Aphex Twin: CHEETAH

APHEX TWIN: CHEETAH (2016)

1) CHEETAHT2 [LD Spectrum]; 2) CHEETAHT7b; 3) CHEETA1b ms800; 4) CHEETA2 ms800; 5) CIRKLON3 [Колхозная mix]; 6) CIRKLON 1; 7) 2X202-ST5.

It is absurd, I know, and probably a coincidence, but why is it that when an Aphex Twin release only claims to be inspired by a retro device, it still turns out to be the most interesting and enga­ging release from the artist in more than a decade? The Cheetah MS800 was a digital synthesizer developed and briefly marketed by UK's Cheetah Marketing in the 1980s, and is typically called one of the worst-sounding and most complex and befuddling synths to ever exist — hence the reference, although, if I am correct, Richard D. James never goes as far as to actually haul out one of those old relics and give it a try, he just brings up the name so that every single reviewer in existence, myself included, could go, «oh, how appropriate, a title referring to one of the most bizarre electronic devices for one of the most bizarre electronic artists».

But somehow, really, CHEETAH is fun! An EP, technically, though still more than half an hour in length, it is radically different from the cluttered, over-spasmodic, blurry stuff we'd had from Mr. D. lately (yeah, looking at you, SYRO) — here, the man goes for a tight, tense, and mini­malistic approach instead, concentrating on the drum-'n'-bass rhythm first and adding a few extra flourishes at the last moment. The result is that much of this does indeed sound a bit like an old arcade soundtrack, but a thoughtful one, where the music is expressly written to mimic the action on screen; and by making the beats relatively simple and the bass lines loud and deep, he allows the brain to focus tighter on what's going on and, perhaps, even to store a part of it.

The very first track... by the way, I'm not going to retype these titles, thank you very much; I've had enough of that crap with Autechre releases — my only question, which nobody seems to have an answer for, is what the hell is meant by "Колхозная mix" (track 5)? "Колхозная" is the correct Cyrillic spelling for Kolkhoznaya, the name of several streets / stations in various Russian cities (derived from kolkhoz, of course), but I have no info on any electronic teams, studios, art-projects, DJs, etc., that would go by that name. Did the guy just select a random Cyrillic word from a random text or what?.. Anyway, the very first track (which is not the Колхозная mix, but something else with a lot of letters and numbers) begins by establishing a good old ominous groove — relentless percussion, grim bass punches, cloud-gathering synths deep in the back­ground — against which a simple lead melody keeps making a threatening descending dive-bomb, and somehow it is immediately more effective than if he'd stuff the opening with a dozen beep-and-bleep overdubs and a mega-poly-rhythmic set of beats that only a ten-headed alien could easily identify and empathize with.

The second track almost sounds like some good old-fashioned electro-pop (give it to Quincy Jones for a few moments and you can have yourself a solid rhythm track, awaiting the reincarna­tion of Michael Jackson), eventually adding a mystery component with harpsichord-like «secret chamber tones» and funny tapping runs from percussive bass / bass percussion. There's an odd soothing, rather than irritating, feel about this music, probably because of the muffled, glossed-over effect on all the parts that internalizes the feeling rather than externalizes it — I really love what he's doing with the production, creating music that is much more fit for taking in at home, in an enclosed space, rather than in some action-packed dance club.

Later on, ideas (or at least approaches) begin repeating themselves, but the record does not over­stay its welcome — it gives you two more very short interludes (one sounds like your on-screen sprite is trying to zig-zag his way through a perilous swamp and the other finds him walking into cloudy dreamland) and three more IDM tracks, all of which have their enjoyable moments: the funky bass groove on ʽКолхозная mixʼ, the quasi-jazzy «piano» «improvisations» on the next one, and yet another superb bass groove on the last track — my only wish is to hear some of these, some day, played by real jazzmen on real instruments, which would have been even more awe­some (no, I mean, really, just close your eyes and imagine that last track handled by a couple of real jazz-fusion pros on drums and bass... eh?). But then, what do I know, electronic music is still the future and all that. At the very least, I do know that the old windowlicker is not quite out of ideas yet, and that this latest attempt to go for a stripped-down sound is a much welcome change, well worth an honest thumbs up, despite the brevity.

