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From: Jeff Davis <jjdavis@xnet.com>
To: idm-reviews@hyperreal.com
Subject: I Care Because You Do: (Long) Review
Date: Fri, 12 May 1995 05:59:56 -0500
Aphex Twin: I Care Because You Do
(A multimedia version of this review w/ sound snippets can be found at
http://hyperreal.com:70/1/music/reviews/davis/.)
01 Acrid Avid Jamshred
02 The Waxen Pith
03 Wax The Nip
04 Icct Hedral
05 Ventolin (Video Edit)
06 Come On You Slags
07 Start As You Mean To Go On
08 Wet Tip Hen Ax
09 Mookid
10 Alberto Balsam
11 Cow Cud Is A Twin
12 Next Heap With
Due to my lack of industry connections, my lack of local import outlets,
and my chronic lack of motivation, my reviews are usually delayed. This
one is no exception. I've been listening to this disc for about a week
now, and although I appreciated it instantly, it has continued to grow
on me. Although one is free to argue the earnest / cynical intonation
of the title (I lean towards the latter), the work as a whole is of a
higher quality than some of the more recent works RDJ has been so
heavily slagged for. There's more thought and attention to detail and
your ears can tell. As mentioned before, production is flawless, and
most importantly the heavy use of orchestral structure and elements
marks an exciting new direction, (or at least a good head fake.) The
percussion and melody are as complex and non-4/4 as ever, and the filler
tracks and obviously reworked ideas are relatively few. It would be a
major stretch to call the collection instantly accessible, but it is
certainly engaging after relatively few listens. The overall emotive
tone of the disc, as invoked by several songs is one of an amalgam of
beauty and concern, a mood of pristine, crystalline worry. The songs
are framed by beautiful noises held together by complex and disturbed
structures. It's nice, but in many cases leaves you longing for a
silver cloud that doesn't come with a dark, brooding lining. The
collection hangs together fairly well around a pretty consistent feel
and theme, and this is somewhat refreshing after the jeckyl and hyde
sucker punch sequencing of several recent RDJ releases.
For lack of a more creative alternative, I choose track by track rundown
as my review strategy:
_Acrid Avid Jamshred_ opens with a kickin', but simple snare and tom
line. The funky drummer adds nuance upon layer upon syncopated morph to
this line until it becomes the tightly wound upright spine of the song
that you soon realize it is. Nice ambient washings, some bleeps, quirts
and sweeps round it out, but in the end this song is about drums, funky
drums. You can picture Mr. Drummahman in the dimly lit club, eyes
closed, just gettin' into it, and the gritty snap of his beats is
evidence of the fact that he'd just as soon come over and kick your ass
as provide the beats to keep this song nailed down. After some
short-wave tuning speaker to speaker whining, all superfluous sound is
peeled back to reveal again this rhythmic jewel as you ask yourself " Is
there really such a thing as a 1/64th note?" Kickin', and an
encouraging opener.
A good example of the intermingling of beauty and nervous tension that
permeate many of the tracks on this disk is _The Waxen Pith_. It opens
with some nice drums with an acidic fart beat, but then a surprise
element wanders in, catching the seasoned AFX listener totally off
guard: Violins!!??!! They're pretty, diligent and I like 'em, but it
took me several listens not to double take upon first hearing them.
Plenty more orchestral floss from the same quiver abounds on this disc,
so get used to it quick. This one for some reason forever reminds me of
a spider repairing its web as rapidly as possible before some oncoming
disaster ( a tank, perchance?) forever crushes its masterpiece. This
oncoming disaster, which started out as an innocuous acid fart, becomes
more and more violent throughout the piece until it threatens to throw
your sub woofer voice coil right out of the enclosure in the closing
moments of the piece.
_Wax The Nip_ could just as easily have been titled _Quoth: Bike Pump
Meets Calliope_. The interesting, multi-foiled beat barrage is as
indecipherable and undanceable as ever, but not as full frontally
assaulting as Quoth due to the pleasant organ washes which saturate and
smooth over the caucus. Nice but not tremendously groundbreaking. I
give it an F for filler.
I really don't know and don't care if Phil Glass had a hand in _Icct
Hedral_, but it scares me every time a hear it. Deliberate piano
pounding and tortured electronic screams and growls kick this one off.
It would make a great Hitchcock or Steven King soundtrack to a scene of
a frantic, panic-driven murder cover up. I hear the cops coming up the
stairs, where'd I hide the murder weapon? The probing penetrating
melody is alternatively shared by strings, synths and screeches. Midway
through, an orchestral break builds the climax up even farther through
some ascending dynamics and key shifts until the nagging rhythm / melody
line takes on an almost "nanny nanny boo boo, they're gonna catch you"
bent that would drive even the most coolly calculated killer a little
crazy. I giggle every time I picture Conductor James, with black tails
and stick in hand, passionately working the orchestra pit up to frenzy
in this one.
