Aphex Twin: Blackbox Life Recorder 21F / In A Room7 F760 (12"EP) [WARP]

Why you'll love it

This Warp 12" spins at 45 RPM, with two tracks a side. The EP scored 79 on Metacritic, and Exclaim! called it "solid tungsten all the way through."

This edition

• 12" EP
• Cut at 45 RPM
• 2025 repress

About the album

Most artists announce a new EP with a social media post. Richard D. James teased this one during his Sónar 2023 set and then papered Los Angeles with posters carrying QR codes, which led fans to an app called YXBoZXh0d2lu that played the new music over visuals. The title track followed as a single on June 21, 2023, with the full EP arriving on July 28.

The four tracks are percussion-forward and quietly unsettling. The Arts Desk heard a cinematic drone in "Blackbox Life Recorder 21f," an ambient breakbeat in "Zin2 Test5" and a livelier, beat-heavy pulse in "In a Room7 F760," while the closing Parallax Mix of the title track turns grubby and claustrophobic. Pitchfork's Philip Sherburne called the tracks big, bruising and percussion-forward, and Exclaim!'s Daryl Keating hailed the opener as an absolute masterclass in percussion.

John Doran of The Quietus compared it to a very large house with a huge variety of rooms. The app's name, incidentally, is base64 for "aphextwin," which is about as close as Richard D. James has ever come to wearing a name tag.

Also at Kops: more Aphex Twin on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Warp (cat# WAP480EP), a reissue of the 2023 EP.