Aphex Twin has shared “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f,” the first official release from the producer born Richard D. James in five years. It leads a four-track EP, Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In a Room7 F760, coming July 28 via Warp. Check out the song below (Weirdcore’s EP artwork is the video image), along with the EP tracklist.
Last week, Aphex Twin performed at Sónar 2023 in Barcelona. A post from the Aphex Twin Twitter account instructed fans to “LOOK OUT FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL IN SONAR +D PROJECT AREA AND AT THE MERCH DESK.” Posters with QR codes were reportedly put up in Los Angeles yesterday (June 20). The codes lead to an augmented reality app called YXBoZXh0d2lu; when the QR codes are scanned with the app, music and an animation play.
Earlier this year, Aphex Twin announced that he’ll headline London’s Field Day Festival on August 19. He made a rare social media appearance in three photos Arca posted in June.
In 2021, James joined the early wave of NFT sales, collaborating with Weirdcore and Freeka Tet on a graphic that sold for more than $128,000. Freeka Tet revealed that the NFT’s seed file had additional material buried within it, explaining how to access the other files in a video on Instagram. Fans who followed the steps discovered “April 14” in the files, according to NME.
In spring 2020, James shared a handful of unofficial tracks before Aphex Twin posters and billboards appeared without explanation in London, Bristol, Los Angeles, and Berlin in October. His other recent projects include developing a new synthesizer and a software plugin to allow for nonstandard synth tunings. Aphex Twin’s Collapse EP came out in 2018.
Read Pitchfork’s Sunday Review of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II.
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Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In a Room7 F760 EP:
01 Blackbox Life Recorder 21f
02 Zin2 Test5
03 In a Room7 F760
04 Blackbox Life Recorder 22 [Parallax Mix]
This article was originally published on Wednesday, June 21, at 1:46 a.m. Eastern. It was last updated on June 21 at 10:43 a.m. Eastern.