“aphex_twin”
Aphex Twin
Come To Daddy EP
Warp/Sire
As soon as you’re done reading this, and you’re convinced it would be the right thing to do, go buy this EP; while you’re at the record store, pick up all of Aphex Twin’s records. Every note of everything he’s ever done is good.
Come to Daddy has all the trademarks of AT: warped manipulation of drum rudiments, delicate ambiance, computer manipulated dada vocals, a good sense of humor (no matter how plain that description sounds, trust me this shit is WAY a-typical). But with Come to Daddy, AT has hit a milestone in his career and in the whole vague genre of electronic music. Aphex Twin has proven himself a multi-faceted, well-rounded (here it comes..) SONGWRITER.
Where most electronic music, other Aphex Twin records included, is more sound-experience oriented, a lot of the songs on Come to Daddy have some mature “songlike” structure. Not in a verse-chorus-verse way, but in a classical, compositional way.
There’s still some very successful sound-for-sound’s sake pieces reminiscent of a ’90s Edgard Varese or John Cage, but truly emotional songs like the delicate “Flim,” with its near-acoustic timbres, prove that Aphex Twin is not really an “electronic artist,” he’s just, an artist. Listening to Aphex Twin, you rarely think of his music as “this new kind of music that’s done with computers,” it’s just music that would take too many people to play. If you’ve ever had a musical idea you thought would be really cool, and tried to convey it and get it played by a bunch of people, you understand why someone like Aphex Twin uses a computer.
I hear the video for the single, “Come to Daddy,” is being played on MTV, and that’s strange. I mean, I want him to be on MTV and make a lot of money, if anyone deserves it… but if you’re not familiar with Aphex Twin, you may see the video and think, “this song is horrible.” “Come to Daddy” is a tongue in cheek, pseudo-industrial song that might be kind of off-putting taken out of context as the world’s first vision of Aphex Twin. At the same time, this is AT’s biggest strength; unlike other electronic artists that have been exposed, Aphex Twin makes album-oriented music. Come to Daddy, the EP, is another step toward solidifying Aphex Twin’s place as one of the first in the genre that will be timeless.
