10 iconic Aphex Twin moments

Richard D. James. He does get up to some mischief, doesn't he?

Better known as Aphex Twin, but also going by the aliases Caustic Window, Blue Calx, Brian Tregaskin, GAK, Polygon Window, The Tuss and a horde of others, James has built a dedicated following who love tracking his every move.

Rumours are swapped, forums explode with gossip and people dissect his songs at every turn. So much so that his music is often in danger of taking a backseat to his shenanigans.

But whether you buy into the hype or not, there’s no doubting he’s a master of bending technological boundaries to fit his own twisted concepts.

Here are his 10 most iconic moments.

Whatever you think of the Grammys, winning one is still a musical milestone. So when Aphex Twin won for 'Syro' in 2014, it was a big deal. Up against Deadmau5, Little Dragon, Röyksopp, Robyn and Mat Zo it was pretty amazing the self-described “ginger kid from Cornwall”, who’s made some of the weirdest electronic music in history, was even nominated. He’s also been nominated for three Brits but they are obviously yet to fully recognise his genius.

In 1999, hip hop videos were in their Hollywood heyday. So what else were James and director Chris Cunningham supposed to do than create a 10-minute send-up of the entire genre? Especially in a way that made it difficult to look at a white bikini again without picturing…that.

Aphex Twin fans had been waiting 13 long years for a studio album when reports of a blimp flying over London began circulating. Sure, there had been a remix album and a collection of old, unreleased tracks but fresh original material had been rare since 2001 so the internet collectively lost it’s shit when the blimp was seen to have the Aphex Twin logo and the number 2014 on it. On the same day, Aphex Twin graffiti began showing up on the streets of New York City to complete the first half of one of the best promo campaigns in recent history.

The second half of his promotion campaign involved the murky depths of the deep web. After sending out the blimp, James tweeted a link from his barely used Twitter account the next morning. The URL could only be accessed with the Tor browser and took the user to a site hosting the album’s artwork, tracklist and title. It was exactly the exciting climax fans were searching for.

Chris Cunningham may be responsible for two of Aphex Twin’s most iconic videos but that didn’t stop James putting his faith in the hands of a 12-year-old for his most recent single. Ryan Wyer had his wish come true when James and Warp Records asked him to make the official video for ‘CIRKLON3 [Колхозная mix]’. Ryan, who is visually-impaired and autistic, caught the eye of James with his own homemade videos for Aphex Twin tracks and was given free reign to make what he wanted to for the track.

For a long time people thought James had bought a tank but, just to be clear, it’s actually a Daimler Ferret Mark 3 Armoured Scout Car. Acquired in a “shady” deal that involved swapping some “things” with “a guy he knew from Cornwall”, the vehicle was made for the British army and came with a mounted machine gun. Being in it is like being in a “womb…with a gun” apparently.

James’ face has always been one of his main marketing tools. Whether it was a bunch of kids terrorising an elderly lady in his image, or dancing with bikini-clad models that had his face superimposed on theirs, the twisted version of his grin is perhaps more mainstream than his music. In 1999 James took the theme a step further in true Aphex Twin fashion on the song now known as ‘Equation’ (it’s actual title is a math equation). Released as the B-side to ‘Windowlicker’, fans discovered in another show of mythical technological wizardry that James had drawn a picture of his face with the music taking his schtick to a whole other level of meta.

Never one to simply play live or DJ, James once played his live shows with friends dressed up as teddy bears and female bodybuilders flexing on stage. Meanwhile, he would lay on the ground, “just chilling” with his instruments.

A year after the ‘Syro’ release, James was clearly not done screwing with people on the internet. user48736353001 quickly ammassed a large number of followers after it went viral that the account might belong to James. It was later deleted, but he came back with 8user48736353001 and a whole bunch more tracks, some dating back to the '80s and '90s. Again, he removed the account but not before the page momentarily read “I AM NOT RICHARD” and a link to a YouTube channel containing all of the demos.

At the core of Aphex Twin’s legacy is that, potentially, all the stories are bullshit. Fans have always tried to find reason to James’ rhyme and everything is handled with such a cultish, mysterious fervour. Does he really have a dead brother? Did he really remix a Craig David track just to annoy him? Did he really live in the middle of the Elephant & Castle roundabout? Did he really play with sandpaper at a club night? No, but that didn’t stop a fan selling it on eBay for $232. In his own words to The Guardian, "I'm just some irritating, lying, ginger kid from Cornwall who should have been locked up in some youth detention centre. I just managed to escape and blag it into music." The joke is probably on everyone else.