Here’s the one that absolutely blew everything wide open for a precocious 25-year-old artist from Cornwall, England. Richard D. James Album could’ve been called just about anything, but it makes perfect sense that the producer named it after himself. RDJ’s fourth studio LP as Aphex Twin still sounds like his most personable and uniquely varied release to date, like the realistic audio equivalent of the randomly firing synapses, twisted jokes, curious musings, and ingenious ideas at work inside the head on its front cover. And it’s just as prone to drastic changes in mood, too — the elfish and spirited “Fingerbib” transitioning into “Carn Marth”‘s rambunctious, squalling beats feels like the difference between having two beers and 10. Aphex Twin started experimenting more with the use of vocals on RDJ Album, which added another strangely human touch to songs like “To Cure a Weakling Child” and “Milkman” (a joyously perverse bonus track popularized by the album’s non-UK releases). It’d be a stretch to say this was an album “about” the man called Richard D. James, but it’s probably as close to one as we’re likely to get.

James used computers and software to advance the sounds of his music on Richard D. James Album, but they also allowed him to better articulate the compositional complexities that were simply impossible with real machines. This includes drum programming, sample manipulation, instrument creation, and other digital intricacies that would’ve been otherwise unthinkable without computers. In this way, Aphex Twin truly came into his own as an unparalleled producer, but this wouldn’t have made such an impact had he not also proven himself to be a musical mastermind with the ear for melody and harmonic sensibilities of a classical composer. There is no other record in the world that could rightly be compared to Richard D. James Album, and when listening through a tracklist that sounds as mind-boggling and lovable as when it first appeared 18 years ago, it seems impossible that there will ever be.