4 out of 5

Label: Warp

Produced by: Aphex Twin

…And my lil’ brain exploded.

My Aphex origin story is probably not too dissimilar from others, starting with the Come to Daddy video and going from there. I was just kind of still wrapping my head around that EP when Windowlicker released, and suddenly, for as much as my understanding of what electronic music could be had expanded already, it exploded even more. Not that the single (and video) was necessarily out of line with Come to Daddy (or the other RDJ works I’d started to collect), but it was the kind of mind-exploding jump in the line that few artists manage effectively, and especially not within a genre it could be argued they partially typified and defined, which is how I view Aphex Twin and “IDM,” or this particular breed of breaky and glitchy and expansive electronic music. Not that James was a sole inventor, or certainly he had compatriots at Rephlex and its peers at the time, but built up through his releases there is a summary, or sorts, of the shakeups to the scene.

And not that it can’t continue to evolve (it has), but Windowlicker seemed like a Where Do We Go From Here? endpoint. All of the breaks and left turns employed before are matched to both the harshest and weirdest and poppiest moments of Aphex’s music, stretching the grooving sound of the song across both singledom – it’s catchy! – and completely bafflingly swerving away from that, with the porny vocals and the track’s descent into hellish grunginess in its later portions making it maybe uncomfortable or unpleasant, depending on how you’re approaching it. …While it maintains its central groove throughout. It remains one of the most seamlessly all-over-the-place songs of all time.

Countering (or complementing?) this is the single release’s followup track, which is generally called [Equation] or some variant, owing to being a complex looking mathematical formula. This track, to me, ended up representing most of what people trying to mimic RDJ’s style would end up falling prey to: just being scattershot and weird and figuring that’s what IDM is. Of course, there’s more to this song than that, as Aphex again pursues keeping an ongoing beat with a whole bunch of chaos trying to distract from that beat, but whereas Windowlicker’s take on this kept reinforcing the core sounds, [Equation] is moreso kitchen sink. It sounds like less of a song and rather a stew of leftover effects James wanted to see if he could make work together. And yes, he does – the experiment works; the equation is solved – but that minuses out some of the song’s listenability (at least on repeat) and keeps it more in the realm of “interesting.” It’s definitely part of the initial jaw dropping experience of this whole single, but Windowlicker and followup Nannou can be listened to in a loop; [Equation] needs some time inbetween.

Speaking of that latter track: of course RDJ backs up some of his most frantic work to date with some of its most beautiful, harkening back to both his early ambient collection and some of the most touching compositions on Richard D. James album, centering on a music box sing-song, manipulated into a dancier beat, wound up twice or more and playing out its lullaby.

And also top the Come to Daddy video, why don’t you?