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         Ophecks
             from Nova Scotia on 2001-12-18 16:58 [#00062191]
        
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I think it's his best. So complicated... it's a more  sinister RDJ album to me... long and RELENTLESS!!! Some weak  tracks, yes, (Gwarek2), but I think tracks like Vordhosbn  and Om Switch just take his style to new heights, it  out-RDJs the RDJ album. 
 
  With that said, MAYBE it was to fulfill contract  obligations... cuz it ain't revolutionary... but I think  it's his best, regardless. 
 
  I feel so alone in thinking this, fuck!
 
  
         
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         Chrispy
             from UK on 2001-12-18 17:05 [#00062194]
        
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It's understandable. There are som attractive tunes in there
 
  
         
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         The_Funkmaster
             from Newfoundland, Canada on 2001-12-18 17:24 [#00062199]
        
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it's good, but right now I'm thinking the RDJ album is the  best... the RDJ album is short and sweet, it doesn't waste  any time, and it fills so much great music into the short  time that it is... 
 
  
         
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         Ophecks
             from Nova Scotia on 2001-12-18 19:04 [#00062207]
        
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Review from yahoo's Launch site, saw it on another thread,  it echoes my sentiments exactly!
 
  Rejecting rumors that he was giving up music for video  games, Richard James, a.k.a. Aphex Twin, returns with the  best work of his inventively mad career. Most know the  British programmer from his grotesque soft porn video  Windowlicker or such albums as I Care Because You Do or  Selected Ambient Works Vol. whatever. But there have always  been many sides to Aphex: The bonkers programmer making  machines careen like heavy-metal insects having sex. The sly  sentimentalist whose elegiac washes of strings and moody  ambience equaled Britain's emotional 19th century classical  composers. Or the partying nutter who influenced legion of  lesser DJs with his acid drenched breakbeats and sampled  chromosome whirrrrrs. Drukqs comprises all of that in one  two-CD set, with greater clarity and direction than ever  before. 
 
  With more than 30 songs, Aphex shows why he remains the  master of the programming world. "Prep Gwarlek" is a  stumbling stew of pan lids and manhole covers clanging in a  thudding percussion suite. "Father" is simple, just 25  seconds of atonal piano plinked and plonked as if being  played by a sad marionette. "Taking Control" is pure '90s  acid beats, overlaid by a groaning voice program, myopic  synths, and hilarious 1970s Syndrums. Aphex indulges his  ambient side often, as with the beautifully sparse "Petiatil  Cx Htdui." Again, this is more pristine piano, played like a  sonata for a lost love. Of course, it is entirely  programmed, but you would never know it. The irreverent  "Ziggomatic" is Aphex's drum-n-bass tour de force; a blurred  ride amid shooting stars, slamming drums, liquid synth  tones, sparkling music-box sounds, and an exhausted video  game character. 
 
  One day they may say that Richard James, like Shakespeare,  could not have possibly made this quantity and quality of  music, that Aphex Twin must actually be many people, a  collective of nutty DJs and knob twiddlers. But we know this  could only be the work of one man, but perhaps succored by  many different Drukqs.
 
 
 
  
         
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         The_Funkmaster
             from Newfoundland, Canada on 2001-12-18 19:19 [#00062212]
        
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cool... I still say Drukqs is not his best, but it's good...   
 
  
         
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         Ophecks
             from Nova Scotia on 2001-12-18 22:34 [#00062264]
        
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Grrr... everyone's wrong except me!
 
  
         
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         Korben Dallas
             from www.mp3.com/polcxd on 2001-12-19 02:41 [#00062345]
        
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From Allmusic.com
  Despite threatening retirement several times, in 2001  Richard D. James finally released another Aphex Twin record.  But for all this record tells listeners, he may still be in  retirement. Spreading 30 tracks (most with unpronounceable  titles) across two discs, Drukqs sounds less like a major  new statement from electronica's best producer than the  results of a Sunday afternoon's trawl through his hard drive  for files he hasn't released before. Many songs here evoke  the feel of recordings long since past, from the quiet  ambient techno of his breakthrough, Selected Ambient Works  85-92, to the demonically extroverted programming of Richard  D. James Album and the Come to Daddy EP. Stylistically, the  record leans toward the later recordings, with many tracks  here reprising the off-key melodies and overloaded drum  programming of "Come to Daddy" or "Windowlicker." There's  also little rhyme or reason to the program; James veers  directly from a drill'n'bass firestorm ("Cock/Ver 10") to a  delicate piano piece à la Erik Satie ("Avril 14th") to an  acid-techno burner ("Mt. Saint Michel Mix") with barely a  glance backward for transition.
 
