Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Collapse EP at Amazon.com. 5.0 out of 5 stars Aphex Twin forever. November 17, 2018. Long-term Aphex Twin fans know James can do, and has done, better, but that’s not the point. While you get the feeling that James is operating very much in his comfort zone, Collapse at least brings him back into something approaching ‘classic Aphex Twin’ territory, unlike the bolder but less consistent Cheetah EP two years ago. Given that the perimeter of James’s comfort zone is many times larger than that of virtually every other artist out there, that’s no bad thing. The Collapse EP falls between these, affirming him as the very best electronic wizard in the game! The Collapse EP is a juicy bag of delights. Extending the flamboyant paths that Aphex Twin has consistently managed to forge through his dizzying career.

1. Aphex Twin Discogs
2. Aphex Twin Scotland

Aphex Twin Discogs

When an artist creates such an intriguing mythology around their character as Richard D. James’ Aphex Twin has (like how he lives in the roundabout at Elephant and Castle, drives a tank, and writes all his music while lucid dreaming), any new release tends to hum with excitement and magnetically draws the attention of the music world. ‘T69 collapse’ off his upcoming collapse EP has certainly been no exception, and deservedly so.

Aphex Twin Scotland

The beginning section is rather surprising in the way that it’s nothing surprising at all; there’s no jarring experimentation or swamps of overly glitchy reverb. It feels very much like the calm before the storm. In the background we find this airy percussion that is balanced out by, and eventually gives way to, the thick acid synth line which drags the track down creating a darker tone, coupled with the beat becoming more erratic. The middle section of the track feels as if the beat and the synths are antagonising one another, pushing and pulling, until eventually, at the 3.14 mark, all that falls away and the storm suddenly clears. RDJ left a clue hidden in the beginning of the music video that this moment, this storm clearing, is the collapse mentioned in the title: ‘cos when the bass bit kicks in and the tempo starts slowing down it’s like a collapse of sorts’.

The clean, purposeful, jungle-infused rhythms we hear after the “collapse” hark back to the Xylem Tube EP or Didgeridoo stuff from the early 90s. This was a more recognisable jungle/dnb sound that RDJ started off with before his endless experimentation pushed it into being the more organic, amorphous sound used in 2001’s Drukqs. It appears as though, after his 13 year break from releasing music under the Aphex Twin moniker, RDJ has settled on a more refined style. From 2014’s Syro to this latest single release, it is clear that this second generation of Aphex Twin music has done away with some of the weirdness, some of the humour from his earlier style, and replaced it with a colder, more precise, and arguably much more mature approach to production.