Richard D James, man or myth? You might almost ask yourself that question, if you are familiar with his work. Being somewhat the kid wonder of experimental techno, this is also the man who more or less perfected and commercialized the click-`n`-cut techno that many artists have copied since (Autechre and a dozen other Warp artists, for instance).

Starting out as an ambient artist, Richard D James worked his way to acid, techno and drum&bass - not just blending the genres together but creating an absurd, original and unusual mix that refreshed the scene. Creating louder and harsher music, his finest work to date is definitely The Richard D James Album. Commercially, the Come To Daddy EP and Windowlicker EP meant his breakthrough and introduction to a large crowd of MTV teenagers, especially through his groundbreaking video clips.

With drukQs, Richard D James finally puts a new full-length on the shelves, a double-album actually, and I think it is only fair to say that the expectations for this album were very high. Whether or not RDJ met these expectations is the subject of quite some debates, but it is only fair to say a couple of good words and bad words about the what-should-have-been-his-masterpiece drukQs.

On the positive side, RDJ covered a lot of different styles with this double album. There is material that could have been from his earlier darker albums, material that could`ve been from the Windowlicker-sessions, and even some material that refers to his ambient past, especially the keyboard play.

His loud songs are _really_ loud, they sound very Venetian Snares-like, while his piano-pieces are a good hommage to Philip Glass.

However, some of the songs sound a bit like left-over material; material he didn`t dare to put on previous albums but decided to throw on here because he didn`t have enough material. Even more obnoxious is the random order the songs are put on both albums. There is no structure, no red line, no flow of songs. This creates a really difficult listen, and will have many people programming their CD player to leave the unwanted songs out. It would been a lot smarter if drukQs would`ve featured a `soft` CD and a loud `CD` instead of throwing it all together.

So where does that leave drukQs? It is not the masterpiece that we had hoped for, but it is surely a very good album in a lot of ways. If you learn to live with the strange structure, this album is a good deal offering listen-friendly tracks as well as dance-floor tracks. If you think that Autechre has gone a wrong way with their last 2 releases, you should give this one a spin and leave the atmospheric tracks out. If you`re only into Aphex Twin because of their cool videos, what the hell are you doing reading this review anyway?