For decades Black Devil Disco Club has been one of dance music’s most enigma-shrouded acts — the Zorro of the discotheque. When Richard D. James, a.k.a. Aphex Twin, reissued the original 1978 Black Devil record on his own Rephlex label, the lost-and-found effect was so striking, the dark analog space disco sounds so eerily contemporary, that it was rumored to be a hoax carried out by Luke Vibert and Mr. Twin himself. The follow-up LP, 28 After, only made matters darker. Who were the shadowy figures behind these mesmerizing, occultish sonics, and what did they want?

As for now, we’re supposed to believe that the new Black Devil record, Eight Oh Eight, is the final leg of a trilogy masterminded by one Bernard Fevre, a French citizen who has been making under the radar music for decades. Here, Fevre, answering questions from France via e-mail, casts whatever dark light he wished on the mystery of the Black Devil Disco Club.

A lot of your early recordings are not dance music at all: How did you come to this sound?

I was drawn to the synthesiser because it enabled me to realize a symphonic vision that previously would have needed many musicians. With the synthesiser I could create the kind of sci-fi music you will hear on the "strange world of Bernard Fevre," and then in the clubs it was the African rhythms that inspired me. I found that by mixing the primal beats with the electronic textures and melodies, it created a kind of "disco" sound. But for many people it was too new, too original, and they didn’t consider it disco at all.

So it was a gradual change created by mixing the different colors made

possible by the advent of electronics. For me it is my own musical hybrid. It is not "disco," per se, but "black devil disco."

The album reissued by Rephlex is from 1978. That’s a long time between records. What did you do in the meantime?