Often referred to as a ‘mini album’, Come to Daddy unites the disparate strands running through James’ music at the time. Despite the extreme variation in the tracks, there’s a consistent oddness running through everything, a sense of urban decay embodied in the greyscale colour palette of the Chris Cunningham-directed video.
Come to Daddy itself is obviously notorious mainly for the video, which cemented the image of Aphex Twin’s face as some sort of demonic avatar. The lyrics are supposedly taken from some fan mail, and while the aggressiveness of the track is clearly tongue in cheek, maybe it was a way to channel his own horror at receiving such an intrusive message (I want your soul, etc).
Aphex Twin’s music has always held a warped mirror to current trends, and the aggro vibe of Come to Daddy reflected a strain in dance music at the time, when drum’n’bass was getting harder, darker and and faster. Did it attract a certain kind of macho fan to his music, similar to The Prodigy with the direction they leant on Fat of the Land? Maybe so, but that’s beyond moot now. It’s an absolute banger of a track and inherently horrifying even without the video: the way ghostly figures seem to emerge from the clouds of static, the sinister detuned tones that come in and out of frequency and how the beat feels as if it’s being pulled inside out by a hurricane of white noise.
Anyone who bought the EP on the strength of the title alone would be disappointed by Flim, one of Aphex’s gentlest and most accessible pieces of music – a rarity given its appeal to casual listeners and status as a firm fan favourite. One such fan being Skrillex, who cited it as his favourite track ever. The wistful melody is just the right side of melancholy and fluttering breakbeats never outstay their welcome.
A highlight for me is Bucephalus Bouncing Ball, which takes the sound of a ball being bounced on a drum machine pad to its logical conclusion…and beyond. It could easily be an exercise in po-faced geekery, were it not so entertaining to listen to, especially the last 30 seconds which used to make me feel like the emoji with its head exploding.
The two ‘remixes’ of Come to Daddy sound nothing like the original, although both are permeated with the same clouds of static. The Mummy mix is largely an experimental beat workout, which gets more and more spookily atmospheric throughout. The dystopian hip-hop of the Little Lord Faulteroy mix is populated by some very odd characters whom I can’t help picturing as cousins of the child-demons from the Cunningham video, “watching the water flow past in the canal, looking at the swans and hearing the birds singing”.
To Cure a Weakling Child (Contour Regard) is a rare Aphex Twin remix that actually bears some resemblance to its alternate version. Contour Regard is more spacious, emphasising the reflective melodic elements, albeit with the occasional incursion of the same brittle static that infuses the whole release.
Something of a companion piece to Flim, IZ-US lacks the creepiness that characterises the rest of the release and is the perfect way to close. That gorgeous woozy euphoria that’s somehow melancholy and uplifting at the same time.
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