Aphex Twin: SYRO

APHEX TWIN: SYRO (2014)

1) Minipops 67 (Source Field mix); 2) XMAS_EVET10 (Thanaton3 mix); 3) Produk 29; 4) 4 Bit 9d Api+e+6; 5) 180db_; 6) CIRCLONT6A (Syrobonkus mix); 7) Fz Pseudotimestretch+e+3; 8) CIRCLONT14 (Shrymoming mix); 9) Syro U473t8+e (Piezoluminescence mix); 10) PAPAT4 (Pineal mix); 11) S950tx16wasr10 (Earth Portal mix); 12) Aisatsana.

Let us meet a few conditions. First, you are Richard D. James, a.k.a. Aphex Twin. Second, you have not had a «proper» new long-playing album out in thirteen years. Third, your latest album features you not dicking around without a head on your shoulders, but actually diligently doing your thing. Fourth, you put a receipt that details the complete production costs of your album on its front cover. With all these conditions met, how could SYRO be released to anything other than universal acclaim on the part of critics and veteran fans alike?

However, since this here site is known to operate under a strict «no-bull» policy, I would like to try and assess the values and virtues of this record as if that thirteen-year gap never existed. If you remember, Richard's last proper LP, DrukQs, was met with a relatively lukewarm reception — sometimes branded as too long, sometimes as too monotonous, sometimes as too unjustly focused on electronic percussion, overall, not one of his better efforts. Now what would have been the reception for SYRO, had it come out in 2002 instead of 2014? If we didn't all have to wait that long, begging The Master to please please please come back, and show us the way?

I had to actually go back and refresh some of the «classic» Aphex Twin numbers, from ʽGreen Calxʼ all the way down to ʽCome To Daddyʼ, in order to understand why my senses could only perceive SYRO as one large, unterminable, irritating bore. It is better than DrukQs, for sure, if only because the emphasis has been shifted away from fussy funky percussion and put back on tonal sounds — Richard D. James may be a master of his own groove, but his best work had always had a positively melodic side to it. However, calling SYRO a «melodic» album would clash way too hard with my naïve world view, and I won't do it.

Where some of Richard's work used to be awesomely otherworldly, and some of his other work used to be hilariously nightmarish, and some of his other work just made you stop right there and think «I have no idea what this ʽmeansʼ, but it sounds so different and so cool, why hasn't any­body else thought of that before?», SYRO does none of these things to me. Predictably, it is complex (and made even more complex by the frequent use of processed vocal overdubs), it is «intelligently danceable», and it even makes an effort to be diverse, but (a) there is really nothing here the likes of which we hadn't heard before, be it from Richard himself or from a gazillion of his electronic followers, and (b) more importantly, these tracks do a fairly poor job of converting themselves into lasting impressions, or even short-lived impressions, for that matter.

Perhaps it is the fault of the production, which fails to give these tunes the required depth: just as it was on DrukQs, it all just sounds like an extended soundtrack to a generic video game, and even good headphones do not particularly help out to perceive anything breathtaking about these loops and ambient flourishes. But a much more likely solution is that the man is simply no longer driven by the fresh excitement of exploring uncharted waters, which was there in the 1980s and in the 1990s. «Exploration» is now reduced to «desperation», that is to say, silly gimmicks that serve as mental bookmarks rather than anything else —  «ʽCIRCLONT14ʼ? Oh, you mean the one where they wispily chant no-so-chkeeee, no-so-chkeeee, no-so-chkeeee all the way through?» (For the record, nosochki literally means ʽlittle socksʼ in Russian, and this is hardly a phonetic coincidence, since there are other Russian phrases occasionally scattered in the mixes as well — a 25th-frame-type trick, no doubt about that; Her Majesty's Secret Service should probably start investigating whether the man has been put on Putin's secret payroll).

Naturally, it would be illogical to expect the man — not just after such a long break per se, but after a long break during which his electronic feats and wonders, once upon a time a jawdropping force like no other, have become a normal part of our collective conscious — it would be illogical to expect him to have the power to stun the world once more. Electronic wonders are as much of a rarity these days as any other type of wonders, and adventurousness and artistic flexibility do tend to decrease with age even if we're talking of geniuses. Yet, on the other hand, after such a long break, neither did I quite expect this former Napoleon to meet his musical Waterloo, no matter how many important critics will try their best to convince you that it is really his musical Austerlitz. Not «revolutionary», no, but gimme some emotion/impression/revelation, whatever. And no, nosochki does not count. And I don't play any video games these days, either.

