Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin is Richard David James, born in 1971 and raised in Cornwall, where he spent the late '80s DJing free parties and clubs around the South West. The Analogue Bubblebath EP, released in 1991 on Mighty Force, gave him his first following, and that same year he helped set up the label Rephlex. The next year's Selected Ambient Works 85–92, put out by the Belgian label Apollo, took him far wider, and by the end of 1992 he'd signed to Warp.

What he makes won't sit still. Techno, ambient, acid and jungle all feed into it, and he has become the name most closely tied to intelligent dance music. After Selected Ambient Works Volume II came the Richard D. James Album in 1996, a warped, prankish marvel of hyperspeed drum programming laid over music-box melodies, "Girl/Boy" swooning on lush strings while the beats splinter underneath. "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker" followed, both with Chris Cunningham videos that carried him to a far bigger international audience.

Drukqs in 2001 closed out his Warp deal, and he spent years releasing music on Rephlex, including the Analord EPs as AFX. Syro, his 2014 return on Warp, won the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album, and he has kept dropping EPs such as Cheetah and Collapse, and tracks on SoundCloud, ever since. Critics routinely rank him among the most influential figures in electronic music.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.