Drukqs is a great album btw, if you're at all interested in music you should give it a listen. It's got everything from tender prepared piano pieces to his signature drill and bass. Syro from 2014 is also an amazing album.
If you're to believe the account Richard James gave, he claims to have used sleep deprivation and lucid dreaming to compose the album. I used to listen to the entire thing beginning to end on headphones, and I believe it!
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aphex-twin-selected-amb...
I've thought it to be compared in some ways to Bach's "The Art of Fugue" which pushed its own genre so hard that its often considered to be pinnacle work on Fugues and sort of forced later musicians to move along to newer forms.
While I personally prefer SAW85-92, I have to recognize the ways in which SAW2 pushes ambient and electronic music, even today, to areas that force it to be defined and to redefine itself. SAW85-92 sounds very much like a product of the time, but SAW2 sounds absolutely contemporary even today. It somewhat closed the book on Ambient electronica and then shoved that book firmly into the avantgarde. The individual pieces range from unsettling to mind-alteringly beautiful.
"...I Care Because You Do" just sort of continues the leap forward. "Start As You Mean to Go On" feels to me like plugging yourself into a power outlet in a hurricane. IMHO, RDJ is at his best when he combines a kind of odd, almost apathetic, idle but tuneful, framework to a song, then ignites it into a frenetic mind blending fire with absolutely bonkers rhythmic lines, or sometimes just leaves it to chill like with "Aberto Balsalm".
It's wild to think we're talking about music older than people who have graduated college and are considered almost mid-career in some fields. And yet he's still making mindblowing stuff https://youtu.be/e_Ue_P7vcRE
Just noticed on Bleep that they're releasing a 30th anniversary expanded edition on the 4th of October: https://bleep.com/release/460396-aphex-twin-selected-ambient...
Random tidbit: around when the album came out I chucked it on my friend's CDJs (IIRC I skipped straight to Mt St Michael) - by chance the CDJs were set at some lower speed, maybe 50-75%
Highly recommend trying it out - being able to hear how much groove and complexity sits behind those super fast tracks is quite enlightening. We ended up listening to both discs of the album like that, just boggling the whole time
The track in question: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6kN4zRfnHm8
PS. Whilst YouTube has playback speed it's unlikely to give the same benefits - but if you've no other options it could be worth a shot
You do you, but maybe give it another dedicated listen and you might change your mind! :)
Made me laugh. We all have our tastes and loves/hates. Accept it.