One hour into this mess comes ʽAisatsanaʼ, the quiet ambient conclusion — a five-note piano phrase repeated over and over, sometimes with minor variations, pretending to long to be resol­ved until it finally is resolved with a couple extra chords at the end. Somehow, it seems to me to be symbolic of this entire album — a lengthy search for self-expression, pretending to be carried out on several different paths but really mainly following the same unoriginal, tired direction, and finally pretending to have reached its goal, but there never really was a goal. The whole thing is just boring, meaningless, and tedious, and if it took Mr. James thirteen years to come up with that, well, he might just spend the rest of his days growing vegetables as far as I'm concerned.

Seeing as how so many people give out radiant-glowing reviews to SYRO — even though I have not been able to find even a single one that would illuminate me on what exactly I have missed here — I do feel a responsibility to warn you not to take my rather vicious thumbs down at face value, and go and check it out for yourselves. Nevertheless, most of this review was written in a cool-calm-collected state and reflects my genuine feelings (or, rather, lack thereof) towards the album, so I am not just trying out a contrarian approach or anything. In the end, I guess we'll just have to wait until the Heroic Aureole wears off our hero a little bit, and see where SYRO is going to stand, say, in twenty or thirty years time, provided the world will last that long.

Aphex Twin: Chosen Lords

APHEX TWIN: CHOSEN LORDS (2006)

1) Fenix Funk 5; 2) Reunion 2; 3) Pitcard; 4) Crying In Your Face; 5) Klopjob; 6) Boxing Day; 7) Batline Acid; 8) Cilonen; 9) PWSteal.Ldpinch.D; 10) XMD 5a.

In 2005, Richard D. Twin continued his unpredictability spree by releasing, under his alternate moniker of AFX, a series of eleven vi­nyl-only EPs that he called Analord and numbered almost in successive order: first came No. 10, then Nos. 1 through 11. (Don't ask me what particular brand of algebra this represents). Those of us who are of the more common stock and do not bother so much about the vinyl vs. CD contro­versy, right down to not even owning a turntable any longer, may only enjoy the results through illegal (and, in the eyes of the Twin, most probably distasteful) digital rips — or through this par­ticular compilation from 2006, which did get a CD release and, supposedly, was almost forced on the man by his management.

The latter — the fact that Chosen Lords were a half-hearted release — means that there is no guarantee that you really get the best stuff. Knowing the evil mind of «Daddy Windowlicker», you might, in fact, get the worst, and may that be a punishment to you for disrespecting the power of vinyl and the holy obsession of the completist. (At least, that is exactly what most of the completists say — unless they are simply pissed off that it was them and not you spending all that time and money on scooping up the entire series). But with this kind of music, it is not easy dis­tinguishing between best and worst in the first place. And there is certainly very little sense to re­viewing all of the series and trying to find significant progressive difference between Analord 5 and Analord 11. For our purposes, Chosen Lords will do fine.

There is a retro scent to this music — naturally, since, true to its name, the Analord series made significant use of old analog equipment, although computer equipment was also present. Some have called it a conscious return to the good old days of «acid techno» and drew analogies with Ambient Works 85-92. Others, conversely, highlighted its innovative qualities (merging the old ways with new creative approaches etc.). Both parties are probably right. However, in my own eyes, this does not make Analord any less of a «coasting» experience than DrukQs, no matter how different the technologies involved in their preparation.

The overall sound is simply too dry and shallow. The best of Ambient Works were impressive sonic vortices, spurring on all of those cellular / atomic level analogies and making the listener want to reach within oneself and find echoes of these strange sounds in his/her own blood. On Analord, or, at least, on these particular selections, James mostly sticks to complex, but un-moo­dy robotic patterns that took much work to create, but not a lot of inspiration, I believe. For all of the innovation, I cannot hear any new types of sonic sensations that had not been discovered be­fore, and none of the tracks are sharp, rough, or aggressive enough to attract extra interest. Worst of all, way too often I catch myself understanding that this is hardly distinguishable from back­ground Web muzak or arcade shooter accompaniment ('Fenix Funk 5' might have been terrific in «Mario Bros. In Outer Space», but hardly anywhere else).

