Is Aphex Twin the Most Important Electronic Music Artist of All Time?

The most ballyhooed electronic music album this past week—by a landslide, no less—is a work that doesn’t come out for a month. When word came a week ago today that Richard James, better known to electronic fans as Aphex Twin, would drop SYRO (due out Sept. 23 via Warp), his first full album since 2001’s Drukqs, it was like EDC fell on Christmas for diehard Aphex Twin fans like Bryan Ling.

“It’s exciting to think about the possibility of new output from him,” says Ling, who manages Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, among others.

Ling, who owns every James record, is part of a sect of Aphex Twin album collectors that has become much more well-known this year after Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson paid $46,300 for a rare copy of Caustic Window.

This particular group of fans runs deep. On the Aphex Twin message board, WATMM, as several fans debated the format in which to buy the new record, one fan wrote simply, “I buy everything. I don’t care. I buy everything.” That is how Caustic Window came to be public in the first place. When word of the unreleased album was made public via a copy being sold on Discogs for $13,500, over 4,000 Aphex Twin followers joined forces via Kickstarter to have the album ripped to digital format. Together, the collective raised more than $67,000. All of the 4,124 fans who banded together to have Caustic Window released digitally received a copy of the album, and the original was sold to Persson.

To recap, an album being sold for $13,500 was licensed, with permission from James’ Rephlex label, for over $67,000, then sold for $46,300. That’s getting into Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Elvis territory. How hardcore are the Aphex Twin fans? They are so fervent that a limited edition of the new album, which will sell for $400, is expected to be so in-demand that Warp Records is holding a drawing for fans to have the chance to buy the limited-edition pack. “In the interest of fairness, the chance to purchase the item will only be available via a ballot,” the label posted on the website. None of the DJs on Forbes’ Top 10 Highest Paid list can sell a single record for anywhere near that.

Deadmau5 credits Aphex Twin as a huge influence, telling In the Mix, “He makes me feel not so antisocial,” and adding recollections of listening to Drukqs on long bus rides from Niagara Falls to Toronto. In 2011, Skrillex listed “Flim” as his favorite song of all time on his Facebook page. Asked about that in a Pitchfork interview, he extolled the many virtues of Aphex Twin.

“I know every break and hit to ‘Flim’ verbatim,” Skrillex told the site. “I’ve listened to it more than any other song in my whole life. I first found out about Aphex in San Francisco when I was 11 or 12. Korn was on MTV playing their favorite videos, and [Korn guitarist] Munky picked ‘Come to Daddy.’ So I saved up my money and got the Come to Daddy EP.”

I hated all the music that was around Radiohead at the time. It was completely fucking meaningless, but Aphex was totally beautiful.

Ling became an Aphex Twin devotee in a similar fashion. “It was the drummer of 311, Chad Sexton, who got me into it,” he explains. “It was on their tour bus, him listening to Ambient Works, and basically breaking it down and explaining to me that this was the way that his mind retains classical music, this was in the same way. For Chad it’s like listening to classical music, how intricate the drum beats and just everything, the kind of sounds. The way he described it back then is there’s all this space, and in that space you’ll hear all these intricacies of what he’s doing. So listening to him while I’m hearing it the first time, I was kind of hooked.”

It is high praise indeed when other musicians, and especially those from other genres, are champions of an artist. Another James disciple is Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, who called James his favorite producer when asked his biggest influence.

“I would still say old Richard D. James. He burns a heavy shadow,” Yorke told Dazed & Confused. “I used to have this big hang-up when I used to DJ at college, and the most exciting thing that used to happen was when a new Warp record came out. That’s what I used to DJ, and the sound system would come alive. Aphex opened up another world that didn’t involve my fucking electric guitar, and I was just so jealous of that whole crew. They were off on their own planet. I hated all the music that was around Radiohead at the time; it was completely fucking meaningless. I hated the Britpop thing and what was happening in America, but Aphex was totally beautiful, and he’s kind of my age too. He’s a massive influence.”

After a career spanning over 20 years, James has earned that respect. His debut full-length effort, Selected Ambient Works 85-92, might very well be the electronic music equivalent of a debut from another artist’s artist, the Velvet Underground and Nico. Like that landmark album, Selected Ambient Works 85-92—which followed the Analogue Bubblebath Volumes 1 and 2 EPs—was released to widespread critical acclaim and paved the way for other artists. UK’s FACT Magazine named it the best album of the ‘90s, and it was included in “1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die.” Warp Records boldly calls the collection “the birthplace and the benchmark of electronic music.” Ling would agree.

“It was my first real taste of electronic music at all. For me it was all techno, then Aphex Twin,” he says. “It was also the first time music, for me, wasn’t about songs, but I started thinking about the rhythm and vibrations of light and sound. It really expanded my whole world. So Aphex Twin opened all these doors in my mind of how much other music was out there in ways I’d never really thought of before.”

Ling sums up very nicely what it means to be a fan of James: “Aphex Twin has to mean something different to every kind of person. I think it sits in its own realm.”

Follow Aphex Twin on Facebook | Twitter