Aphex Twin
...I Care Because You Do

With “…I Care Because You Do” we simultaneously reach the pinnacle of Richard D. James's career and 90s electronic music. The CD revolutionizes the ambient genre, "humanizing" what had been machine music up to that point (aseptic, cold, impersonal), instead expressing a mischievous, playful yet sinister mood (as hinted by the sardonic smile of the self-portrait on the cover), unknown until then to the albeit commendable productions of his colleagues.

The work is very varied but the quality is consistent throughout all the tracks, starting with the off-kilter trip-hop of “Acrid Avid Jam Shield” which slowly but inexorably evolves with its broken and slowed beats into a disoriented yet beautiful synth melody, only to return to the starting point. Also spectacular are “The Waxen Pith”, a violin melody disturbed by synthetic frequencies and beats, and the trio “Wax The Nip”, “Come on You Slags!”, and “Start As You Mean to Go On”, hammering tracks that transform techno into something abstract and melodic at the same time. The dark “Icct Hedral” sounds like a bizarre (and very successful) experiment in symphonic-industrial music, but the noise pinnacle of the CD is the shocking “Ventolin”, traversed from start to finish by a hissing frequency and the noise of a slow but very heavy rhythm made up of formidable metallic/synthetic hammer blows, causing the listener almost physical pain. “Alberto Balsalm” and “Cow Cud Is a Twin” are instead two delightful and whimsical melodic trip-hop, high-class diversions, while the concluding “Next Heap With” strips away all electronic frills (even if the sounds are undoubtedly the result of synthetic emulation) to offer us an Aphex Twin composition for orchestra, surprisingly at ease even with strings and winds, as if he were Morricone.

Richard D. James will continue his brilliant career more than honorably, but he will never again equal the heights reached with this masterpiece, whose greatest merit is that of finally bringing a certain sense of humor to a musical genre that was taking itself a little too seriously.