Aphex Twin's new album: the truth

Aphex Twin's new album will be a collection of ballads with Irish boyband megastars Westlife.

Mr Aphex announced his first studio album for 13 years by threatening London with a zeppelin and then a small ad in the back pages of Loot, otherwise known as the "dark web".

There was also a posting on his official Twitter account, which read: "nuAlbum with WstLfe, theyre the 1s with Ronan in, rite?!".

The reaction from the music industry to Aphex Twin's comeback was swift and overwhelming. [Note: insert a bunch of tweets here and pass them off as journalistic quote sourcing.] Also, Phats & Small were unavailable for comment. Skrillex did hold a press conference at which the only attendees were Chase & Status, Nile Rogers, a bloke from Disclosure and whoever's left out of Milli Vanilli.

The album will be available in gatefold vinyl which plays, greetings card style, Avril 14th when you open it up. The first 500 copies will come with a free "Squarepusher sucks" sticker.

Alongside a live tour with Kid 606 and Austin Mahone supporting, the album will be promoted with residency on The One Show.

A statement from Ronan Keating reads: "Seriously, it's because we're Irish, isn't it? They just dressed in black and sat on stools. We had dance routines and stuff. Westlife didn't even do curtains properly."

What will the new album be like? Will his window be caustic, lickable or polygon? Further thoughts will be in the next edition of Electronic Sound.

Bonus: a possible album preview has appeared on YouTube:

The Aphex Twin blimp is a Warp Records PR stunt, say Oval Space

(See a 2014 album update here.)

A blimp displaying Aphex Twin's logo has appeared above art centre Oval Space in London.

The airship shows the year 2014 with the zero containing his logo. Stencils are also appearing, including at New York's Radio City Music Hall, although it could be those have been there for a while.

One marketing man has already collared the bloke driving the blimp trick ("it's gonna be good"), while another tweeter reckons the blimp contains 2,014 unreleased Aphex albums. Or perhaps it's a load of, er, hot air.

I did a bit of digging around.

The publicity stunt follows a successful Caustic Window Kickstarter campaign that saw £67,000 raised to release a rare 1990s test pressing. The latest missive from the campaign - I'm one of the backers - just mentioned some housekeeping details about a DigiPack release and mentioned nothing of a Pink Floyd-style PR coup.

I rang Oval Space, who are hosting Aphex's label mate Rustie next month for the debut of Rustie's new album Attak. I asked them if the blimp was anything to do with them. They issued a quick denial and told me it was a marketing exercise by Warp Records.

Maybe he's just DJing at Oval's LDN Craft Beer Festival this weekend. Maybe this means all those unreleased albums are ready to go. Maybe - and most likely considering what Oval Space told me - it's to do with Warp's 25th anniversary celebrations.

Either way, I think we can conclude that Aphex Twin is launching an aerial assault on London and we should all run for our lives.

Aphex blimp photo: NME

Further Fats: Aphex Twin.

You see where I'm going with this, right?

Post suggestions in the comments. There must be a full Fat Roland's worth of complete record covers in this. Damn you, Portishead, for beginning with P.

10 Guardian pieces about whether the album is dead or not

I'm not sure what this means. Maybe think-pieces about the death of the album are dead. Maybe everything's dead.

Maybe I should record these articles as an album. And only sell it to dead people.

1 

"The latest victim, and perhaps the most depressing when it comes to the slow but steady bludgeoning of creativity within the field, is the album."  (Harriet Walker, July 2014)

2

"While some musicians have been resistant to the decline of the album, others have begun to recognise and accept the changing tide." (Hannah Ellis-Petersen, July 2014)

3

"Is the album dead? Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and Elton John hit by dramatic US sales slump." (Headline, Edward Helmore, November 2013)

4

"The internet will suck the creative content out of the whole world until nothing is left." (David Byrne, October 2013)

 5

"Music has died now I've thrown away my CDs and only listen on my laptop." (Headline, Sophie Heawood, June 2013) 

6

"Music apps are the new albums. Or the new concert DVDs. Or..." (Guardian apps blog, November 2012.)

7

"It has been a decade since piracy and the arrival of iTunes – which destroyed the notion of an album in favour of single, downloadable tracks – but the music business has found nothing to repair lost CD sales." (Dan Sabbagh, October 2011)

 

8

"Record breaking: is the album format dead?" (Guardian music blog, August 2009)

9

"The death knell is sounding for the album, and the industry is quickening its demise by fighting innovation." (Natalie Hanman, July 2005)

Or...

10

"The working cycle of a band is still based around making albums and then touring them, and while artists are still grouping songs together for release, whatever the format... Whether you're listening on a smartphone or gramophone the "long player" is here to stay." (Guardian music blog, February 2013)

Further Fats: Every Guardian music 'crepuscular' reference since the start of 2010, probably (2013)

Five engrossing techno tracks

Here are five utterly engrossing techno tracks. Dive into them. Let them wash over you. Some of them have the texture of treacle or gloopy fairy tears, while others will feel like you're drowning in a pool of hot tar. But in a good way. Some of them just feel you're being humped by the YouTube Lossy Dog. Down boy.

