Aphex Twin is the artist everyone tells you to listen to and nobody tells you how. You ask where to start and someone says “SAW II,” someone else says “absolutely not, start with Drukqs,” a third person says “watch the Windowlicker video and never sleep again,” and now you’ve got eleven tabs open and you’ve listened to nothing. So here’s the actual answer, opinionated and correct: start with Selected Ambient Works 85-92, then Richard D. James Album. Everything else can wait. You can start here, and you should.
First, the person. Richard D. James is a Cornish guy who’s been making electronic music since the late ’80s, mostly under Aphex Twin but also as AFX, Polygon Window, Caustic Window, and a pile of other aliases he half-buried on purpose. He is the closest thing electronic music has to a folk villain — the smiling logo, the creepy press shots, the tank he allegedly lives in, the story about owning a submarine. Half of it is true and he won’t tell you which half. That myth is fun, but it’s also the thing that scares people off. Ignore it for now. The music is more inviting than the legend.
There are basically three Aphex Twins, and you do not have to like all of them.
The ambient one. Start with Selected Ambient Works 85-92. Not the sequel — the first one. It’s warm, melodic, made on gear held together with duct tape, and it sounds like memory more than music. “Xtal” and “Ageispolis” are the way in. This is the least intimidating record in the entire catalog and arguably the best, and if you only ever listen to one Aphex album, the internet will not be mad at you for picking this. Selected Ambient Works Volume II is the colder, beatless, two-and-a-half-hour dream-logic sequel — gorgeous, but it’s a record you grow into. Don’t lead with it. People who tell beginners to start on SAW II are testing you, not helping you.
The playful one. This is the squelchy, hardware-driven, melodic-but-hyperactive Aphex — rubbery, candy-colored, occasionally goofy. Richard D. James Album (1996) is the sweet spot: tiny tunes like “4” and “Girl/Boy Song” stapled onto drum programming so fast and detailed it shouldn’t be hummable, but is. …I Care Because You Do (1995) sits right next to it — a little grittier, a little more acid in the synths, the same brain clearly having a blast. This is the easiest bridge from “pretty” to “weird.”
The drill-n-bass one. Now the deep end. This is where the breakbeats get chopped into confetti, the time signatures stop making sense, and tracks sound like a hard drive having a panic attack. Drukqs (2001) lives here, half gnarly machine-gun rhythms, half delicate prepared-piano pieces, which tells you everything about how his brain works. This is the Aphex that earns the scary reputation. You can absolutely love it — just don’t make it your first date.
And then there’s Windowlicker, which sits outside all three and deserves its own paragraph. The 1999 single is a genuinely great, funky, almost R&B-shaped track. The video, directed by Chris Cunningham, is a fever dream where everyone has Richard’s grinning face, and it is the single most efficient way to understand the vibe of Aphex Twin without committing to an album. Watch it. Then watch “Come to Daddy” if you want to be unable to sleep. Cunningham and James together is its own genre.
So, the path: play Selected Ambient Works 85-92 front to back and let it sit with you for a week. When it stops sounding strange, move to Richard D. James Album, and catch the Windowlicker video somewhere in there for the personality. Then, and only then, if you find yourself wanting the rhythms more violent and the melodies more deranged, go to Drukqs and the rest of what he buried out there. There’s a lot of it — the man has released more music as a hobby than most artists do as a career, and the Syro comeback in 2014 and the Cheetah (2016) and Collapse (2018) EPs are all worth your time once you’re hooked.
One rule, and it’s the only one that matters: do not start with the hardest thing to prove you can take it. Aphex Twin isn’t a dare. The whole point is that underneath the gremlin logo and the submarine stories is a guy who writes some of the most beautiful melodies in electronic music, and the beautiful stuff is right there at the front door. Start where it’s pretty. The terror can wait.
Start with the ambient record. Thank me in a week.