Aphex Twin - ...I Care Because You Do

Aphex Twin's masterpiece. Filled with scary metallic clanking, wrenching high-pitched frequencies, and some of the most beautiful, washed out melodies ever committed to tape. Richard James shows off his prodigious talents at everything from IDM (Acrid Avid Jam Shred, Alberto Balsalm) to minimalist (Icct Hedral, Next Heap With) and everything in between, including some truly original flipped up soundscapes (Ventolin). And then there's Mookid, which is in a category of its own... has any techno artist ever managed to create a piece of music as heartbreaking and yearning as this?

If you're looking for where in Aphex Twin's catalogue to start, you'd do best to buy I CARE BECAUSE YOU DO last so as not to ruin the rest of his releases. Yeah, it's that good.

James seems to have a fascination with encoding information such that it becomes unintelligible without another key piece of knowledge.

Several track titles on this album are anagrams:

1) acrid avid jam shred = richard david james
2) the waxen pith = the aphex twin
3) wax the nip = aphex twin
8) wet tip hen ax = t(h)e aphex twin
11) cow cud is a twin = caustic window
12) next heap with = the aphex twin

The theme of encoding has run throughout James's career. For instance, he also used the anagram technique on the Hangable Auto Bulb EPs. Many of the track titles on the double-album Drukqs are written in Cornish, a language similar to Welsh in that it is all but gibberish to the uninitiated English speakers. For example, "Cymru" translates to "Wales". Another example is the track "Lornaderek" a concatenation of his parents' first names.

Absolutely beautiful release by the master of the genre, not to mention the first item I ever purchased by him a decade ago.

I had listened to multiple other kinds of electronic music prior, but never heard anything close to this, and especially nothing with as many layers as this has.

This whole release is filled with a track for just about every mood, and while some parts are a bit loud compared to the rest, they fit well as a whole, regardless of how off they may be, especially Ventolin, which regardless of it's harsh high pitched meshing, beats are found.

Definitely an album I will never get bored with, and even after listening to just about every piece of AFX / Aphex Twin material out there, I can still honestly say this ranks up there in my personal top 5 releases by him, and is definitely one of the most overlooked releases, as both of the Selected Ambient Works releases seem to unfortunately overshadow this gem.

Quite disturbing album and NOT to played too loud unless you're sure what you're getting into. First track is quite funky in an obscure sort of way but the masterpiece is track 4 (icct hedral): one can almost picture some dark gothic cathedral with a sinister organ playing in the background. Beware Track 5 (Ventolin), this is an audio version of a 'video nasty' take care on the sound levels as this is an assault on the aural senses! Shon