Nix The Weap: A Quick(ish) Look At The "Come To Daddy" Music Video

Richard D. James is a name probably not familiar to many of you, but the man is quite a legend in the world of electronic music- if you consider yourself even the smallest fan of EDM, as it’s known these days, you owe something to the guy. He has released a huge body of work that has been highly influential in cultivating genres like Acid Techno, Braindance (an alternative and much less elitist name for the genre known as Intelligent Dance Music), worked under many different names during his career, including AFX, Polygon Window, Caustic Window, Bradley Strider, and many many more. Even legends like Daft Punk, Radiohead and Skrillex have cited the man as an influence on their work. As a fan, I intend on doing a full retrospective and analysis of the man’s work at some point in the future, but for this article, there’s one very specific thing I want to talk about.

His work under the name Aphex Twin is probably the most (in)famous, combining breakneck speeds with complex rhythms, harsh synthesizer sounds, and a very cold and unforgiving edge. There are a great number of softer pieces he’s done (and even a few that are arguably upbeat and happy) under this name, but usually when people think of Aphex Twin, they think of things like this;

There’s actually a reason I showed off that video specifically; Richard is quite an enigmatic bloke- he lives in a converted bank, for example, and it should say a lot that misinformed rumours (which he has occasionally spread himself), including claims he was planning on buying the Michael Faraday Memorial, were often believed and considered fact. So it comes as no surprise that he often found himself a frequent collaborator with nightmare maker Chris Cunningham, a British director and artist who has done many, many weird and wonderful music videos as well as creating the downright bizarre video above, Monkey Drummer; the song the incredibly freakish automaton plays the drums along too is first two and a half minutes of Aphex Twin’s track, “Mt. Saint Michel/St. Michaels Mount”. The two have collaborated many times over the years, each one bringing their respective dark fantasies to the table and fusing them together in tantalizing little visual and audio pieces that probably shouldn't’t be experience by mere mortal men (but damn if that isn't what makes them so satisfying to watch, right?)

But perhaps their most infamous and well remembered collaboration was their first; the music video to Come To Daddy.

The track itself, according to Richard, was a pisstake track done as a joke that he thought up whilst getting drunk, and he has referred to the songs origins as a “crappy death metal jingle”, and still seems surprised the track ever took off at all. But take off it did, and to this day it remains perhaps his most well known song- and the music video played a large part in that. Largely because it’s a fucking fever nightmare on celluloid, including such endearingly joyful elements as a grotty little shithole of a tower block (the same tower block where Stanley Kubrick shot some scenes in A Clockwork Orange, funnily enough), dog piss that summons an evil TV dwelling spirit that really, really wants to have a little nibble on your soul, and children with Richard D. James’ head superimposed over their own, the face never moving, always twisted into that devious smile- a feature that referenced many of Richard’s album covers for his releases under Aphex Twin, which included his trademark slasher smile face in some manner or another- that come about to completely wreck the shit of everything and anyone in proximity in a genuinely disturbing and brutal fashion (or at least as brutal as possible without showing any gore).

pictured above: the face you will see when you die

Things further detiriorate when suddenly, we a random breakdown into a nursery rhyme sample complete with jolly skipping that isn't present at all in the original song, and things finally come to a head when we see that ungodly thing that emerges from the TV, screaming right into the poor old woman’s face, before morphing into an elongated caricature of Richard with the same demented scowl on his face as the children, asserting itself as their leader (or perhaps being seen as some kind of god in their eyes), before twitching and pulsating along to the twisted beat in some kind of horrid seizure, while the spirit from before continues to holler, laugh, and continue demanding a taste of our souls like the greedy little scourge of the damned it is.

To say this video made waves is an understatement; nearly anyone old enough to remember it, remembers it. It broke the mainstream music consciousness entirely on it’s visual content alone. Channel 4 ranked the scene with the creature emerging from the TV in it’s 100 Top Scariest Moments list in 2003- the only music video on the list- and Pitchfork called it the greatest video of the 1990s. While it wasn't’t his first music video, it was the one that made Chris Cunningham an overnight sensation, and as a result catapulted him from obscurity into stardom and landed him work with acts such as including Portishead (“Only You”), Leftfield and Africa Bambaataa (“Africa Shox”), Squarepusher (“Come On My Selector”), and Björk (“All Is Full Of Love”). Even now, it still remains one of the most talked about music videos of the decade. As well it should be.

The reason the video works can be broken down pretty simply; it isn't just the stunning special effects work (which, it goes without saying, is amazing), and it isn't just the fact that it’s “weird and creepy”. What makes it all work, even without a strictly conventional narrative, is that the strange and frightening elements of the video aren't’t forced. If they really wanted, they could've just had the “I want your soul” guy be a Jason Vorhees lookalike chasing after a vulnerable cheerleader type, or have it be a demonic clown played by Tim Curry stalking Seth Green or something along those lines. They could’I've been over indulgent with flashy and shiny special effects or pools of gore left right and centre (or, at the very least, some blood). Hell, they could have hired well known British actors to play the roles, or had zombies in it, or just flat out have fucking Satan himself be the singer in the video.

But they didn’t.

Instead they put together this weird, gritty and grubby urban nightmare where everything felt incredibly unreal and threatening, and peppered it with visuals that have elements of a social breakdown, hive mind mentality, and just plain royally fucked up things, and it none of it feels forced for the sake of being “edgy” and “troubled”; it feels natural, like Chris and Rich literally just sat down and said “let’s have fun”. And it adds to the quality of the video exceptionally.

~ Decon, 05/10/2013

images collected from wikipedia and pitchfork