OK, onto Aphex.
This is one of those ones that shows you what he’s capable of when he’s not just trying to be a twat, which he usually is.
This track has been sifting through my nerves and heart valves since 1995. Apart from being a delicious sonic object it is also a beautiful piece of music: something that zeroes in on the soul, articulates shards and shades of feeling you were only otherwise dimly aware of. The tone is hard to define: it is melancholy, triumphant, a love song, an elegy; you can be in a different place at a different time and this piece of music somehow finds a way to reflect or transform the moment. He’s a riddle, because maybe he just has a good ear, but, surely, to make music like this you must have some rarefied poetic sensibility, some depth of feeling and width of vision. Perhaps he’s just English: if he has it there somewhere, it has to be deflected, downgraded, treated like an accident, something meaningless. Don’t show your emotions, lads!