What a gorgeous album. As an old ex-raver, I appreciate furious breakbeats and thudding kick drums. I’ve also loved ambient and experimental music for as long as I can remember. Skee Mask combines the two strains of electronic music in ways that are novel, even classy. A lot of post-rave music can be gimmicky – ooh, it’s trance without a kick – but Skee Mask avoids the cliches and often lands on the profound.
I know I said I prefer ambient music when I’m working, and I usually do, but sometimes I need to up the tempo, especially later in the day when editing what I wrote in the morning, and formatting in WordPress. Skee Mask’s Resort is the perfect album for when I need to jolt my brain a bit and push on to the workday’s finish line.
- Skee Mask’s Bandcamp
Tops: Aleksi Perälä – Cycles I+II (Mixes)
Aleksi Perälä is a madman, and I say that with utmost respect. He works exclusively within an unconventional tuning system called the Colundi Sequence, releases a new album every two weeks on average, and makes music like no one else on the planet.
I habitually listen to whatever he puts out, but given the sheer amount of releases I often don’t listen to an album more than once. However, Cycles I+II (Mixes) ends up in my ears pretty often. Extended mixes of tracks from the Cycles vinyl LP, these four 20-minute tracks sound like gamelan meets classical Indian meets pure sine waves. It’s perfect for focusing, encouraging the words to flow from my mind to Word document like pebbles down a stream. Or something.
If you’ve never heard Aleksi Perälä, it’s a great place to start your journey.
- Aleksi Perälä’s Bandcamp
Flops: Röyksopp – Nebulous Nights – An Ambient Excursion Into Profound Mysteries
I really wanted to like this album. I’ve never been the biggest Röyksopp fan, although I do think that their early single “Eple” is genius. But any time an artist releases a full-length ambient album, like Röyksopp did with Nebulous Nights – An Ambient Excursion Into Profound Mysteries, I’m going to check it out.
My main issue with this album isn’t the songs themselves. They’re uniformly equal parts trippy and beautiful. It’s all the voices. I realize that I’m an outlier in the human race in that I prefer completely instrumental music. This is doubly true when I’m writing. As soon as I hear a voice, whether sung or spoken, I get distracted and pulled away from the sentence. Maybe someone could convince them to re-release the album in purely instrumental form?
- Röyksopp’s Bandcamp
Tops: Christopher Willits – Opening (Immersive)
I’m not the biggest fan of the sound of the guitar. I don’t dislike it, per se, but I much prefer to listen to synthesizers. However, there’s something special about ambient music done on guitar. Jonas Munk, Chihei Hatakeyama, and Christopher Willits are some of my favorite artists and they all work primarily with guitar.
Opening (Immersive) is a remaster of Willits’ 2014 album, Opening. While I don’t have the ability to hear it in spatial audio, the re-release has given me a chance to really get into it. With additional instrumentation from Tycho, the album is less floaty than other Willits records but no less beautiful.
- Christopher Willits’ Bandcamp
Tops: Max Richter – In a Landscape
The Blue Notebooks introduced me to composer Max Richter back in 2004. I loved the blending of electronics with classical instruments and I’ve continued to listen to him, especially Sleep, his eight-hour record that seemed custom-made for an ambient head like me.
In a Landscape is Richter’s latest and it consciously looks back to themes that he first explored on The Blue Notebooks. It’s gorgeous stuff, maybe a bit looser and more gossamer than some of his better-known works, but that suits me just fine, as I don’t need strong motifs calling my soul away from my work.
- Max Richter’s home page
Flops: Aphex Twin – Music from the Merch Desk (2016–2023)
Hear me out. I’m no Aphex hater. I’ve been a fan since 1992 when I first heard “Didgeridoo.” I’m also not a super fan though. When Richard is on, no one else comes even close. I’m particularly fond of his later works like Syro, which I think strike a beautiful balance between musicality and Aphex excess. However, I think he sometimes has an issue with quality control, and his latest, Music from the Merch Desk (2016–2023), is a perfect example of that.
I realize that a compilation is never going to feel as coherent as a purpose-made album. And that’s what Music from the Merch Desk is, a collection of songs released as vinyl-only collectibles and sold at his shows over the last decade. For the collector and die-hard fan, I’m sure this is probably like manna from heaven. For me, it feels like a hard drive dump. It’s sad to say, but this album from Aphex Twin is boring.
You may disagree. I hope you love it. But any time I try to listen to it I invariably turn it off and play Selected Ambient Works 85-92 instead.
- Aphex Twin’s Bandcamp
Recommended Synths for Ambient
If you’d prefer to make ambient rather than listen to it, here are some recent synthesizers that I consider good for the genre.
More Information
- All about synthesizers
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2 responses to “The New Aphex Twin Is Boring: 2024 Electronic Music Tops & Flops”
Big Aphex fan and really wanted to like it, but meh, same old same old from him.
Never understood all that AT craze.
The guy is interesting by himself, smartly and successfully marketed himself, but to me he’s just another electronic act, not really a “genius”.
Not so bad but not so good either.