Aphex Twin Speaks On His New Album 'SYRO' & Kanye West Sample

As we have learned a few days ago, there’s a new album from Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, on its way. Titled SYRO, it’s his first album in 13 years and has been in the works for the last “six or seven years.” Pitchfork sat down with the artist for an extensive Q&A and shared some of the conversation’s highlights:

SYRO (pronounced “sigh-ro”), a made-up word one of James’s children came up with and is the “most accessible” of the several albums he’s been working on. It features unintelligible vocals from James, his kids, his wife, and his parents.

He also commented on Kanye West sampling Drukqs’ “Avril 14th” on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s “Blame Game”:

“Is it a sample? I actually don’t know what it ended up being in the end, I’m so slack. I know that he tried to fucking rip me off and claim that he’d written it, and they tried to get away with not paying. I was really helpful, and when they first sent it to me, I was like, ‘Oh, I can re-do that for you, if you like,’ because they’d sampled it really badly and time-stretched it and there was loads of artifacts. I was like, ‘I’ll just replay it for you at that speed if you want.’ And they totally didn’t even say ‘hello’ or ‘thanks,’ they just replied with, ‘It’s not yours, it’s ours, and we’re not even asking you any more.’” [laughs]

He also shared that he still DJs anonymously:

“The good gigs are always the smaller gigs. The few I’ve done recently, just for fun, totally anonymously, were so much better than a normal gig. The soundsystem’s usually shit, but it’s really nice when nobody knows who you are.”

Head over here for more interesting details on James and his new LP.