Arriving as the third album on Supreems ‘Sweet Sun’ label – an imprint gathering a reputation for future-facing, storytelling electronic music – Sloucho's 'NPC' explores the duality of his main character and non-playable lives. With a strong Irish artistic presence featuring Rory Sweeney, EMBY, Curtisy and more, Sloucho navigates through Cloudcore-inspired broken beats, bass-driven percussion, alternative dreamscapes and wubby fuck-steps on his most complete release to date, laying the foundation for an origin-story in the process.

Garnering support from Surusinghe, Roza Terenzi, Two Shell and more; some of the tracks on NPC have already been heard in clubs around the world - from Antwerp to London and Mumbai to Paris. ‘Mind Traveller’ offers an ambient introduction to ‘Athrú’, Sloucho’s home world, as the artist's pitched vocals act as the listeners guide into the island's core. ‘Mutant’ features experimental electronic artist Rhoshi on a track that follows the kaleidoscopic sonic-themes of Sloucho’s previous Cloudcore releases ‘Slow Feet’ and ‘Silver Veil’, before the Rory Sweeney-featuring ‘Come Around’ ignites the dance with its dutty screw-face two-step, balanced by moments of melodic contemplation before evolving into a techno-dancehall hybrid.

‘Brand New’ stays on the steppy aesthetic, and brings MCs EMBY and Zack Oke into the frame with a 3D Meta-human video created in collaboration with respected, exhibiting digital artist Aisling Phelan. Using a motion capture suit, they captured EMBY and Zack’s performance and imported it into Unreal Engine, using different environments scanned from around the Greek Islands as the backdrop. The result is mind-blowing; a complete digital realm, shot like a real-life rap video as EMBY and Zack spit bars across an elasticated garage riddim. Full video is on YouTube.

‘Super Maramu 2000’ is a cut of alien-club beamed directly from ‘Eile’, the afterlife of Sloucho’s Neolithic ancestors. A waltzer-ride through Latin-bass and techno with an oxymoronic blend of maximalist and minimalist futurism, it’s as silly as it is serious, before the stuttering, juke-influence of ‘Make It Work’ brings the album’s rapid first half (and a bit) to a close.

Sloucho seamlessly weaves from front left of the club to dark, fume-filled rooms on ‘Two Thousands’ (featuring EMBY and Curtisy), ‘Rocks’ (featuring Zack Oke, who sounds remarkably like experimental spoken-word artist Coby Sey here, and Chilean artist Vatican Jail) and ‘Lights On’ (featuring Yamagochi), Sloucho explores a previously unseen side to his sound, meandering through alternative trap and hip-hop laden beats that are both dreamy and nightmarish, bringing NPC to its starry-skied climax. More

An essential piece of electronic history is restored to its full glory for the 30th anniversary, with all 25 tracks of Selected Ambient Works II reunited in this Expanded Edition alongside two extras. Constantly referenced and revered decades after its release, SAWII has seen accolades such as the Pitchfork perfect 10 and #2 best ambient album of all time.

Written in his early 20s, it follows the glacial synths and deft percussion of Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and preceding the contorted, intricate, abstract visions of electronic music on ...I Care Because You Do. Aphex Twin crafted this mammoth set of mostly beatless vistas, textured compositions that are by turns beautiful, nightmarish, emotive, and thrilling.

From swooning beauty to careening dread, even in just the first two tracks, SAWII is a stunning and faultless piece of work. Each soundscape brings with it the sense of standing in some vast space, with dripping rusted pipes and dilapidated walls, or endless canyons of low bitrate whooshing winds. Tracks like ‘Blue Calx’ emanate a strange kind of peace, with synths that sound like wobbling laminated paper or underwater radar blips while a constant knocking keeps pace. Elsewhere, curious microtonal keys flutter and subtly morph, low frequencies throb and purr, and oscillating hums induce hypnagogia.

