Aphex Twin
Come to Daddy EP

I have always been fascinated by the technical and experimental qualities of Aphex Twin... to me, he's a genius! I was just a simple teenager when I was captivated by his way of conceiving music, unsettling yet hypnotic... it gave the idea of a lunatic!

"I made 'Come to Daddy' while I was just walking around my house, getting bored, making this death metal kind of beat. Then it got released, a video was made, and this little idea I had, which was a joke, became something huge. It's not entirely normal." (Richard David James)

An angry, diabolical sound to say the least, distressing, will find its way into your most remote anxieties, expanding like a tumorous abscess, enough to devastate you and bend you to excruciating pain; in the exaltation of that idea or "joke," as defined, prelude to the most insane and twisted paranoias; which begin with the first track of the project “Come to Daddy (Pappy Mix)” as a sonic prologue in the elaboration of the following tracks.

It is by distressing the listener, in the exaltation of his own intentions, with spectral atmospheres permeated by that dense drum’n’bass, in the relentless need to unleash the deepest fears, if only at the simple sound of those words “I WANT your soul” which are already disturbing on their own, but emphasized and pervaded by that wave of malignancy, when dictated over the rhythms of those crazy, incessant, and heretical screams... that Aphex Twin hits the target with his own sonic project.

If you add to all this a video by the equally disturbed partner in crime Chris Cunningham, the job is done…..

Now, coming from a metalhead, it might seem quite heretical, but the project and particularly the title track, aside from being quite mentally unstable if not maniacal, could wipe out many discographies of those Norwegian screamers trying to redefine the concept of "evil” in their death messages narrating black masses and nonsense like Andrea Volpe and Charles Manson... well, I think it's time to screw those people and keep enjoying this excellent project by Richard David James, whom some "blockhead" has dubbed the most pop...

Vastly different is "Flim", as if it accidentally came your way, a bridge between drum‘n’bass and ambient over a sterilizing motif from those psychotic manias of the artist and far from that "insane" need to rework in a completely senseless and deconstructed way the sound of Come to Daddy.

A reworking of the title track in a lo-fi minimal drum‘n’bass version like "Little Lord Faulteroy", paranoid and disturbed, or like the schizophrenic "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" plus a similar version of "afx237 v.7" located in Drukqs (See Rubber Johnny by Chris Cunningham), continuing with "To Cure a Weakling Child (Contour Regard)" and "Funny Little Man" that don’t seem to stray from that catharsis of occasionally cacophonous sounds in a Dadaist reworking, which characterizes the general vision of the entire project, symptomatic indeed is "Come to Daddy (Mummy mix)" in which the DJ even uses a combination of “familiar” sounds... his own mother’s voice...!

The brief but appreciable close-track "IZ-US" appears different, characterized by a calmer and jazzier sound.

I close by recommending this experimental project... urging even the die-hard fans of True Norwegian Black Metal to listen.

Best Regards from IlMigliore.