The Aphex Twin demo treasure trove is now up for grabs.
The mysterious user48736353001 account first appeared earlier this week, leaving a message on a track off Richard D James's new EP that said, curiously, "Would like to know the full setup for this track, brilliant music man. I love your early '90s stuff so much, I was doing stuff in the early '90s, similar to you but I didn’t know about you when I did it! I'm also 43 years old. :) I’m going to be uploading it to SoundCloud soon, gotta dust off the old DAT’s & cassettes!"
The comment started a dialogue between the official Aphex Twin account and user48736353001, before the latter started uploading a stream of tracks that sounded remarkably like old Aphex Twin material. Over the next few days user48736353001 would amass over 100 tracks. Many, including Planet Mu boss Mike Paradinas, asserted that they were genuine Richard D James songs, a claim seemingly proved by the (brief) presence of an alternative version of "Girl/Boy Song," since taken down.
Now, user48736353001 has put all 110 tracks into one set and made them available for free download. You can stream them below and grab the whole thing here. He also left the following note:***hello humans, hopefully im gunna start making all these tracks downloadable from 6pm next saturday 7th Feb, [if i can find some internets] -user48736353001"
Update: More than 30 additional Aphex Twin tracks have been made available for download. Full details here.