I Listened to the Entire Aphex Twin SoundCloud Dump in One Sitting

One night last week, like so many other people in the world, I noticed that Aphex Twin's blue-ticked Twitter account linked to a SoundCloud profile by a used named "user48736353001," allegedly a dumping ground for 110 unreleased tunes from the depths of the Richard D. James archives. I could ignore it no more. In the name of journalism I was going to listen to all 110 tracks… in one sitting.

In for a nine-hour haul, I had provisions: a can of Blue Bolt and a Boost bar. I was ready for this.

09:00 PM: This is it. I feel excited. I can do this. 110 songs is nothing. I scroll down to the very bottom, wanting to do this in as real-time a way as possible. Things start off nicely with "8 utopia"; this is good, spacey, some puffs of synth pad here, some tingles there. Would sound quite good in a documentary on microbiology. Which is what I assume he's going for.

09:21 PM: "22 Pearls" is playing—a dubbed out bit of ambient noise in a 90s point and click adventure—and I still feel confident that these nine hours will pass in relatively pleasant fashion.

09:50 PM: Just ate half my Boost while the Pizza Express jazz of "20 Pink Floyd" washed over me. Current mood: remorseful.

10:28 PM: I quite like music. It's quite a good thing. "Symbonsad" is quite a good song. Regretting only buying the one Boost bar.

11:00 PM: Two hours in. Something called "Afx origTheme" is playing. I could have watched a film—because no film should exceed 90 minutes—and half a Take Me Out: The Gossip in that time.

11:43 PM: No sound known to man is as thrilling and perpetually perfect as the sound of the ring being pulled on a can of fizzy drink. The Blue Bolt has been engaged. "Renalgade Sonar"—another 90s shareware demo soundtracker—twiddles about as I think about how I'm going to ration my can of Blue Bolt to get the maximum hit from its 75mg of caffeine.

12:01 AM: Remember when being up at midnight on a school night seemed like an uncontrollably exciting prospect? Well I'm nearly 25 now so being up at this hour just makes me feel anxious and guilty. "Martins Car LPF" soundtracks this shift in mood and sounds like all the bad didgeridoo techno you hear in taxis back home after a night in a shit club when you're trying to maintain a decent level of conversation with the driver while simultaneously avoiding throwing up luridly coloured puke. Current mood: nauseous

12:26 AM: The song currently playing is called "mooow (Dixons Theft mix)." I have no memories, fond or otherwise, of the defunct high street technology retailer. Like kale and the films of Steven Spielberg it is just something I am aware of.

01:12 AM: I would quite like to stop listening to music now, really.

01:31 AM: "17 Alis Trak[brain floss mix]" isn't changing my mind. Flashbacks, now, of being solidly trounced at various laser quest parties as a pre-teen. Those heavy plastic weapons, the heavy plastic body armour, the rank stench of unendingly pumping dry ice, the warm squash and stale Wotsits after being beaten every time.

01:36 AM: Just remembered my best friend at primary school talking about wanking all the way home in the car from his tenth birthday party at the local Laser Quest.

01:59 AM: I've finished the Boost.

02:17 AM: The thing with Aphex Twin, right, I'm telling myself, the thing with Aphex Twin is that he's a prankster, a joker, he's a pisstaker, right, and we need more of those around, yeah, we need more people like Aphex Twin going around taking the piss out of us mugs sad enough to be sat up at quarter past two in the morning listening to an old demo with a name so silly my keyboard doesn't seemingly have the capabilities to type it out properly, but let me tell you it sounds like some synths wibbling a bit. Mozart. He's got a tank, you know.

02:30 AM: On to "3 gerald remix" now. Sounds like Drexciya.

03:05 AM: Give us a tune mate. Please.

03:07 AM: Christ, I've got work tomorrow. Current mood: doomed

03:23 AM: Blue Bolt: demolished. "11 Early Morning Clissold": best track yet. Ecstatic ambient. I'm floating out of myself. Is Clissold shit? Probably.

03:44 AM: Was Aphex Twin into platformers? I could probably google it. "1 P- String" is an underwhelming boss battle turned into a plodding techno track.

03:45 AM: Forever fuck my brother for deleting my saved files on both Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country.

04:09 AM: Mad, isn't it, time? Just mad. Think about time for a bit. You'll go barmy! I am looking at proverbs related to time and agreeing with them sagely. "1 70's Tune," which is playing as I nod at the proverbs, sounds like a disco record that's been scrubbed with Fairy Liquid or something like that.

04:21 AM: You can go to bed properly tomorrow, Josh. That'll be nice.

04:37 AM: "Dance and Play"—are we sure this isn't a Legowelt track?

05:00 AM: 5 AM with a bullet. I do not recognize the man in the mirror.  Aphex Twin makes a lot of music.

05:05 AM: Doesn't he ever just spend an evening putzing about, logging into a parody account he's set up just so he can hate-read the tweets of someone who blocked him?

05:29 AM: Everything aches.

05:40 AM: Come on man, "3 hollow alias ab6" isn't a proper name for a song.

05:50 AM: TEN MINUTES LEFT.

05:59am: As the undeniably lovely "luke vibert spiral staircase [future music competition]" hovers around me I enter a zone of complete calm. I am at one with the universe. I am a man who has just listened to nine solid hours of previously unheard Aphex Twin music. I am changed. Mood: IRREVOCABLY ALTERED.

What have I learned from the experience? Well, nine hours is a long time to listen to music, for one thing. More importantly, this cloudburst of content makes us consider how best to approach the extensive back catalog of one of electronic music's most vital figures. This, I don't think, was it. Heard as one elongated glut, the highs dissipate into the unsequenced whole. The concept is admirable, and hearing a producer as experimental as Aphex Twin in full flight is a pleasure, but a glut of this kind needs a curator to make sense of it. My sleep-deprived self was not the man for the task.

If you are, drop me a line.

Follow Josh Baines on Twitter.