PRAISE THE ANALORD

The fact that AFX’s Analord series was only made available on vinyl played a big part with me not bothering with this. Not that I have anything against vinyl, but I’ve grown to like the practicality of CDs over the years. My turntable is accessible, and I grew up listening to vinyls, yet the fact that I cannot carry it with me easily meant that spending a large amount of money to collect the 11 Analord EPs was a bit pointless.

Still, the press release for Chosen Lords mentions that each of the 11 vinyl EPs went on to sell well into five-figure quantities, which is a testament of AFX’s lasting appeal.


Chosen Lords comes as a gold CD

So, the fact that part of it has been compiled into a digestible CD version is rather good news. Released on Rephlex on 10 April, Chosen Lords features ten tracks covering a wide range of styles, as would be expected with Richard D. James. I am personally glad he seems to have moved away from the drill malarkey of his Richard D. James Album area. As with anything AFX related, it is difficult to tell whether these tracks were new or taken from Jame’s alleged very impressive collection of unreleased material, and I obviously cannot compare this condensed version of Analord with the complete series, yet this album continues to restore my faith in the man following the recent release of Hangable Autobulb (Warp) on CD and the release, still on Warp, of a limited edition split vinyl with LFO. Still, it would be nice to see Aphex Twin properly revived with a new album, of new material, soon… One can dream!