The genre classification of Richard D. James Album, the third album from the eponymous producer under the name Aphex Twin, has always confused me. Folks in the electronic music sphere like to toss around the term “Intelligent Dance Music” with regard to this record; pretentious as the label may sound, it also feels like a misnomer. If there’s any dancing going on here, it’s of a very strange sort. But through its frantic beats and glitched-out samples, Richard D. James Album ushered dance music from the club to the bedroom, breaking down the genre’s conventions and serving as the blueprint for an entire generation of album-oriented electronic music.
Aphex Twin has always seemed to operate on extremes, be it musically, visually, or performance-wise; Richard D. James Album is no different. The record presented an interesting left-turn for the producer—increasingly influenced by the burgeoning British breakbeat scene, this album takes those genre stylings (plus acid techno, drill n’ bass, jungle, and about a dozen others) and pushes them to the absolute brink. In fact, Richard D. James Album is a record that takes the very concept of “groove” by the throat, bending and twisting until it resembles something different altogether.
And it starts right from the beginning. Album opener “4” still possesses, nearly thirty years after release, one of the most frenetic and unique rhythmic patterns in all of electronic music, full stop. The visceral quality of the breakbeat here, complemented by an oddly-pitched ambient string piece, is… hard to describe. It rattles your bones, swirls around your grey matter, and, oddly enough, makes you move. Thus is the magic of 
Richard D. James Album.
Although the album never quite returns to the jittery heights of its opening track, the remainder of Richard D. James Album is consistently packed with unorthodox, boundary-pushing electronic tracks. The acid bass influences bleed through on the aptly-titled “Cornish Acid,” which squelches and squeaks its way through its two-minute runtime. “Yellow Calx” is a deep-cut gem, with a brutal, neck-snapping breakbeat that sounds like cicadas buzzing or spoons being banged on dinner plates. “To Cure A Weakling Child” features some of the most ingenious sampling on the record, using guttural clicks and snaps to form what is one of the most entrancing moments here.
Although RDJA is an album that thrives on rhythmic frenzy, the cooldown moments are what shift the record from an exercise in novelty to a complete album listening experience. “Fingerbib” is one of Twin’s most gorgeous, albeit simple, productions in his entire catalogue—an amazing respite from the gut-punch of the album’s A-side. “Goon Gumpas” serves a similar role later in the record, its string section reinforcing the album’s oddly baroque slant.
And through this attention to album flow and variation, Richard D. James Album functions as the peak of Twin’s incomparable run of records in the late ’90s. It may lack the sprawling nature of 1992’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92 or the lightning-in-a-bottle unpredictability of 2001’s Drukqs, but by sharpening his compositions into tighter and more concise tracks, Aphex Twin was able to translate his club-focused electronic style into a traditional album context. RDJA is an album that compromises in structure, but holds nothing back in content and explosivity. As an electronic music head, it is still a record that possesses an uncompromising, electrifying, “how-did-a-human-being-even-come-up-with-this” quality that has not quite been recaptured since.
In a genre that has had thirty years to up the ante of volume and rhythmic extremity, the best moments on Richard D. James Album persist as some of the most thrilling and thought-provoking that electronic music has to offer. An album that is somehow still underappreciated in the Aphex Twin canon, RDJA is among the best that electronic music has to offer, period. If you can stomach the head-spinning craze that is this record, you’re in for a treat.