Think of Caribou’s recent “reward” to fans of a 1 ,000-track YouTube playlist, or FaltyDL’s curious decision to promote his new album through porn site Pornhub.

Why not explore the creative possibilities offered by the internet? Why not use it as a medium to shock, delight and surprise? Yes there are real problems created by the new digital paradigms – as highlighted by One Little Indian’s problems when Bjork’s new album was leaked – but there are also opportunities.

Rather he’s giving his audience a new way to engage – and in the process he’s highlighting the need for a new playfulness and spirit of adventure in the music industry’s relationship with the internet.

Hence we had Thom Yorke and David Byrne railing against the evils of streaming – and Yorke’s grand but flawed attempts to create a new way of selling music – either through a “pay what you like” scheme or via a legalised BitTorrent model.Īphex Twin isn’t trying to solve these problems. There was a sense for a while that the internet had to be used to solve all the problems that it had caused. He is simply playing, in much the same way that label mates Boards of Canada did when they launched their 2013 album Tomorrow’s Harvest with a bizarre online and offline global treasure hunt. He’s not suggesting that he has the answers that will lead to a new business model. This is him at his best, playing with the medium and his audience just as he used to do with more primitive models of branding, marketing, myth-building and distribution. This latest dump of early demos on Soundcloud is perhaps the least sophisticated of recent moves – but the mystery surrounding what’s happening and why, the constantly changing user profiles Richard D James uses, and the seemingly random drip-feeding of tracks is classic Aphex Twin. The strength of good feeling generated by this grassroots digital initiative seems to have genuinely moved Aphex Twin – “the whole thing is just really touching” he told Pitchfork back in August – and has perhaps influenced his future activities.Ī few months later came the equally unexpected news of a new Aphex Twin album – announced with a link only accessible via darknet site Tor – causing an unexpected spike in traffic for the service which makes it possible for users to surf the internet anonymously. First there was the almost accidental Kickstarter campaign that brought the “lost” Caustic Window LP to the wider world – and ended fittingly enough with t he inventor of Minecraft bagging the original pressing. Over the last year the world has been introduced to Aphex Twin material – new and old – through a variety of intriguing digital channels.

Aphex twin soundcloud download