Aphex Twin
Windowlicker

After the splendid "Richard D. James Album", it was hard to expect something that would surpass it: the songs on that album were all indispensable, never unnecessarily stretched like the dance music of that period, but warm and delirious, experimenting with everything: from jungle (remember "4") to classical music (the splendid "Girl/Boy Song", the peak of Aphex Twin beauty).

Therefore, a new innovation was almost unthinkable, yet it arrived: the EP "Come to Daddy" turns out to be another recording of human follies, with the hardcore imprint of the title track, a quieter but unsettling remix of "To Cure A Weakling Child" (already included in the previous album) and other tracks balancing between the most schizophrenic IDM and the calmest techno. Another hit in short, repeated again by this other single: only three pieces, demonstrating Aphex Twin's skill, even before the masterpiece "Drukqs" and the less successful "Anarold", three tracks that deserve to be in the "100 most important pieces of electronic music", each more innovative than the last, without a common thread connecting them. No, here inspiration is realized, without following a line to keep the songs united for a theme.

The opening "Windowlicker" seems almost crude in its languid sighs and almost orgasmic rhythms, as if it were the theme song of a porn flick, but it is the demonstration of genius beyond the ordinary: the beats flow in a vortex of distortions and the piece magically transforms into destroyed jungle. Spectacular also is the subsequent "A Complex Mathematical Equation", where rhythms become contortions and chase each other like cat and mouse. Pure wild music, leading to the unexpected "Nannou", which is love at first sight (or rather, at first listen): a magical tinkling of a music box that you can't help but love, which seems to be the precursor of some passages of the subsequent "Drukqs", those realized on the harpsichord.

A single that truly presents itself in clarity, never ambitious nor cacophonous as many other dance-house records appear, just an example of first-rate artistic madness. Truly, sensational.