In such a situation, the most effective tracks are those where, at least, you have a lot of things happening, so it may not mean much, but it keeps you too occupied to be bored. Which means that the winner by far is 'XMD 5a' (perhaps not coincidentally, one of the two tracks on here ac­tually credited to «Aphex Twin» rather than the non-aphex evil twin «AFX»), a real oddball com­position that begins with rhythmically tolling bells, continues as a little convoluted acid dance track dubbed over an ambient-minimalist piano track, grows into a percussion-heavy funk num­ber, dissolves in the ambience of the piano, comes back in a poisonous pool of Moog-ish atmos­pherics, and finally bursts in an evil biley bubble. Nothing sensational, but still — a sonic adven­ture that contrasts rather sharply with the comparatively static nature of most other tracks.

The bottomline is, in the hands of a beginner this kind of stuff would command reverence, but for James, this is starting to raise the question of whether his explorations had really reached the end of the map by the year 2000. The fact that some people actually paid attention to — and almost applauded — the fact that 'PWSteal.Ldpinch.D' introduces a regular 4/4 beat, might somehow hint at the possibility that things are coming back full circle. Who knows, maybe ten years from now the Twin will be gracing us with digital deconstructions of Sinatra standards. For now, my review should serve as a cautious warning: there is no big reason to hear this stuff unless you are already a vintage Aphex nut. At least — repeat repeat — I see nothing here that makes it any better than DrukQs.

Check "Chosen Lords" (CD) on Amazon

Aphex Twin: 26 Mixes For Cash

APHEX TWIN: 26 MIXES FOR CASH (2003)

CD I: 1) Time To Find Me [AFX Fast Mix]; 2) Raising The Titanic [Big Drum Mix]; 3) Journey [Aphex Twin Care Mix]; 4) Triachus [Mix by Aphex Twin]; 5) Heroes [Aphex Twin Remix]; 6) In The Glitter Part 2 [Aphex Twin Mix]; 7) Zeros And Ones [Aphex Twin Reconstruction #2]; 8) Ziggy [Aphex Twin Mix #1]; 9) Your Head My Voice [Voix Revirement]; 10) Change [Aph­ex Twin Mix #2]; 11) Une Femme N'Est Pas Un Homme [Aphex Twin Mix]; 12) The Beauty Of Being Numb Section B [Created by Aphex Twin]; 13) Let My Fish Loose [Aphex Twin Remix]; CD II: 1) Krieger [Aphex Twin Baldhu Mix]; 2) Deep In Velvet [Aphex Twin Turnips Mix]; 3) Falling Free [Aphex Twin Remix]; 4) We Have Arrived [Aphex Twin QQT Mix]; 5) At The Heart Of It All [Created by Aphex Twin]; 6) Flow Coma [Remix by AFX]; 7) Windowlicker [Acid Edit]; 8) Normal [Helston Flora Remix by AFX]; 9) SAW2 CD1 TRK2 [Original Mix]; 10) Mindstream [The Aphex Twin Remix]; 11) You Can't Hide Your Love [Hidden Love Mix]; 12) Spotlight [Aphex Twin Mix]; 13) Debase [Soft Palate].

Strictly speaking, I have every «legal» right to skip this 140-minute monster, since it is not a «proper» Aphex Twin or AFX album. Not only is this a compilation, with mixing dates running the entire length of James' official career, but only two of the tracks (the remixes of 'Window­licker' and 'SAW2') begin and end with Aphex Twin himself. The rest are exactly as advertised: remixes of works by other artists — for cash. (I'm assuming RDJ doesn't accept checks).

However, it doesn't take a serious expert to understand that an Aphex Twin remix is not just a re­mix. «Just a remix», at best, gives you a longer version of your favourite single with more oppor­tunities to shake it up, and, at worst, serves as money bait for frustrated completists, spending the­ir time hunting for rare Japanese 12" releases when they could have been researching stem cells instead. For Richard D. James, remixing is a major way of making a living, not so much in the fi­nancial sense as in the biological one. Like an evil parasite, he attaches himself to the original product, sucks out its organic matter and injects his own venom. Or larvae. Listening to this al­bum, especially if you are familiar with the original tracks, is the musical equivalent of walking through a parasitological museum (there actually is one in Tokyo, believe it or not).

