The Story
Richard David James was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1971 to Welsh parents and raised in Lanner, Cornwall — about as far from any music-industry center as England gets, which may explain everything. In 1991 he co-founded Rephlex Records with Grant Wilson-Claridge, and in November 1992 released Selected Ambient Works 85–92: home-recorded ambient techno, some of it made in his teens, that quietly became one of the most revered electronic albums ever issued.
Through the nineties on Warp he seemed to invent a new dialect per record — the beatless drift of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, the hyperactive drill of the Richard D. James Album (1996), and the era of grinning-face provocations: 'Come to Daddy' and 'Windowlicker' (1999), the latter's Chris Cunningham video a landmark of the form.
After Drukqs (2001) he mostly went quiet under the Aphex name — releasing as AFX and other aliases — until Syro appeared in 2014 and won the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album. The releases since have kept the pattern: long silences, then a sudden generosity, like 2023's 'Blackbox Life Recorder 21f', which earned another Grammy nomination.
Few artists have stayed this unpredictable for this long while remaining this loved. The catalog rewards wandering: start anywhere, expect whiplash.
