The women then accompany James in his limousine while their faces morph into James' own likeness. After emerging from the limousine, James begins provocatively dancing with an umbrella bearing the Aphex Twin logo in an attempt to seduce the two women. James, displaying a hyperbolic amount of wealth and power, emerges with his signature fixed grin, at which point the song begins. Suddenly, a ridiculously long white limousine (38 windows in length, including the driver's window, which takes 20 seconds to fully display) crashes into the two men's black Mazda Miata NA (MX5) convertible, and a " pimped-out" Richard D. They come across two women (referred to in the end credits as "hoochies") who repeatedly turn down their advances. In the video, two foul-mouthed young men in Los Angeles are window shopping for women the French term for window shopping is faire du lèche-vitrine, which literally translates to "licking the windows" "window licker" and "window licking" are pejorative British English terms. It is a ten-minute long parody of contemporary American gangsta hip-hop music videos. The music video for "Windowlicker" was directed by Chris Cunningham, who had also directed Aphex Twin's previous music video, " Come to Daddy". It was fun though because it was just done in the spirit of trying to have a crack, I'm too much of a hip-hop fan to want to take the piss out of hip-hop. I don't really like it very much because it's me working in a slightly different area. Īs of 2001, "Windowlicker" has sold over 300,000 copies. Track three, "Nannou", dedicated to his then-girlfriend, is made up of wind-up music box samples. Ī logarithmic spectrogram of " Δ M i − 1 = − α ∑ n = 1 N D i F j i + F e x t i ] "), has a very experimental sound. According to an article on the website Wired News, photographs run through the program tend to produce "a kind of discordant, metallic scratching". MetaSynth will then convert the spectrogram to digital sound and "play" the picture. This program allows the user to insert a digital image as the spectrogram. The effect was achieved through use of the Mac-based program MetaSynth. This spiral is more impressive when viewed with an X-Y scatter graph, X and Y being the amplitudes of the L and R channels, which shows expanding and contracting concentric circles and spirals. The spiral at the end of the spectrogram for "Windowlicker"Ī spectrogram of "Windowlicker" reveals a spiral at the end of the song. Additionally, Daft Punk credited "Windowlicker" as an influence on the direction of their stylistic approach on their 2001 album Discovery. Similarly, Stereogum stated that "the song's mix of unpredictable syncopation, digital- dub alien transformations, errant noises, and bursts of melody would serve as a starting block for much of today's electronic music". In 2012, Pitchfork stated that the track's futuristic elements presaged various musical developments, including " Flying Lotus' digital deconstruction, James Blake's bent vocals, the wobble and knock of dubstep". The track consists of various sections, including a drum'n'bass intro, a "gooey middle section", and an abrasive noise ending, as well as featuring consistent melodic elements throughout. Gasps, vocal harmonies and moans reminiscent of sexual vocal tones "glide in and out of the production" it has been speculated that, like in many of James's productions from the late 1990s, the vocals are his own. "Windowlicker" has been described variously as "uncompromising cyborg R&B", " hip-hop written in the language of glitches", and "eerie lounge-porn music" the track's "sleazy, erotic ambiance connote images and emotions alien to James's previous compositions." Heavily digitally processed and rhythmically rearranged breakbeats prominently appear in the song's backing track. Pitchfork included the song at number 12 on their list Top 200 Tracks of the 90s. The song peaked at number 16 on the UK Singles Chart, and was later voted by fans as Warp Records' most popular song for its 2009 Warp20 compilation. Cunningham also directed the song's music video, which was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Video. The artwork for the single was created by Chris Cunningham, with additional work by The Designers Republic. " Windowlicker" is a song by British electronic musician Aphex Twin, released on 22 March 1999 as a single by Warp Records.
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