Aphex Twin’s double album ‘Drukqs’ is set to receive a 25th anniversary reissue – see all the details below.
The 30-track record will be re-released through Warp Records on October 30, marking the first time it has been reissued on vinyl since its original release in 2001.
It will be available as a four-LP set, a two-CD edition containing an eight-page booklet and a double-cassette package. A special version of the vinyl release will also include a six-panel poster and an AFX logo stencil. Pre-order the reissue here.
Released in October 2001, ‘Drukqs’ was Richard D. James’ first Aphex Twin studio album since 1996’s ‘Richard D. James Album’.
The album moves sharply between meticulously programmed drill’n’bass tracks such as ‘Vordhosbn’ and ‘54 Cymru Beats’, and sparse pieces written for piano. Its best-known composition, ‘Avril 14th’, is a delicate two-minute instrumental influenced by composers such as Erik Satie.
The producer described the sprawling double record to The Face at the time as a “ragbag” of material he had accumulated since 1997. He also claimed that the decision to release it was prompted by accidentally leaving an MP3 player containing around 180 unreleased tracks on a plane, leading him to fear that the files could be leaked.
‘Drukqs’ divided critics when it arrived, with some describing it as unfocused but others praising its collision of extreme rhythmic complexity and fragile acoustic compositions.
NME awarded the album nine out of 10 upon its release, describing how it moved through “whipsmart intellectual techno, gibbering drum’n’bass [and] early ’90s rave”. It was later placed at Number 10 on the Best Albums of 2001 list.
‘Avril 14th’ has become one of the most widely recognised Aphex Twin tracks, and was used in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and Chris Morris’ Four Lions. Kanye West also sampled it on ‘Blame Game’, from his 2010 album ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’, with James later claiming that West’s representatives had initially attempted to use it without paying him.
The 88-second ‘QKThr’, meanwhile, has experienced an unexpected second life after being used in millions of TikTok posts thanks to the viral “subtle foreshadowing” trend.
The track’s popularity was credited with helping Aphex Twin reach 448million monthly listeners across YouTube in January, surpassing Taylor Swift’s total of 399million at the time.
The reissue follows the expanded 30th anniversary edition of Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works Volume II’, released in 2024.
He later surprise-released the 38-track compilation ‘Music From The Merch Desk (2016–2023)’, while he has not released a full-length studio album as Aphex Twin since the Grammy-winning ‘Syro’ in 2014, although he did share two previously unreleased tracks through SoundCloud last November.
