It took a couple years after the release of his critically acclaimed album 'Syro', but in 2016 the saintly electronic music figure known to the world—and quite possibly aliens—as Aphex Twin, opened up and returned to the live stage. Richard D. James chose Houston’s Day for Night festival in 2016 to first unveil his new set, replete with otherworldly visuals ranging from satirical political animations to Ricardo Villalobos.



What’s been even more intriguing than where he’s playing and what he's playing on, which has ranged from Barcelona’s Primavera Sound to a triumphant return at Berlin’s Funkhaus, and has reportedly included drum machines and a mysterious modular synthesizer, has been what Aphex has been rinsing in his sets.

Sure, he’s been deploying some of his own tunes from his various aliases and other unidentifiable rave madness at recent gigs, but what’s even more interesting is that James has been focusing much of his recent performances around tracks from smaller, emerging artists who are making some of the most mind-bending breakbeat, jungle, house and electro around. In a recent cover story with Crack, Aphex touched on the subject, saying “there's nobody big playing all this amazing music coming out. There's so much of it! And [it gives] great artists exposure as well.”

After taking a look at his recent set lists, or at least what fans and other publications have been able to ID, we’ve been assured that James not only hasn’t lost his touch as a performer, but as a digger with a curious ear that digs deep into the genres he helped popularize and the artists who have been influenced by such sounds and scenes.

This includes the like of TSVI’s 'Whirl', a half-tempo stomper with alien synths and spooky vocal snippets. Then there’s, ETCH, AQDMX (a.k.a Aquarian and Deapmash), Egyptian club producer and NTS host ZULI and DJ Seinfeld, whose rave-ready breakbeat track 'Sakura' and its churning synths has been making its way into Aphex’s sets.

Recently there has been a lot of chatter about Aphex Twin's re-emergence as a performer and the question has been raised, should producers be compensated (especially if the fee is so high) when a major artist plays their music during a DJ set? We'll leave that up for debate.



Without taking the above argument into account, we caught up with a handful of these talented artists and breakout starts to hear just what it means to them to have Aphex Twin dropping their music in some of the most anticipated sets in recent rave history.