'Come To Daddy' by Tony Fletcher from VH1
Music for the Whole Family
If there have been stranger occurrences in pop music than Aphex Twin getting heavy rotation on MTV, then excuse me for not remembering them right now. The Twin -- a.k.a. the still early-20s Richard D James of Southwest England -- has spent his prolific career as electronica's eccentric outsider, forever taking abrupt U-turns when the door marked "commercial success" has opened in front of him. Hearing his music emanate from my TV screen in the middle of the day -- on the nation's premier pop channel no less -- is an experience I would have laid money against as little as 12 months ago.
James is, after all, the man whose record company biography proudly informs us has recently been "teaching his computer to write music so he can spend more time 'shagging,'" while failing to complete commissions or to show up for promotions other musicians would die for -- including a TV documentary, a radio session, a soda commercial and a national radio interview. Like Moby, one of electronic music's few other visible solo stars, the Aphex Twin has always prided himself on unpredictability; unlike Moby, he has not made a commercial piece of music since his unique debut single "Didgeridoo" arrived on the techno scene some five years ago.
Come to Daddy changes all that. Neither the obdurate nor the ethereal soundscape we have come to know, occasionally love, and equally often despair of him for, it is instead akin to the Prodigy beating up on Nine Inch Nails at a drum and bass club. In other words, it is like some of the most popular 'alternative' music of the moment combined -- and boosted by a shocking video that, once seen, is impossible to forget.
Allowing that 1997 has been a watershed year for electronic music in America, and taking into account James' deliberately perverse nature, I wonder if he isn't simply putting us on, deciding to put himself on the charts if only to show how easily it can be done. This would be contemptible -- if Come To Daddy were not so compelling. The song uses a minimum of lyrics (nothing more than the title words and "I want your soul" delivered ad infinitum) and a maximum of aggression -- James' distorted vocal delivery is nothing short of satanical -- to create a far more exciting and dangerous follow-up to the Prodigy's "Firestarter" than the offensive "Smack My Bitch Up" could ever hope to be. The video stars a gang of marauding children in James latex masks causing havoc in a desolate British council estate, and a skin-and-bones James bursting from a TV womb to strike terror in an old woman in a scene that could have come straight out of a horror flick. The combined audiovisual assault has resulted in the immediate and rapid expansion of Aphex Twin's audience beyond its previous clique of earnest critics and techno chinstrokers, into the mass market of angst-ridden, electronica-industrial adolescents nationwide.
Come to Daddy is not the only fascinating piece on this eight-track mini-album. There are two other versions of the title track. The "Little Lord Faulteroy" rendition features basic keyboards, a relaxed rhythm, and a 'vocal' that turns the terror of the original upside down, a childlike father enquiring innocently instead "Are you daddy's little boy?" "The Mummy" mix is another piece of music altogether, caustic and disjointed. Of the four other new songs, "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball," with its typically nonsensical title, is as close to archetypal Aphex as one gets -- a confusing set of hectic rhythms and occasionally attractive melodies creating a thoroughly engaging listening experience, one completely impossible to recall once the next track kicks in.
Also included is a remix of "To Cure A Weakling Child" from the Twin's last album (simply entitled Richard D James), which features a boy's voice cut up to the point of nonsense. What we are supposed to conclude, if anything, from the mass of vague autobiographical references that dotted that album and this current release is unclear. Does James view his father as the devil, or himself as a 'weakling?' Certainly anyone who began, in his early teens, to make synthesizers, and to stay at home recording ambient music at the age when most of us are out discovering sex, wouldn't have much difficulty convincing us of his abnormal childhood. That the adult James now lives in a former bank and drives a decommissioned tank may just be image-posturing, but it indicates that he has no intention of living a normal adulthood either.
What the hell. Aphex Twin is worth our respect for as long as his constant experimentation keeps us on our toes, and his contempt for the music business remains barely disguised. With Come To Daddy he's elected himself as an anti-icon and dangled the possibility of his becoming a real rock star. If he succeeds on either front, it will be even more amusing -- and hopefully, musically enthralling -- to hear and see how he then decides to deal with it.
Written by Tony Fletcher from VH1
