The 90s were unrepeatable and …I Care Because You Do proves it. Composed between 1990 and 1994, it is a paradigm of the advanced teenager.
Ethereal, industrial and obscenely beautiful
Richard D James’ third album as Aphex Twin was the first one I auditioned in full and in real time. In my naivety I never thought that that face on the cover, all deformed and satirical, would be that of the author himself, rejoicing at his own planetary influence. In 1995, grunge and Brit-pop dominated the alternative scene, followed at a distance by Bristolian trip-hop. In Lima Fujimori alias Chinochet began his second term and it would take a few more years for the raves to arrive. In those years, some colleagues from the Faculty asked me for information on what records to ask for. And so …I Care Because You Do landed on the shoegazer scene of that time like a virus that corrodes everything and everything IT touches is never the same again. Electronic music was still rejected by the bulk of music lovers and described as insubstantial and easy by the usual rockers. …I Care Because You Do influenced everyone who heard it. Musicians and music lovers. It changed perspectives, it broke rules, and most of all, it shaped our youthful minds and temperaments.
When I took the CD to my new-waver compadre Julio “Caradebuke” (from Galerías), so that he could put it on metal tape, he snapped at me smiling: “Hey, what is that marxianada, dude?” It had fascinated him. Kraftwerk and all synthpop were already pre-history. Authentic advanced IDM from a time when everything seemed to be taken to extremesn and from which we would never return; where electronics would decipher the future and sounds would be a religion. It was the foundation and decline of classical music to come. And so the screeching “Ventolin” resonates deep on Fractal’s Lekta (1998) and the mesmerizing, intelligent percussions on “Evamuss.” Contemporaries like Kollantes, Terumo, Rapapay, and the entire Cretásico brotherhood start here. Without knowing it, we were all connected. And all thanks to whom (or what).
AFX would decline in inventiveness, and in this century it has given us only bursts of what it used to sound like. Sculpting trans-human sensations like “Acrid Avid Jam Shred,” “Start As You Mean To Go On,” or the post-symphonic “Alberto Balsalm” is not an everyday thing. You would have to be very burned for it and, equally, to give it to you so often.
Be that as it may, I feel more than grateful for having found Aphex Twin and the experimental post-rocker wave at the beginning of it all than with hipsters like Björk, Sonic Youth, or, obviously, Nine Inch Nails. I care a lot.
Reprinted with permission (Vanguardia Peruana)
…I Care Because You Do is available on Warp. [Bandcamp | Site]
