Aphex Twin and the ugliest cover ever

We are at Aphex Twin’s third release in just over a year: considering the completely personal times and ways in which this icon of electronic music works, it’s quite impressive. Five years after “Collapse”, during the summer of 2023 he released the EP “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In a Room7 F760”, recently reissued in an expanded version. Subsequently, last spring, the reissue of the classic “Selected Ambient Works Volume II” arrived (here the review). Finally, just before Christmas, a compilation was released, “Music From The Merch Desk (2016–2023)”, containing 38 rare songs.

As the title suggests, these are not completely unreleased material, but tracks sold in vinyl format at concert stands, without warning, and quickly became collector’s items. This practice, which began in 2017, continued until last year’s tour.

The compilation stands out for having what we can safely call one of the ugliest covers ever: a terrible collage of images of Richard D. James’ face. It is nothing new that the illustrations linked to his music play with the listener’s gaze, often provoking or disturbing him. In this case, however, there is a specific reason: the cover seems to recall the illustrations of the terrible “bootleg” t-shirts sold at concerts, generally created by taking the first available images of an artist and composing them in a rudimentary way. In short, Aphex Twin is trolling us once again.