Vatican Shadow's Cairo Is A Haunted City

Prurient's Through The Window

Morph's Morphine

Synkro & Indigo's Guidance

Pearson Sound's Untitled

Oh and an extra one for being so well behaved...
The Autechre remix of Surgeon's Whose Bad Hands Are These?


Further Fats: Oh to be torn up by wolves and fed, bit by bit, through an old lawnmower (2008)

Here is the latest pop chart, apparently

I've just checked the latest pop chart now that streaming counts towards its figures. I'm not sure I like it.

Here's the current top ten.

1 - The sound of you and your wheezing breath captured by your laptop's watching camera.

2 - A mysterious operative in a curtained room reading your Yahoo spam emails and chucking quietly. His name is Muriel.

3 - The flat tap-tap-tap of mouse clicks. When you look at the shadows, the clicks stop.

4 - Echoing through Westminster, the joyful slap of high-fives and glass clinks - then urgent shushing when someone approaches.

5 - The plastic rustle of the actual tarpaulin the government uses in its cover-ups.

6 - Julian Assange weeping his way through I Did It My Way then powering his way through six packs of Pringles.

7 - The wet, crusty bubbling of Eric Pickles' widening smile.

8 - The slow grind of history repeating itself and repeating itself and...

9 - The sound of the computer that auto-generates Calvin Harris hits. A mix between a jolly "ping" and the mournful wail of a dying planet.

10 - The brittle splintering of forced satire.

Further Fats: Oh, puppies, why do you live? (2006)

I'm splurging my wordballs at these following events

I did a poetry event the other night. I did it. I proper did it.

Evidently takes place in the bricked back room of Salford's Eagle Inn on a stage facing two balconies: the double-deckered audience gives the impression of intimacy in what is otherwise a cavernous chimney. A great venue with great beer.

Here are some other events I'm splurging my wordballs at:

> On June 18th, I host the launch of Anneliese Mackintosh's debut short story collection Any Other Mouth. Click here for the Facebook event. I'm reading the book at the moment. Its perfect mix of humour, depth and readability has left me giddy. It makes me want to be a better writer.

> On June 21st, I'm supporting Zach Roddis as he launches Selected Tweets in the Salford Zine Library. Zach Roddis is YOLO. Zach Roddis is not YOLO. He is neither buffalo nor augmented pony. This is going to be a weird one: here's the Facebook event. Click here if you want to give him money to produce more stuff.

> And on June 25th, it's the monthly literary feast that is Bad Language. Ooo. I've not done a Facebook event post for that yet. Sack this blogging lark, I'm off to Land O'Zuckerberg...

In other news, I'm generating story ideas. There are post-it notes on my living room wall. I have a thing in my head. An idea; a through-line. It feels quite fragile, like a web made by a frail spider with a bit of a detox wobble. But I have a thing: a series of connected stories that aren't very connected at all. Like Cloud Atlas. That kind of thing, only not as long and as frustrating.

I can't tell you what the thing is because that would cause a breeze in my mind and the web would crumble.

The thing feels quite precious in this state. I'll keep you updated.

Three things I've been listening to, and they all begin with P like pea, pineal gland and, er, Papa Roach

This is what I've been pouring into my ear tubes recently.

PLASTIKMAN: EX (MUTE)



Slow-ass acid techno, performed live in New York, that's as sharp as a million pins piercing your brain. There's so much space in Pastikman's first album for a decade, a simple cymbal shudders plaster from the walls. The growling bassline of EXtrude will knock you off your feet. Every moment is played for a live experience, and although progress is, on the surface, glacial, the themes submerge and rise with a beautiful and hypnotic dynamism. And Richie Hawtin certainly offers us the best production I've heard in 2014. Run for the hills, Jon Hopkins!

PLAID: REACHY PRINTS (WARP)



IDM's most listenable, most melodic moment of the year, and certainly Plaid's "easiest" album. Nafovanny's moody loping is nothing less than a five minute pop song with a stadium-techno refrain, albeit with that ethereal chiming to make things sounds like a steel drum band on Venus. Like their older tracks Eyen and Get What You Gave, most of this feels simple and familiar. Throughout, there's Kraftwerkian melodies, home-listening melancholia and, on Matin Lunaire, a close approximation of Wonky-era Orbital. The most Plaidian Plaid to date.

PATTEN - ESTOILE NAIANT (WARP)



And here's an album I started listening to a lot then gave up on. patten's complex and messy electronica sounds like Boards of Canada with broken legs. It has all the sounds of classic IDM, but it seems somehow distracted and entirely of the head rather than the heart. There's so much bustling on Key Embedded, while their most intriguing moment Drift kills itself with its own percussion. Still, I love the abstraction and the Autechre bit of me has an utter tentpole at the sound of it all.

Further Fats: Bleep Years day two: Plaid's Get What You Gave (2012)