Length 33:49 Release date 8 July 2016 Producer Aphex Twin | Artist Aphex Twin Label Warp Genre Techno | |
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Released 8 July 2016 (2016-07-08) | ||
Cheetah is an extended play by British electronic musician Richard D. James, released under the pseudonym Aphex Twin on 8 July 2016 on Warp. The name is a reference to Cheetah Marketing, a British manufacturer of microcomputer peripherals and electronic musical instruments in the 1980s (such as the MS800 namechecked in two of the EP's track titles).
Contents
Aphex twin cheetah ep review
Release
In 2015, Richard D. James uploaded several tracks with names like "Cheetah3 Teac" and "CHEETAHT7" to his SoundCloud 'user18081971' account; these have since been removed.
A flyer teasing the EP release was sent to various record shops in the UK in early June 2016. The flyer parodies the luxurious writing style of 1970s adverts. The album was announced on 9 June, with James tweeting a link to a website for the EP.
The Cheetah EP was made available on vinyl, CD, cassette and a digital download in various digital formats, including MP3, WAV and FLAC.
It was later revealed that mastered versions of the Soundcloud tracks, "Cheetah3 Teac" and "CHEETAHT7", would appear on the EP as "CIRKLON3 [Колхозная mix]" and "CHEETAHT7b", respectively.
A video for "CIRKLON3 [ Колхозная mix ]" was released on 21 June. The video was James' first since the Chris Cunningham-directed video for "Windowlicker" in 1999 and was directed by 12-year-old Ryan Wyer. James and Warp commissioned Wyer to direct the video after James discovered Wyer's "epic1:40d Gaming" YouTube channel.
Reception
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Cheetah received an average score of 74, based on 11 reviews. Writing for Exclaim!, Daryl Keating gave the album muted praise, calling it "fine but unremarkable, especially when pitted against the behemoths of his back catalogue."
Track listing
All tracks written Richard D James.
"2X202-ST5" is on the CD, cassette and digital download editions, and included as a download available with the vinyl and cassette editions.
Personnel
Credits adapted from Cheetah liner notes
Songs
1CHEETAHT2 [Ld spectrum]5:53
2CHEETAHT7b6:44
3CHEETA1b ms8000:27