Windowlicker EP – Aphex Twin – Released 22nd March 1999, Warp Records
The Windowlicker EP is a three-track release from Richard D. James under his main Aphex Twin alias. It was released on Warp Records in March of 1999 and enjoyed considerable chart success at the time.
Much like its predecessor EP, 1997’s Come To Daddy, Windowlicker owes much of its success to the title track’s music video. The videos for both Come To Daddy and Windowlicker were directed by Chris Cunningham and feature the signature facial mapping effects with which Aphex Twin has since become synonymous.
While the first two Aphex Twin album covers made use of the iconic Aphex Twin logo, the subsequent releases made use of caricature and masks, a theme which was then augmented digitally for the two Chris Cunningham videos.
And while Come To Daddy was a death metal parody coupled with a gritty, horror movie aesthetic, Windowlicker was a more languid, albeit glitchy affair while the accompanying music video parodied west coast gangster rap (with a little bit of Michael Jackson thrown in).
These videos served as a loophole of sorts, in that “Aphex Twin” did technically appear in his music videos though without the artist ever showing his real face, thus retaining both his privacy and his techno credibility.
By mapping creepy caricatures of himself onto professional dancers and bikini models, the Windowlicker video was equal parts amusing and disturbing, not to mention being a minefield of expletives.
The resulting controversy and constant MTV play meant that, one way or another, Aphex Twin “broke America.”
Windowlicker (official video) – Aphex Twin (NSFW)
It’s Windowlickin’ Good
The Windowlicker EP was definitely a record you wanted to tuck on the inside of your jacket or, failing that, turn the cover inward while walking down the street in your hometown.
The cover art was, well, visually arresting let’s just say and the last thing one wanted was to bump into someone curious to know what record you had, “oh is that the kinda stuff you’re into eh?… (mutter mutter) fucking weirdo…”
I should also mention that I have a mate of mine who bears more than a striking resemblance to Aphex Twin (English, ginger, long hippy hair – all boxes ticked) and there’s an amusing photo from an after party at mine where he’s holding up the Windowlicker 12” with a big cheesy grin on his face – you honestly couldn’t tell the pair apart.
Should I maybe talk about the actual music here then?
Well, the main track we all know, right?
The intro to the track alone, with its various glitches and stutters, not to mention those rich compression techniques which helped the beats really slice through the mix, proved massively influential in the decades to come.
Windowlicker was also where we first heard what would become another signature Aphex sound, those strange pitched vocal snippets. Budding producers have been driving themselves nuts for a quarter of a century trying to recreate them.
This vocal sound, or variation of those sounds, continue to crop up in Aphex releases including the 2014 album Syro and his most recent (at the time of writing) release Blackbox Life Recorder.
Right at the end of Windowlicker you’ll notice a series of loud high pitched whines which, when played through a spectral analyser, creates a cool spiral shape.
We used Winamp for this, as was the style at the time, and, this being the late 90s, dial-up internet was slow and expensive so finding out this kind of information took time. You literally heard about it from a guy who heard about it from a guy who saw it somewhere on the internet. And finally the stars would align where you could test the theory out and it was like finally solving a Zelda dungeon times a thousand.
There’s a more impressive example of this on the second track – the annoying formula name one, and fuck off if you think I’m going to type it here so we’ll just be calling it track 2, ok? – which, if played through a spectral analyser you’ll see the famous Aphex face.
The track itself is pure lysergic insanity, drenched with wall-wibbling sounds, glitches, distorted screams and pulverising impacts of breakbeats and bass.
Now I’m no mathematician, but apparently if you take the letters A F and X and their corresponding values on the alphabet – 1, 6 and 24 – then apply those numbers to the formula, you can solve the formula. And if then convert the resulting numbers back into letters the answer is “yer ma.”
…Seriously tho, no fucking idea what it means but even by Aphex Twin standards this tune is batshit.
(Annoying Formula Name) – Aphex Twin (in all its spectrographic glory)
Finally, we have Nannou, winner of the 1999 John Cleese award for Something Completely Different.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Windowlicker because it’s, well, it’s Windowlicker. Of the three tracks on this release, however, Nannou is without a doubt the best and I might even go so far as to say one of the best Aphex Twin tracks overall.
It’s not the best obviously but it is one of my go-to Aphex 101 tracks whenever I have to school someone on and why his music matters. Because at best the guy’s music gets misrepresented as one thing or another, at worst he’s “the guy with the tits.” (It’s how I once heard him described.)
Well yes, that’s technically correct but… eeeh…
Nannou is one of those tracks that’s both highly complex and mature, from a compositional point of view, yet has a naive simplicity and childish wonder to it.
In many respects it’s every bit as busy as some of his more scattershot noisecore tracks, except the obsessively sliced breaks have been swapped out for a more subtle clockwork motif, while an astonishing array of delightful music box melodies dance on top.
They’re instantly recognisable as Aphex Twin melodies, though this track does sort of exist in its own little universe, I’ve always felt.
For me this music hails from the grannyverse, a gawdy parallel reality full of doilies and teacups that were locked away in cabinets until posh people visited and toys were placed on high shelves not to be touched, “that’s an ornament!”
But you clambered up like Spiderman anyway to grasp the forbidden device and, when nobody was around, you wound up the little box and stared at it mesmerised as the cogs turned and the music tinkled away.
Every granny had something like this in the house. Mine had a creepy porcelain kid with a piano who spun on a turntable and played “The Way We Were”. It was utterly ghastly, but as a kid I was obsessed with it yet – boys and our noisy toys.
I’m conscious that other people’s grannies all had similar devices, little dancing ballerinas and similar dainty mechanical marvels, a few seconds of Nannou and no doubt you’ll suddenly recall one from your family…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Pkx37kYf4
Nannou – Aphex Twin
The Man Of A Thousand Faces
Thanks to its iconic video, the Windowlicker EP became one of Aphex Twin’s most famous releases.
It was as successful as it’s possible for an uncompromisingly experimental producer to be in the famously techno-phobic landscape of 90s white America.
No doubt RDJ chuckled at the notion of legions of bleach-brained Limp Biskit bros suddenly being confronted by cutting-edge electronica via a gender bending music video.
Disturbing though it was, the video was the perfect Trojan horse to bring Aphex to a more mainstream audience stateside, forcing many to realise just how far behind the times they truly were. And it would take decades before they caught up.
Released in 1999, Windowlicker represented the end of RDJ’s phase one, which began in earnest with the release of Selected Ambient Works Volume 1.
It came out three years after his Richard D James album and two years before 2001’s Druqks, an album which was apparently only released because he put the tracks on an MP3 player and then lost them on a plane. (RDJ told a journalist this so it must be true.)
And, though we still got additional releases (most notably the Analord and Tuss releases) it wouldn’t be until the middle of the second decade of the 21st century before we got any more official Aphex Twin releases on Warp.
But throughout that considerable gap, Windowlicker was still doing its thing. Its hard-stepping drums and stutter effects had begun trickling down to the mainstream, or at least to main stage electronic festival acts and EDM-adjacent groups like Daft Punk, Glitch Mob and Skrillex.
(Even Kanye West started taking notice, but the less said about that gobshite the better.)
Thankfully, by that point we wouldn’t need to wait much longer for Aphex Twin to start releasing new music, culminating in the release of the 2014 album Syro, an album which turns ten this September so will be covering that in a future article. But in the meantime… stay tuned for another big review on April 14th 😉