The gossamer soft chords of ‘#3’ (AKA ‘Rhubarb’) move slow as clouds, airy wisps that are translated into orchestral grandeur on the exclusive ‘Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev’ with quivering strings, ethereal choir, and reversed molten bass, while ‘th1 [evnslower]’ is a sonorous blur floating from hopeful lifts to anxious dissonance. Finally included on all formats after 30 years, ‘#19’ (AKA ‘Stone In Focus’) seems to smooth over all the wrinkles of life with its blissfully monolithic chords and faint ripples of melody, its ticking like skipping stones marking the passage of time till it slows to a gentle halt.


- Polylined inner sleeves
- Foil blocked wide spine outer sleeve
- Fold out poster
- Sticker insert
- Expanded edition includes all songs on all formats for the first time, including previously vinyl-exclusive track #19 alongside two additional tracks (officially released and on physical formats for the first time)
- Artwork by Paul Nicholson, original album designer + Aphex logo designer More

Tracklist
A1. Jeff Mills - In A Traumatized World
A2. Jeff Mills - Menticide

B1. Jeff Mills - Those Who Worked Against Us
B2. Jeff Mills - Mass Hypnosis

C1. Jeff Mills - Hold And Command
C2. Jeff Mills - Wonderous Butterfly

D1. Jeff Mills - Sacred Iridescent Mirror (The Pledge)
D2. Jeff Mills - In A Traumatized World (Human Toll Mix)
D3. Jeff Mills - Indoctrination

"Trauma and the shock effect of it - the leftover residue of harsh reality so impactful that it shapes the way you imagine, envision and calculate your position in regard to everything and everyone around you.
A new type of psychological radius evolves. Boundaries are reinforced. Relationships are recessed. A damaged brief system float aimlessly. Vulnerable to and for anything reminiscent of a worthy cause. The truth about facts became satirical monologue, dead end expressions that have no critical arrangement. We all know someone that either has been or will be"

- Jeff Mills

The Eyewitness reveals a habitual pattern in the way it symbolizes a mirror reflection of mankind in our most vulnerable moments. It is the forthcoming album of Jeff Mills and it is composed from the perspective of an unknowingly complicit bystander and it is at the very least, psychologically pathological in nature. What this release is essentially proposing is an admission to the diagnosis that no one is immune to shock and trauma. Not the accuser or the accused. And this abnormality s culturally and generally transmittable - handed down and passed over to one another disguised as righteous theatre.

As an artist, what Mills is notoriously known for is the perspectives and paths he chooses to approach hefty, complex, and sometimes, awkward subjects. The best way to recognize the narratives of his mostrecent album works such as "The Clairvoyant", an eerie transcending album that plays through like a Seance for creating a bridge to reach another dimension or "Mind Power Mind Control", a cautionary warning about the consequences of supporting deceit, mind control and mass mental persuasion is to start by first taking a moment to look at yourself in a mirror. He's suggesting sound as a reflection and what we might be able to see in ourselves. Proposing that we might be the problem and a solution. In the same vicinity of his recent solo albums, the direction, scope or target of The Eyewitness is first about us, then about it.

More than the few previous albums he's released lately, this one has a unique relationship in terms of imagery and visual treatments that represent the concept. The front cover shows Mills, neatly dressed in a black suit that appears to be caught in the act of doing something methodically as he cohorts to supportwith a bright white type of surgical light towards the viewer. Stark and in the act of.......something offensive - it could be some type of hypnotic machine at work. Other photos show him in darkened spaces. Remote and deep in thought.

Other clues are the titles of the tracks such as "Sacred Iridescent Mirror (The Pledge)": this refers to the act of installing value and credit to something ambiguous and "Menticide" which means the systematic effort to undermine and destroy a person's values and beliefs. In the opening track, "in A Traumatized World" we hear the narration spoken by Mills. In a language he specifically created for this album. It's a dialect that is designed to be undistinguishable, but spoken with a compassion that it could be sympathized with. In the latter part of the track, it reaches a climatic point. Meaning, "it" has happened. And the album is the evidence.

On extra note:

In this day and age,it's comforting to see a musician [like Jeff Mills] administer music conceptually without any conditions attached. The artistry and craft of using sound and rhythm to bring forth a concern, a warning or the result of a diagnosis to the listener.
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