Poppy as It’s Going to Get: Aphex Twin’s Syro Turns 10

Or like the kids say: s950tx16wasr10

Syr Obonkus himself: Aphex Twin in 2014 (Photos by Alex Lake)

Can music be pop by circumstantial factors alone? Is Tool’s Fear Inoculum a pop album because its seven grueling compositions in 80 minutes touched the public’s pleasure centers and impacted the creative landscape in a meaningful way? Or would it not be discussed this way at all if it didn’t briefly organize enough Tool fans starving for more turgid palm-muting with no payoff over the course of 13 years to unseat Taylor Swift’s Lover for one vulnerable week? One of the internet’s foremost pioneers of fake news, Richard D. James called Syro his pop record and for once the evidence looked supportive: won a Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album, a #11 peak on the Billboard 200 albums chart. With any other legend’s comeback, there’s no ripple in this trajectory: I can see Clapton, Santana, Lionel Richie tessellating effortlessly into this sequence of events after their own 13-year (or even longer) sabbatical from offering the marketplace a new studio full-length. But James is no ordinary legend, Syro isn’t a pop album, and it may actually be the first Aphex Twin album with virtually nothing on it you can hum, ambients included. So it goes?