Enough has been said about _Ventolin_, so I'll touch upon it only
briefly; the _video edit_ appears to be very similar, if not identical,
to the _Salbutamol_ mix. I like this tune because it's crunchy,
abrasively melodic and funky. This track is about heavy machinery
gleefully wrecking havoc on its creators, a steroid driven pipe organ
joyfully and purposefully plowing over everything in its path. The 4Khz
whine is there and initially annoying, but it's nothing that a good EQ
notch filter (or repeated listenings at high volume) won't cure. This
whine ploy becomes interesting only when you realize that Richard's dog
whistle is used as the white space between the snippets of sound that
compose this song. You start to appreciate this more at the end of the
track as the squelching slides in and out of the whine become more
noticeable between notes. Since 95+% of the folks that will buy this
disc already have the Ventolin single and remixes, the addition of this
track adds little to the collection, but it is a good track,
nonetheless.
_Come On You Slags_ sounds like it was cut in the Tamphex / Xylem era,
and it doesn't fit with the rest of this collection, even the harder
Ventolin. Repetitive samples of the "fantasy coming out party", dark
synth lines, a tom line reminiscent of polygon window, and some hard and
crackin' beats compose this relatively uneventful piece. It doesn't do
much for me, it doesn't fit, and shouldn't have made its way past the
edit deck.
_Start As You Mean To Go On_ does a nice job of tossing elements of
several of the _On_ remixes and B-sides into an essentially new piece.
The dominant elements are the main _On_ 16 count melody line, softened
up, pushed back in the mix and looped endlessly, interspersed with the
driving beats and rewind segues of 73 yips. I think I hear elements of
the _D-Scape_ mix, but miss the drag-your-thumb-on-the-turntable
quirkiness of the _u-Ziq_ mix, which is my favorite. All in all, this
recycling works well for me, and the track doesn't come off sounding too
"used" It's a neat idea and I'm glad he included it here.
Prodding muffled bass drums and a troubled sounding string loop open up
_Wet Tip Hen Ax_. Sharp bleeping and gradual percussion line
development build this one up, as additional layers of strings and an
oboe-like whale call loop into the mix. We're searching for something
here, in an urgently mournful way. The break is a more upbeat refrain,
with a background setting of those shuffley filtered rephlex drums that
I've grown to love over the last 12 months. This song is pleasant,
there's a lot going on in an understated way, and it develops well
without confusing the listener. I'm reminded of an Arctic expedition,
pushing forward rapidly through the ice crystals against a background of
cloudless, purple skies.
_Mookid_ is a lovely one that I quite liked upon first spin and have
grown more fond of with each listen. The beats and handclaps are here
throughout, but they're muffled and shuffled as if through sheets of
colored tissue paper. You really want to groove to it, but you're
inclined to just smile and tap along without calling any attention to
yourself, because it's so damn subdued. A nice touch is the use of a
soothing steel-drum sounding wave to propel the melody line, which is a
simple four measure loop that is repeated with no mutation, save changes
in the sustain. Sliding and sweeping meows come in and out to signal
the next round under the cover of some very warm ambient washes, until
this teaser ends quite abruptly. This track and its tasty successor are
the SAWII tracks that you can dance to. I'd kill for 4 or 5 more of
these gems.
It seems that everyone's fave (mine included) is the lovely _Alberto
Balsam_. The same warm steel drums from the prior track are used to
carry the theme in this one, although James allows them to do a lot more
in this one. It's a starkly beautiful riff, cornwall calypso that's
elegant in its simplicity and singularity of focus, It loops around the
block, repeatedly building up to a nice climax of 8 hits of clanging
pans peeled naked of all melody, than Boing, back to square one. For
me, this is the first time RDJ has successfully packaged the emotion
that was there in droves on SAWII into a beat and melody driven package.
This one has the lovely warm organic goo and sparkling buildups that I
normally expect from a Middleton / Pritchard track, and for me, this is
the track that proves that he DOES care, whether its because we do or
not. The scary part about this one is that it could actually get
commercial airplay.
Trainspotter points to all those for whom _Cow Cud Is A Twin_ confirmed
the suspicion that Mr. AFX is a Mac user. The Speech to Text feature of
Sys 7.5 that was first featured in the shout out at the end of the
Ventolin single (Whisper voice) is used here as well, with several of
the great and funny voices (Bells and Hysterical) put to good use. A
nice sampled upright string bass loop and car door slamming poke the
plodding, trip-hoppy melody along. It's pretty happy and upbeat,
doesn't drive you anywhere too fast, but that's okay. Rather, it
chooses to swagger amidst a mosh of church chimes and doodahs to the
crisp snap of another riveting snare line.
After a string of rather soothing and pleasant tracks, we end on a
suspenseful and sequel-invoking note in _Next Heap With_. After opening
with some eerie haunted house organ chord progressions, the staccato
strings which provide the only real beats in this song arrive. A
fluegel horn / french horn call reminiscent of a warrior trumpeting on a
conch in the midnight fog strikes a tone that is proud in a stark and
singular way. We are clearly pushing the iceberg out into uncharted
waters, but we go there knowingly and willingly, because we know it's
beautiful out there. With renewed faith, I can't wait for the next RDJ
release to find out where "there" is.
all rights reserved, all wrongs reversed, 1995.
Jeff Davis ____--~~~~~~vvvv~~~~ oooooo 812.831.7846
jjdavis@xnet.com____---- ( ( ( vvvv ~~~~~~ooooooooooooo
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