I am not familiar with all of the originals, nor even with all of the artists, which range from real biggies like Nine Inch Nails and Meat Beat Manifesto to local celebrities like Nobukazu Takemu­ra to all sorts of techno and trip-hop bands and DJs that may or may not have been great in their heyday (actually, if you start penetrating the world of 1990s electronic music through the big names, 26 Mixes is some serious publicity for the smaller ones). The album may — and, at a cer­tain point, should — be enjoyed on its own, independent, terms, but, of course, comparisons with the raw material will also help unfurl the secrets of Aphex Twin's creative spirit. So it's 140 mi­nutes of offbeat pleasure per se, and then, if you want, 140 ⋅ 2 minutes of instructive similization for the sake of intelligence, coolness, and merciless timekilling.

The Twin's basic approach is «reconstruction» rather than «deconstruction». It is as if he took one or two listens to each selection, found one or two elements of it that he liked — a beat, a bassline, maybe even a vocal part — dissolved the rest in acid, then built his own dream castle around the salvaged bits. Just one example: Takemura's 'Let My Fish Loose', a dreamy ethno-jazzo-electro­nic «bal­lad», used to be a multi-layered recording, awash in tricky time signatures and flutes and funky keyboards and bits of Spanish guitar. Of all these things, James falls in love with one: the bassline, which is indeed a very groovy jazz bassline. So he makes it loud as hell, and everything else quietly hiding behind its back — but the annoying kiddie vocals he apparently hates, so he ends up distorting them, stretching, compressing, and dehumanizing at will. It's brilliant, since it is at the same time an exhortation of the track's strong points and a mean parody of its weak ones. (At least, that's how I see it at present — but I think it's an understanding that ties in well with the common idea of «Aphex Twin = The Evil Clown of Electronica»).

Some of the tracks can only be qualified as cruel (but deserving) jokes. Both David Bowie and Philip Glass, for instance, take a severe beating on the remix of the Glass-orchestrated version of 'Heroes', on top of which he dubs David's original vocals — as if asking us the question, «What the hell do these two people have to do with each other?» Clearly, nothing, as the abysmal audio effect will have you realize. 'You Can't Hide Your Love', a simplistic, sterile dance track from DMX Crew is sped up, stripped of the boring overlays that conceal its worthlessness, and turned into a dance fool's paradise.

Most of the time, though, the source material is simply used as a bare foundation to create more of that typically-Aphex music. Mescalinum United's 'We Have Arrived', as the name tells you, used to announce alien presence: a fast-paced, pompous «astral» march with huge beats and swo­oping keyboard waves to reflect macrocosmic proportions. All of that hugeness is being ripped out, and the tune is reinvented as a jarring, almost insufferable industrial slam, with alien beats now sounding as megaton sledgehammers and galactic waves replaced by the poisonous hiss of acid-corroded metal. Like I already noted, Aphex Twin's electronics normally dislikes stars, gala­xies, and other faraway places; he is more concerned about fractals, atoms, and quarks, whose worlds are really just as limitless in themselves as those of the stars and galaxies, and there is no better way to see this than to compare the original 'We Have Arrived' with his reworking.

Occasionally, the remixes serve to remind you that the man's own music is not entirely sourceless, either, and that there is no inseparable rift between the electronic revolution and whatever used to exist prior to that. The second track, for instance, sounds like a decent outtake from Ambient Works II with a loud drum rhythm attached — in reality, it is his reconstruction of Gavin Bryars' 'Sinking Of The Titanic' theme from 1969 (conveniently renamed 'Raising The Titanic'). And the album ends on an almost hippiesque note with a remix of 'Debase' from the Mike Flowers Pops, a retro band mostly known for an Oasis cover and contributing to the Austin Powers soundtrack.

It would be cheating — and somewhat unfair — to call 26 Mixes the Twin's «best» album, but one thing is certain: the diversity of approach and abundance of ideas make this the easiest 140 minutes in a row of his music that I have ever sat through. Think of it this way: no matter how prodigious the man is, it is pretty hard for one talented person to keep on releasing double CDs full of consistently successful music (especially electronic music); DrukQs demonstrated this in all clarity. On 26 Mixes, it is as if he enlisted the help of 26 friends — imagine it as a shot in the arm on the part of talented corporate songwriters — to aid with the basic skeletons. The result is simply one of those, I am not afraid to say, seminal albums that give Electronica a good name, helping to convert the skeptically minded who think that intelligence, diversity, and entertainment could not, in theory, peacefully co-exist on an electronic album. Thumbs up.

