In December 2016, Aphex Twin played in the U.S. for the first time in almost a decade, at a festival in Houston. By all accounts it was a memorable night, complete with a dramatic storm that hit during his set—the big screens were lowered, revelers hid in porta-potties, and the rain seemed to drive Richard D. James to play harder and harder music. Eagle-eyed fans noticed something else that night: a new record, stamped with a few logos and the simple title Houston, TX 12.17.16.
The music was ripped and online the next day. The EP—two 10-minute long tracks of scuzzy broken techno that switched gears as often as Meshuggah change keys—was both awe-inspiring and befuddling. The same goes for much of Music From the Merch Desk (2016 - 2023), a streaming compilation of the physical releases he’s put out at his shows around the world since then. Some of his strangest and most challenging music is gathered here, in a 38-track, two-and-a-half-hour package that feels both completist and incomplete (his truly avant-garde Mt. Fuji cassette is missing), full of goodies for the musically curious but not worth the slog of listening to all the way through.
None of the music here is new. There are already countless Reddit threads debating the merits of each release, and Music From the Merch Desk offers no bonus material or extras in any form. A handful of these records were already repeats, picking out highlights from webstore-only releases, oddities like his inessential Korg demo 12", and the famous SoundCloud archive. Another good chunk of the compilation is taken from an LP also known as Field Day, after the UK festival James played in 2017, featuring glimpses of brilliance overshadowed by fiddly noodling. For every highlight like the fuzzy, frantic “T20A ede 441”—as hyperactive as something off Drukqs—there’s an aimless experiment or a melody that doesn’t quite land.
The rest is hit or miss, with thrilling high points. The Barcelona 12", never officially released online, is wonderfully wiggly, particularly the psychedelic acid odyssey “rfc pt8.” And the London 14.09.2019 12", cherry-picking tracks from the online-only EP Orphans, has the most functional AFX work in decades. Rarely since …I Care Because You Do has his music been as straightforwardly pretty as his remix of Luke Vibert’s “Spiral Staircase,” which he submitted anonymously to a remix contest—that he won, naturally—in 2004. “Nightmail,” all scorched acid lines and feverish vocal loops, imagines what early AFX might have sounded like if he was steeped in the breakbeat hardcore scene of London rather than tucked away in Cornwall. Best of all is “Soundlab20,” a retro electro track that conjures up James cruising down a beachside parkway in a convertible, with no facial distortions or weird imagery. It’s simply a perfect sunny-day jam, the likes of which he rarely lets loose from his vault.
Tunes like those are worth coming back to, but most of Music From the Merch Desk sounds like listening to James figure out his equipment in real time, stopping and starting sketches with no discernible rhyme or reason. You might be thinking, “That just sounds like Aphex Twin,” but the material here is more disparate and scattershot than usual—especially sequenced as it is, chronologically according to the release date of each tour EP, with no flow or build-up to speak of. Students of James will find it fascinating, but they’ve probably heard it already. For everyone else, it’s a warts-and-all look at a musical genius in low-pressure mode—another bout of oversharing from an artist who once held his cards close to his chest.
