Syro () is the sixth studio album by Aphex Twin, the alias of British electronic musician Richard D. James, released on 19 September 2014 on Warp. It was James's first album under the Aphex Twin name since Drukqs (2001).
The album was recorded over several years on a wide range of equipment setups. Described by James as "my pop album, or as poppy as it's going to get", it incorporates styles such as techno, synth-funk, breakbeat, acid house, and jungle, as well as edited vocal samples of James and his family. The artwork features a detailed list of its production and promotional costs. A cryptic viral marketing campaign included an announcement on the dark web and listening events in cities around the world. The album was preceded by the lead single "minipops 67 [120.2]".
Syro received critical acclaim and placed in several international charts, peaking at number 11 in the US Billboard 200 and number 8 in the UK Albums Chart. It was nominated for the Choice Music Prize and the 2015 Mercury Music Prize, and won the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album.
Background
Warp founder Steve Beckett mentioned in 2009 that a new Aphex Twin studio album would "hopefully" be available by the end of the year, though no album was released. In 2010, James said he had completed six studio albums. Among them were two "very non-commercial abstract, modular-synthesis field recordings" completed in 2006, as well as Melodies from Mars, a collection of unreleased material from 1995, which James reworked in 2007.
In 2014, a test pressing of James's unreleased album Caustic Window was listed on Discogs for US$13,500 (£8,050). Members of the internet forum We Are the Music Makers negotiated a deal between the collector, the forum's administrator, James and Rephlex Records, and launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to purchase the album. The campaign raised over $67,000 (£41,000) from 4,124 contributions, with proceeds split between James, Rephlex and the charity Doctors Without Borders. James said the campaign was "really touching, and really sweet" and, upon realising the continued interest in his music, he was inspired to release Syro.
Music
Recording
The album was recorded in six different studios, including James's studio in Scotland, which he spent three years building and which was completed in 2006. One audio engineer spent three months with James, helping him wire together patch panels before the engineer "realised he was doing it all wrong and had to start again". Describing the overall process as "brutal", James referred to the in-studio technical issues as the catalyst for writing new music that would be featured on Syro. James used various audio setups when composing Syros material. Rearranging equipment allowed him to explore more writing possibilities; he said "that will achieve some sort of purpose, so the way I've wired it together becomes the track in itself." James also explained that when composing the "logical thing to do is not change anything and just do another one using the same set of sounds", but during Syros recording sessions he would often "get bored and swap things out". All 12 tracks were written by James in-studio.
According to James, the tracks were written over an extended period; Syro features both archived and more recent compositions, with the album's oldest track around "six or seven years old". A total of 138 pieces of equipment were used on Syro, including synthesisers, samplers, sequencers, processing units, MIDI interfaces, drum machines, vocoders, graphic equalisers and mixing desks. Among the brands James used were Yamaha, SSL, Sennheiser, Boss, Roland, Korg and AKG. Several pieces of equipment were further modified by James himself. In addition to instrumentation, Syro features several vocal tracks. Among them are edited "unintelligible" tracks of James, his wife Anastasia Rybina and his two sons, as well as both his mother and father, who appear on "XMAS_EVET10 [120]". He recorded several additional "poppy" vocals of his parents—none of which were used on Syro—and stored "entire sample packs of their voices" during the process.