Check "26 Mixes For Cash" (CD) on Amazon

Aphex Twin: DrukQs

APHEX TWIN: DRUKQS (2001)

1) Jynweythek; 2) Vordhosbn; 3) Kladfvgbung Micshk; 4) Omgyjya-Switch; 5) Strotha Tynhe; 6) Gwely Mernans; 7) Bbydhy­on­chord; 8) Cock/Ver-10; 9) Avril 14th; 10) Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michaels Mount; 11) Gwarek 2; 12) Orban Eq Trx 4; 13) Aussois; 14) Hy A Scullyas Lyf A Dhagrow; 15) Kesson Dalef; 16) Cymru Beats; 17) Btoum-Roumada; 18) Lornaderek; 19) QKthr; 20) Meltphace 6; 21) Bit 4; 22) Prep Gwarlek 36; 23) Father; 24) Taking Control; 25) Petiatil Cx Htdui; 26) Ruglen Holon; 27) Afx 237 V.7; 28) Ziggomatic; 29) Beskhu3epnm; 30) Nanou 2.

This goddamn thing is just too long, which is not so much a complaint as a lament: even if there are any bright new spots here that suffice to advance Richard D. James to the next level, three or four listens are not going to get you to follow him there. Really, for a guy much of whose reputa­tion was based around short, up-to-the-point EPs and singles — such as, e. g., the famous 'Win­dowlicker' from 1999 — to throw out one hundred minutes of continuous electronic noise on the market sort of understates the meaning of «overkill».

There have been cautious, sceptical, and even overtly negative reviews of DrukQs, which is un­derstandable since even serious admirers of Aphex Twin might not want to spend their time sor­ting the wheat out of the chaff; and since Aphex Twin is merely God in disguise, and His know­ledge of the Universe does not go much further than a detailed understanding of superstring the­ory, which He invented, and the Big Bang, which He supervised — it is obvious that the 2 CDs of DrukQs are going to contain crappy filler, like it or not.

In all honesty, I would call this a «coasting» experience, and an intentional one at that; DrukQs is a big, sprawling summary of most, if not all, of James' interests in the world of sound. The tracks meticulously alternate between (a) techno / drum'n'bass dance numbers with psycho-futuristic me­­lodic un­der­bel­lies, along the lines of Ambient Works 85-92; (b) rhythm-less, minimalistic, mostly minor key piano or string compositions, along the lines of Ambient Works II; (c) stern industrial clots of noise, such as can be found on his mid-Nineties albums; (d) brief musical or non-musical jokes (e. g. a phone message from his parents congratulating him on his birthday). There is no «hard techno» à la 'Come To Daddy', and no orchestrated arrangements, but other than that, it is all fairly representative.

And fairly ehh: not a single track truly stands out. Despite all the superficial diversity, they blend into each other much like their unpronounceable, unmemorizable titles (which range from com­plete orthographic gibberish to long words or short phrases in Cornish, certainly undistinguisha­ble from said gibberish for any layman without a Celtic fetish). The melody-carrying synths be­hind the frantic beats never burst into magic, and the beats themselves, in all honesty, are far less innovative and unusual than they used to be. It's all rather yawn-inducing even from the scientific point of view. Were elementary particles truly flashing around the way they are pictured in 'Ta­king Co­n­trol', or geological fluctuations accompanied by the sounds of 'Gwely Mermans', natu­ral science would be nothing but a chore.

It is not unimaginable, of course, that there is much subtle charm here that the critics missed for obvious reasons — such as its pretentious length and lack of transparently evident innovation — but, after all, it is just as easy to nosedive in electronic music as it is in, say, guitar-based music, and maybe even easier. Even when you have computers on your side to assist you with finding fresh types and combinations of sounds, your power is still limited; what is a computer, after all, but a bunch of alternating ones and zeros? And on DrukQs, these alternations simply happen to be more coarse-grained than elsewhere. Thumbs down.

Check "Drukqs" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Drukqs" (MP3) on Amazon

Aphex Twin: Come To Daddy

APHEX TWIN: COME TO DADDY (1997)

1) Come To Daddy, Pappy Mix; 2) Flim; 3) Come To Daddy, Little Lord Fauntleroy Mix; 4) Bucephalus Bouncing Ball; 5) To Cure A Weakling Child, Contour Regard; 6) Funny Little Man; 7) Come To Daddy, Mummy Mix; 8) IZ-US.

