NETSPIN

Aphex Twin may not have released a new album in nine years but that’s because he’s apparently saving them up. The drill’n'bass legend has a half-dozen “completed” LPs, according to a new interview, but isn’t saying when – or if – they will finally be released.

“I’ve got six,” the DJ, real name Richard D James, told Another Man magazine. “Two are very non-commercial, abstract, modular-synthesis field recordings – those I finished four years ago. Another one is Melodies From Mars, which I redid about three years ago. There’s one of stuff I won’t go into: a comp of old tracks which is never really finished and always changing. And then one I’m working on now. There are also loads of tracks which don’t belong anywhere.”

James’s last studio album was 2001′s Drukqs. Since then, the only formal signs of life were a remix comp, a collection of EPs, and a music video – years late – for the 1999 track Nannou. In 2009, Warp Records boss Steve Beckett told BBC 6 Music a new Aphex Twin record would “hopefully” be put out by the end of that year. Eighteen months later, there’s still nothing on the calendar.

Despite his quiet release schedule, James has continued to play DJ sets across the UK and Europe. While other superstar DJs jump and preen behind the decks, AFX said he prides himself on his “stillness”. “I love the fact that if you are very still, which I usually am, it’s much, much harder to get everyone dancing and going mental,” he said. “If people do go mental I know it’s only because of the music.” When other DJs ask the crowd to “put their hands in the air”, James rolls his eyes. “If I want to put my hands in the air I will. I don’t need some fuck-stick telling me what to do.”

Elsewhere in the interview, James described music as “adding flavours into the earth-mix which were not there before”. And “favourite noises” these days are “wind” and “mine shafts when you chuck rocks down them”. His six new earth-mix flavours, windy or subterranean, can’t get here soon enough.