Aphex Twin - I Care Because You Do 2xLP

Label: Warp

Our Review:

The mad-scientist of electronica - Richard D. James aka Aphex Twin - released I Care Because You Do in 1995. This album's single "Ventolin" stood as one of the more cantankerous tracks that RDJ had recorded to date. A harsh, tinnitus-inducing squeal permeates the sequencing of clunky rhythms and dum-dum melodies of that single thumbing its noise at everybody who took the whole Intelligent Dance Music thing way too seriously. At the time, the track was a blatant provocation, and after all these years, it still sticks out as a grotesque distortion, with the album moving somewhat like a palindrome around that track - progressing up to that nasty piece of electronics from more stately and subdued tracks before reversing course. One of the tracks that brackets "Ventolin" is the majestic "Icct Hedral" which spirals around an orchestration worked out by Phillip Glass for Aphex Twin, with James girding the cauldron of repetitive woodwinds and strings with his trademarked crunching breakbeats and phase-shifting parametric filter sweeps. The sweaty acid-breakcore track "Come On, You Slags!" is the other bookend to "Ventolin" with more introspective abstractions pooling on either side with plenty of counterpointing rhythmic complexities tossed in for good measure. It was on this record that the Aphex sense of humor - with its broad spectrum from the strange to the village idiot - first came into its own as a unique facet to Aphex Twin's vocabulary. So much of this work still sounds amazing after all these years, and it's also great to see this on vinyl again finally, too!