Aphex Blimp Day

Aphex Blimp
(Chris Randall)

Update #1: Aphex Twin has, in fact, announced a new album titled SYRO. And he announced it “via Tor, the deep web browser typically used for the internet’s shadier pursuits,” because he’s Aphex Twin and that’s just the sort of thing that Aphex Twin would do.

Yesterday, the Intertubes were all abuzz with news that a blimp bearing the number “2014” and the Aphex Twin logo was floating over London. Fans immediately started speculating that this might mean the reclusive mad genius Richard D. James is finally set to release some new music. (The Twin’s most recent full-length, Drukqs, was released in 2001.) After all, he’s said he has six albums’ worth of material recorded.

To help celebrate this momentous-yet-odd occasion, Vapor Lanes released an “alternate” version of “Vordhosbn” that slows the Drukqs track down from 45 rpm to 33 1/3 rpm. As he puts it:

I first conducted this experiment in college with some friends, and found the results so captivating that I now consider this the “correct” way to hear this song. Where once the drum programming was verging on incomprehensible, suddenly it’s one of the best hip hop tracks you’ve ever heard. It grooves so perfectly that it almost seems intended to be slowed down in exactly this way. Hope you agree.

Via Marc Weidenbaum, who has more “Aphex Blimp Day” links.

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