Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album

Richard D. James Album is Aphex Twin at his most playful and unhinged, a 1996 electronic classic that still sounds like nothing else.

Composed largely on a Macintosh, the album took the frenetic breakbeats he had been exploring under the AFX name and wrapped them in lush strings and childlike melodies. Released on Warp, it became the label's most successful release up to that point, and the grinning portrait on its cover remains one of electronic music's most unsettling images.

4 opens with a rush of hyperactive drums beneath gorgeous, floating strings, and Fingerbib offers a delicate, music-box melody that feels almost like a lullaby. To Cure a Weakling Child features James's voice modulated to sound like a child over a bouncy, off-kilter rhythm, while Girl/Boy Song pairs soaring string lines with breakneck, chopped-up beats.

The contrast between beauty and chaos is the whole point. Tender melodies are constantly ambushed by drum programming that lurches, stutters and sprints, yet the album never loses its sense of mischief or its strange, homespun warmth. It still sounds disorientating and wonderful decades later.

For fans of electronic music, this is a landmark worth owning on wax, and this pressing comes with a digital download card so the madness can travel with you.