Review Summary: In your face and all over the place.
Aphex Twin was at his peak during the 1990s. Aside from codifying modern contemporary electronic music with his first Selected Ambient Works album, he showed the world that electronic music has a LOT of possibilities under its umbrella. He made beautiful yet atmospherically unnerving compositions ("SAW Volume II"), pieces rooted in drum-n-bass and jungle that were more emotive than they had any right to be ("RDJ Album"), and whatever the hell "Ventolin" was. As the turn of the millennium neared, he made one of the genre's most terrifying songs ("Come to Daddy") while making some brilliant satire towards the mainstream's trends along the way ("Windowlicker"). It's safe to say that come the 2000s, Mr. James would have to battle the beast mutated from what he created and show us the true and utter brilliance that comes with the name Aphex Twin.
And when Drukqs was released in 2001, it didn't come with unanimous fanfare. In fact, quite the inverse -- the album saw extremely mixed reactions, with some people bashing the album as a directionless, cacophonic mess that served as Aphex's most glaring lowlight, while others gave the album mass acclaim for its compelling unpredictability from track to track, even calling it Aphex's BEST work yet.
Drukqs is Aphex's second double album, providing a wee bit over 100 minutes of music. The first disc just seems to be trapped in a Groundhog Day loop of "calm track followed by aggressive track", with almost all of the tracks receiving names that would make you sound like a bumbling fool if you were to try and pronounce them in public. As an even more audacious move, some of the calm tracks later on the disc are piano pieces, with the most famous example being "Avril 14th".
Alongside this, some monkey wrenches to further accentuate the album's unforeseeable natures. There's the eerie "Gwety Mernans", which sounds like a "SAW Vol II" outtake. There's "Aussois", a 13-second interlude composed of a child speaking, sounding as if it was recorded in a particularly echo-y basement. There's "Orban Eq Trx 4", which is a 1.5-minute long track composed of a modulated drum loop that feels like nothing more than filler.
This brings us to the second disc, which gives us less abrasive tracks that sound more like the Aphex we know and love, such as "54 Cymru Beats" and "Meltphace 6". However, this comes at the cost of a lot of purposeless interludes that could easily have been shaved off without any real effect in its wake. Take "Lornaderek", for example: did a 30-second sample of people singing "Happy Birthday" really serve as a necessary addition? Furthermore, there are still lots of calm tracks that get counteracted by regular Aphex tracks. As the album closes up, it gives us the 8.5 minute epic "Ziggomatic 17" and then offers a softer conclusion with two piano pieces, "Beshku3epnm" and "nanou2" (apparently a sequel to the Windowlicker EP's "Nannou").
Drukqs is an album that doesn't really have a sense of self. It just throws noises and such into your ears, with the occasional cooldown session(s). I see it like this: the album is just sorta situated in a giant body of quicksand, and by the time it realizes its situation and tries to climb out, it's already chest deep in, and all it can do now is try not to drown. If you went into this album expecting it to re-reinvent electronic music, you will probably be disappointed. Drukqs lacks the sense of ingenuity that made Aphex's previous works so highly renowned. I'm sure that, with extensive track eschewing, this could've been condensed down to a decent regular-length album.
Aphex Twin is famous for confounding our expectations, but not in such a blunt manner that almost feels as if he's pranking us.
