Aphex Twin has been infamous throughout his career for his nasty experiments
If you’re holding a piece of sandpaper stamped with that iconic Aphex Twin logo, congratulations—you own one of the weirdest, most sought-after items in music history. And yes, it’s exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.
Aphex Twin’s Time at Disobey
The story begins in 1994 at Disobey, London’s infamous underground art club. Known for noise, chaos, and deliberately absurd performances, it was the perfect place for electronic music’s ultimate prankster, Richard D. James, better known as Aphex Twin.
When Disobey asked him to DJ, James refused to do it the conventional way. Playing records was too normal for his whimsy. Instead, he showed up with sandpaper, electric razors, and hair clippers, gleefully dragging them across turntable needles while the crowd either laughed, cringed, or danced to the ear-shattering screeches. Half the room got the joke. The other half thought they were witnessing an avant-garde genius.
“It wasn’t even my stylus—they paid for it,” James later joked. “I didn’t lose anything, and I got paid to wreck the decks.”
The Sandpaper and Blender Incident
But it didn’t stop there. Disobey loved it so much they flew him to New York’s Knitting Factory, a venue famous for experimental madness. For round two, James dialed up the absurdity. Alongside his beloved sandpaper, he brought a fully microphoned food mixer, filling the room with the grinding hum of spinning blades and raw noise.
People actually danced to it. Some thought it was death metal. Others embraced the chaos for what it was—Aphex Twin’s genius blend of irony and sonic idiosyncrasy.
In a climactic moment, James threw the food mixer off the balcony into the crowd. It smashed into a fan’s head, who, rather than suing, proudly asked for an autograph on the broken appliance. That fan’s blender likely sits on a mantle somewhere—a trophy from one of music’s strangest nights.
The sandpaper sheets, handed out post-show and branded with the iconic Aphex Twin logo, quickly became collector’s gold. Today, they’re relics of a moment where music, performance art, and absurdist humour collided in true Aphex Twin style. But for James, it was all just a laugh. His love of blurring lines between prank and performance has always defined his career. “I love annoying people,” he once said. “But I don’t even try—it just happens.”
Although fact and fiction remain intentionally blurry, the sandpaper set, the blender fiasco, and the Disobey gigs are real enough—burned into electronic music folklore, much like the chaotic, genre-bending legacy of Aphex Twin himself.
So next time you see a sheet of sandpaper with that logo, know you’re holding more than DIY supplies. You’re holding a bizarre, brilliant piece of music history which is proof that sometimes, the best performances start with a joke and end with a blender to the head.