  Of course, aside from all the criticism, the previously  unreleased musings of Aphex Twin are still far more  intriguing and solid than most producers' best releases. The  opener, "Jynweythek Ylow," and "Ruglen Holon" are brilliant,  inscrutable pieces reminiscent of a rusty, bygone music box  or the gamelan music of Indonesia. And a few of the  second-disc highlights, "Meltphace 6" and "Taking Control,"  chart a middle ground between the emotional ambience of  early Aphex Twin and the wracked hysteria of his later work.  Drukqs is a sprawling album that defies listeners to  understand or enjoy it as a whole — it would've made a  much better fan-only release than the long-awaited return of  the techno vanguard's favorite producer. — John Bush
 
  should still be four star not three!
 
  
         
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         The_Funkmaster
             from Newfoundland, Canada on 2001-12-19 02:50 [#00062347]
        
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Amazon.com essential recording If techno ever does become the sound of young America, don't  expect Richard James to be its poster boy, deserving though  he may be. A native of Cornwall, England, James is obsessed  with the mechanics of music making: As a kid, he took apart  and reassembled the living room piano. Under the names Aphex  Twin, Polygon Window, AFX, and other aliases too numerous to  mention, he showed that he could make entire tracks with the  sounds produced by tapping on a Coke can. Like the indie  rockers of yore, he revels in his marginality because of the  creative freedom it gives him. His full-length U.S. debut,  Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994), includes some of  the most serene sounds this side of the Orb, but his  favorite hobby is the not-at-all-blissful pastime of driving  a Daimler Ferret Mark 3 tank through his parents' backyard.
  None of his recordings have captured the competing impulses  to lull you to sleep and blast out your eardrums as well as  Richard D. James, his third and best album. As the title  indicates, James has turned inward for inspiration, painting  aural pictures of real and imagined scenes from his west  country childhood. "Goongumpas" is a fanciful, playful tune  that wouldn't sound out of place on the soundtrack to Willy  Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. As his adventures with the  family upright indicate, James was a bit of a devil even as  a child. "Beetles" is the sound of a boy frying bugs on the  sidewalk with a magnifying glass, and "To Cure a Weakling  Child" shows flashes of the sort of sadism found only on  preschool playgrounds. If you still doubt that young Richard  developed early on, the romantic Nino Rota-style strings on  "Girl/Boy Song" are just made for passionate seductions, and  the tune appears in three mixes, each one hot and hornier  than the one before.
 
  The raucous undercurrents of even his calmest tunes and the  sources of many of his most common sounds are what link  James to the rock tradition. With Richard D. James, the  artist solidifies his position as an electronic music  mastermind who has earned a spot beside such well-respected  innovators--whether or not he's destined for stardom. --Jim  Derogatis 
 
  there, take that... Drukqs has nothing on The RDJ album...  which is my new favorite Aphex Twin album...  
 
  
         
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         Ophecks
             from Nova Scotia on 2001-12-19 04:11 [#00062358]
        
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I'm going to kill you.
 
  
         
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         an astute observer
             on 2001-12-19 04:49 [#00062371]
        
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Opchecks=[REFLEX]
  or not a hell of a lot of difference
 
 
  
         
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         Ophecks
             from Nova Scotia on 2001-12-19 05:28 [#00062392]
        
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Elaborate on that. And reveal your real identity, coward.
 
  
         
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         m
             on 2001-12-19 05:39 [#00062397]
        
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I didn't really get into it. If I got the album before I  heard (IMO) more interesting things like RDJ album,  windowlicker, com2daddy, lp5, ep7, otto von schirach, crunch  etc then I would have appreciated it a lot more. These  fantastic albums also killed my liking for squarepusher  quite a bit. It's a lot easier to follow the loony fast copy  and pasting for me mentally than it used to be. It's lost a  lot of its magic. The fast songs on drukqs don't ever  breath, there's a sound on every time unit progression,  there's not enough silence, then a lot of the songs, most of  the slow ones, are slightly weak sounding to me. But I  havn't heard it enough to have any concrete opinions. 
 
