Despite threatening retirement several times, in 2001 Richard D. James finally released another Aphex Twin record. But for all this record tells listeners, he may still be in retirement. Spreading 30 tracks (most with unpronounceable titles) across two discs, Drukqs sounds less like a major new statement from electronica's best producer than the results of a Sunday afternoon's trawl through his hard drive for files he hasn't released before. Many songs here evoke the feel of recordings long since past, from the quiet ambient techno of his breakthrough, Selected Ambient Works 85-92, to the demonically extroverted programming of Richard D. James Album and the Come to Daddy EP. Stylistically, the record leans toward the later recordings, with many tracks here reprising the off-key melodies and overloaded drum programming of "Come to Daddy" or "Windowlicker." There's also little rhyme or reason to the program; James veers directly from a drill'n'bass firestorm ("Cock/Ver 10") to a delicate piano piece à la Erik Satie ("Avril 14th") to an acid-techno burner ("Mt. Saint Michel Mix") with barely a glance backward for transition. Of course, aside from all the criticism, the previously unreleased musings of Aphex Twin are still far more intriguing and solid than most producers' best releases. The opener, "Jynweythek Ylow," and "Ruglen Holon" are brilliant, inscrutable pieces reminiscent of a rusty, bygone music box or the gamelan music of Indonesia. And a few of the second-disc highlights, "Meltphace 6" and "Taking Control," chart a middle ground between the emotional ambience of early Aphex Twin and the wracked hysteria of his later work. Drukqs is a sprawling album that defies listeners to understand or enjoy it as a whole, and would've worked much better as a fan-only release than the long-awaited return of the techno vanguard's favorite producer. ~ John Bush

It's tempting to imagine Richard James holed up in his basement for years on end, concocting foaming aural experiments to try out on unsuspecting listeners, and he certainly does little to dispel that image here. His past musical output has varied from the gentle but weird, to the baffling, to the ghastly, and with DRUKQS he manages to combine all the aforementioned in a compelling yet unsettling mix that is never less than fascinating. The tracks are listed on the booklet, but not necessarily in the same order they appear on the album, and moreover James seems to have developed his own language somewhere along the way, so we're left to our own devices to figure things out.

Like some demented baseball pitcher, James constantly varies his stylings, now pastoral acoustic piano, now impossibly fast breakbeat techno garage, now weird hollers from behind the basement door. He keeps the listener constantly off balance (at one point including a Stephen Hawking-like voice reading snippets of Goldilocks and the Three Bears); it's a wild, strange ride, but it's consistently fascinating to hear what comes next.