This would be a fine place to mention that, in addition to his relatively small number of long-pla­y­ing records, Richard D. James has had immense streaks of EPs and singles released over the past twenty years, describing all of which individually would take forever — yet it would not always be a waste of time, since much of the man's tastiest meat is to be found on these petty pieces of product. All I can say in general is that they are generally worth checking out, and, as an excep­tion, say a few words about one of his lengthiest EPs: Come To Daddy runs over thirty minutes and, therefore, almost qualifies as a full album (actually, Richard D. James Album only excee­ded it by about five minutes, completely blurring the distinction between album types — which, come to think of it, is only natural considering that these days they all come on the same pieces of plastic with the same diameter).

Come To Daddy is likely to qualify as Aphex Twin's eclectic peak; with a little bit of every­thing and more contained inside, I might even recommend it as a most useful introduction to the chara­cter in general. If you want to see where exactly one talented artist stands on beauty, evil, fun, absurdism, and musical geometry, each single track on this release will answer at least one of these questions, and sometimes more. Plus, together with Album, this is the finest proof available of the idea that Richard D. James is not merely making music with electronic equipment; he has, in fact, become one undetachable whole with his electronic equipment — much like for Jimi Hendrix it could be seen that the guitar was just another, extremely vital, organ of his body, here it seems that sounds like these could only have come from an operative cyborg.

'Come To Daddy (Pappy Mix)' is the most famous number here, mostly due to the promo video, from which the world got tricked into thinking that Richard D. James is, in fact, a mutant hell-raising demon born out of an old TV set in­seminated with dog pee. Musically, however, the track is one of the simplest and least interesting numbers on the EP, a jarring industrial techno parody on all sorts of «evil music», from Ministry to Prodigy to death metal, that is rather one-dimen­sional, unless you want to throw on some points for the mock-creepy «demon vocal» overdubs of "Come to Daddy, come to Daddy!" and "I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!"

But the big general plus of the EP is that it is intended to be more than a sum of its parts, and the hyperbolic evil of 'Pappy Mix' does not reach its full effect until, one track later, you reach the 'Little Lord Faulteroy Mix', whose only common link with the 'Pappy Mix' is the main title — in all other respects, it is an entirely different experience, with underwaterish chimes and little green man vocals taking the place of metallic grind and Lucifer roar. And then, still later, there is the 'Mu­m­my Mix', which is even less similar — mostly percussion-driven with a few ambient tones in the background and next to no vocals at all (just a little high-pitched screaming).

Why are they all 'Come To Daddy'? Probably just to reflect the man's provocative spirit. The unsettling titles, the evil grin staring out of the dog-pee-stained TV set in the video, the unusually high percentage of warped vocal overdubs, all of this has the stamp of the «man-machine» over it, as if all these long years of tampering with the spirit armies of chips and transistors finally did transform the man into the «Analord», as he would, in a few years, start christening a whole se­ries of his new records. Scary — but certainly exciting.

Tucked inside the three «mixes» are lesser known tracks that are, however, no less deserving. 'Flim' represents one of his most pleasant minimalistic melodies, a rhytmic melange of almost jazzy synth patterns, completely devoid of any ironic aspects. 'Bucephalus Bouncing Ball' starts out as a crazy, superhuman break-dance track before completely chucking rhythm out the win­dow and concentrating instead on tracing the virtual trajectory of a virtual set of bouncing balls: imagine a bunch of Olympic gods setting up a pinball championship and you'll end up some­where in the vicinity (I cannot even begin to imagine the work it took to program all that). And 'Funny Little Man', the more I listen to it, the more it comes across as some gruesomely political­ly incorrect musical joke, which is fabulous, because who the heck wants to see a world stripped of the art of intelligent provocation?

Where Come To Daddy can seem a step below the Richard D. James Album is in the «melo­dy» department — without any strings arrangements or Beach Boys influences, but with boun­cing balls and goofy vocal tricks, it is more about «sonics» as a whole than about traditionally valued note sequences. But the inclusion of tracks like 'Flim' clearly shows that, like every talen­ted electronica / avantgarde composer, James simply views «traditionally valued note sequences» as but one of the important ways to realize his maniacal sonic drive, and the good news is, he is fully capable of realizing it in ways that are complex, exciting, and impressionistic, which sets him apart from armies of poseurs. If nothing else, Come To Daddy is simply one of those magnificent treatments for the tympanic membrane that builds up one's sense of perception, ge­neral experience, and, well, character. Thumbs up.

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