  
         
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         JOB
             from St.JohnNewfoundland, Canada on 2001-12-19 05:57 [#00062412]
        
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i dont know man i cant stop listening to drukqs. who cares  why rich released this album, i dont think that should  matter!
 
  Its damn good.
 
  
         
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         Korben Dallas
             from www.mp3.com/polcXd on 2001-12-19 10:36 [#00062461]
        
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agree with m - not that it really matters.
  I am quite looking forward to the MEN releases - for the  more "experimental" stuff - hopefully some more fresh sounds  ? or something. 
 
  
         
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         Archrival
             on 2001-12-19 11:22 [#00062472]
        
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Im on Ophecks side.
 
  
         
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         jand
             from Chelmsford,Essex,Uk on 2001-12-19 11:28 [#00062475]
        
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Yep, I'm with Opchecks..
  it's rapidly become one of fave Aphex albums...Have had the  Mp3s for forever & the CD since the release but I still feel  I haven't listened it fully...
 
  Theres so much in there that every time thru I find  something else I like...to begin with I was a bit,  "hmmm..not sure about this"..but now I LOVE IT!!  
 
  
         
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         XMoB
             from Chicago on 2001-12-19 11:47 [#00062478]
        
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Im with ophecks too, drukqs has some of my new favorite  tracks on it like 54 cymru beats. and some of the piano  pieces are great, I love kesson and petiatil cx.    I just  hope that if and when his next album comes out  it will be  even better! 
 
  
         
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         REPHLEX~ology
             from UK on 2001-12-19 12:39 [#00062485]
        
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Every release he releases, everyone says, thats his peak.
  But the next one just obliterates the last one.
  Im with Ophecks, but the next one will be amazing. Thats if  he releases another one...... 
 
  
         
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         Ophecks
             from Nova Scotia on 2001-12-19 15:02 [#00062521]
        
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It's the electronic equivalent of the Beatles' White Album,  maybe it's a little long. But I'd rather it be long than too  short, like the short (but VERY sweet) RDJ album. More Aphex  is GOOD Aphex! 
 
  
         
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           Toejam
             from Perth (Australia) on 2002-08-26 03:56 [#00364927]
         Points: 3077 Status: Regular
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OPHECKS! YOU ARE MY SAVIOUR!
  I seriously reckon Drukqs is his best, by a milestone. I  hated it for a year, though! 
 
  
         
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           Ophecks
             from Nova Scotia (Canada) on 2002-08-26 03:59 [#00364929]
         Points: 19190 Status: Moderator | Show recordbag
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Hahahahaha... now THIS was a long time ago. Yeesh... like  stepping back into a time machine.
 
  I refuse to read any of my old posts.
 
  
         
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           princo
             from Shitty City (Geelong) (Australia) on 2002-08-26 04:02 [#00364932]
         Points: 13411 Status: Lurker
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Do you still believe this about Drukqs?
  "It's the electronic equivalent of the Beatles' White  Album,"
 
  ;)
  Thats a pretty big call!
 
  
         
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           spoonz
             from Edmonton, AB (Canada) on 2002-08-26 04:03 [#00364933]
         Points: 3219 Status: Regular | Followup to Ophecks: #00364929
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Do you still agree with yourself? Or have you found new  value in his older stuff.  I don't know if I agree fully.  You said some things that I think are exactly right, but I  don't know if it is best yet, because there are so many  songs on the other albums I'd rather listen to. 
 
  
         
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           Ophecks
             from Nova Scotia (Canada) on 2002-08-26 04:06 [#00364940]
         Points: 19190 Status: Moderator | Show recordbag
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Haha, I DID read some of it, and somebody thought I was  Reflex. I remember that... awww, Version 4, how I miss thee  sometimes. ;-)
 
  I still somewhat agree with myself... I want to marry  Drukqs. 
 
  
         
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