Since re-surfacing as Aphex Twin in 2014 with Grammy-award-winning Syro, Richard D James has firmly put that 13 year Aphex-less wait behind him; Cheetah is the second EP to have followed that album (plus one as AFX, one of his many pseudonyms). Named after Cheetah Marketing, a British electronic manufacturer, this 34-minute collection is concise and crisp, very much to the point.
CHEETAHT2 [Ld spectrum] kicks things off with a tight beat, tidy percussion, and an ambient melody and is as focused as anything released under the Aphex name during his current burst of activity. In fact, it’s the kind of stuff that could even garner new fans. It’s six minutes seem over in a flash. CHEETAHT7b offers more of the same, a variation of the same theme but with different timings. If you like your electronic music a la Kraftwerk then you’ll love these two tracks. CHEETAH 1b ms800 and CHEETA2 ms800 both clocking in at approximately 30 seconds, are far removed from the first two CHEETAH’s, no percussion, synthy noodling and, though they may be throwaway, still strangely hold the listener’s attention (I suppose at about thirty seconds each there is very little time for the attention to wander!).
CIRKLON3 [Колхозная mix] is a return to the sound of the earlier longer tracks, perhaps a bit more modern techno than the CHEETAH stylings. Aphex Twin has long been famous for having groundbreaking videos, see the Chris Cunningham directed videos on the very fine Warp Vision DVD, and 12-year-old director, YouTuber Ryan Wyer stays true to those roots with the subtly creepy kiddie dancing (with obligatory Aphex face masks) video that accompanies this track, the first video of this stage of Aphex Twin’s musical odyssey. CIRKLON 1 is again a similar exploration to its predecessor, I sense a little Yellow Magic Orchestra influence here. Finally, 2X202-ST5 sees us to the EP’s end, another excursion in the style of the EP’s four other main tracks, more in the CIRKLON style than CHEETAH.
So there may be less Aphex to take in here than those hoping for another full blown long player but this is a very focused release, no waste, well thought out, as modern as a retro sounding electronic release could hope to be, possibly my favourite of Richard D James latter releases.
Author: Ian, Romford store
