4 out of 5

Label: Rephlex

Producer: Richard D. James

I’m rating this more as a comparison to the other AB releases that I’ve heard (1 and 3, the most readily available ones).  It is, to my ears, an average listen overall, but it nips some good cues from the previous AB releases to be the most palatable and re-listenable out of that trio, so noted by that extra rating.  Woop.

Apparently – except for one track, Cuckoo – the song titles were attributed by fans, each one aligning to an animal (‘Elephant,’ ‘Baboon,’ etc.) it was deemed the track represented.  There’s probably more of a story to it than that, but for some reason I doubt you’re coming here for the history of AFX, so, yeah.  The titles are mostly accurate, though I think we got forced into the convention by ‘Cuckoo,’ because I more rightly would’ve switched that with ‘Baboon,’ the latter being filled with bird-like sounds, and the former having an aggressive, playful stomp to it that I would be okay associating with primates.  Otherwise, ‘Elephant’ and ‘Sloth’ are named perfectly – screeching moments in ‘Elephant’ and the heavy thump of its beat working for a race or stampede of giant beasts, and ‘Sloth’s wandering, easy noodling fitting as a laid back match to how we (..I..?) perceive the animal.

Listening to 3 and 4 back-to-back, it’s a little unfair to rate this higher, as 3 actually has more ingenuity laced into its run-time, but as noted in my review for that album, it sticks around for a bit too long, and feels more like a sketchbook or experimental collection of tracks – though it should be noted that the CD version is a bit more of a compilation than the original vinyl release, I suppose.  4 is shorter and more to the point.  Perhaps simply because of the shortened length does it full more purposeful, but if AB 1 was sort of a “studio” release (probably not at all, but it feels most like an album produced for mass consumption out of the group) and 3 was James getting his footing across the house / experimental house landscape, 4 is pretty directly in the latter camp, the songs shuttled down to exactly what they need to be, a pretty unified feeling on each track but a sound that is now, definitely, AFX and belonging to the Rephlex label.

Even the last track, a distorted sample of Evil Knievel, for some reason works to bring you out of the somewhat boring stupor last track ‘Sloth’ can you leave in, vs. AB 3’s last track, which comes after some short, drastically-different-from-the-album tracks, and seems like a shrug, suggesting to ignore what came before.

AFX has always seemed like the less IDMish work of Richard, more focused on his house roots, and the path of the AB releases seems to trace his growth pretty well, but they aren’t recommended listening, per se, unless you’re one of the billion Aphex fans who owns all of this stuff because it’s under RDJ’s umbrella of genius.  Blah blah, if you’re going to sample one thing from the AFX pile, though, AB IV is the most focused balance of fun and weirdness from the earlier stuff.