Aphex Twin

Making experimental, electronic walls of noise, Aphex Twin has built a reputation as a groundbreaking dance producer, equally adept at creating throbbing, industrial soundscapes or challenging sensibilities with screeching drum & bass weirdness. Born in Limerick, Ireland on 17 August 1971 and raised in Cornwall, Richard David James earned a diploma in engineering and used the skills he had learned to start making his own analogue synthesisers and electronic equipment. Widely regarded as an eccentric genius who lived in a disused bank and survived on two hours of sleep a night, he created thousands of hours of music at an incredibly rapid rate and became one of Warp Records' key artists in the 1990s, with the albums Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994) and ...I Care Because You Do (1995). Richard D. James Album (1996) earned huge critical acclaim and he became the remixer of choice for artists such as The Cure, Saint Etienne and Beck. But it was Chris Cunningham's brilliantly strange videos for his tracks Come to Daddy and Windowlicker that made him an unlikely hit on MTV. Double album Drukqs (2001) was given a 9/10 rating by the NME and he went on to release a series of vinyl EPs under the Analord moniker as well as recording and DJing under various aliases including AFX, GAK, The Tuss and Polygon Window. Syro came out in 2015 and earned him a Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album. The album also scored a number one spot on the UK Dance Albums Chart and the UK Record Store Albums Chart, the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums Chart and the Billboard Tastemaker Albums Chart. The Cheetah EP followed in 2016 with the EP Collapse in 2018 and the Peel Session 2 EP in 2019. An expanded version of Selected Ambient Works Volume II was released in October 2024 to mark 30 years since its initial release.