Windowlicker

"Windowlicker"
Single by Aphex Twin
B-side "ΔMi−1 = −αΣn=1NDi[n][Σj∈C[i]Fji[n − 1] + Fexti[n−1]]"
"Nannou"
Released 22 March 1999
Format
Genre
Length 6:07
Label Warp
Writer(s) Richard D. James
Producer(s) Richard D. James
Aphex Twin singles chronology
"Come to Daddy"
(1997)		 "Windowlicker"
(1999)		 "minipops 67 [120.2]"
(2014)

"Windowlicker" is a song by electronic music artist Richard D. James, released under his Aphex Twin pseudonym. It was released as a single on 22 March 1999 through Warp Records. The single peaked at number 16 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming his highest-charting song, and was later voted, by fans, as Warp Records' most popular song, for its Warp20 compilation.

The artwork for the single was created by Chris Cunningham, with additional work by The Designers Republic. Cunningham also directed the song's music video. In 2000, "Windowlicker" was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Video.[1]

Background

"Windowlicker" consists of James' voice modulated on computer, mixed with his trademark breakbeat snare rushes, drum samples, and mixed choir-like singing, resulting in a smooth yet erratic song with the last minute of the track escalating into an extremely distorted wall of bass. Also included is a sample of a French voice, saying either J'aime faire des croquettes au chien (translating to "I like to make dog nuggets") or J'aime faire des cracottes au chien (translating to "I like to make dog cracottes").

Hidden images

The spiral at the end of the spectrogram for "Windowlicker"

A spectrogram of "Windowlicker" reveals a spiral at the end of the song. 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 effect was achieved through use of the Mac-based program MetaSynth.[2] This program allows the user to insert a digital image as the spectrogram. MetaSynth will then convert the spectrogram to digital sound and "play" the picture. According to an article on the website Wired News, photographs run through the program tend to produce "a kind of discordant, metallic scratching".[3]

A logarithmic spectrogram of "ΔMi−1 = −αΣn=1NDi[n][Σj∈C[i]Fji[n − 1] +Fexti[n−1]]" (commonly known as 'Equation') reveals a portrait of a face near the end of the track, believed to be a photograph of James himself which features his trademark grin.[4]

Single release

The "Windowlicker" single contains its title track and two B-sides. Track two, commonly known as "[Formula]"[5] or "[Equation]" due to its actual title being a complex mathematical formula ("ΔMi−1 = −αΣn=1NDi[n][Σj∈C[i]Fji[n − 1] + Fexti[n−1]]"), has a very experimental sound. Track three, "Nannou", dedicated to his then-girlfriend, is made up of wind-up music box samples.

Music video

I don't really like it very much because it's me working in a slightly different area. 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.

Chris Cunningham, director[6]

The music video for "Windowlicker" was directed by Chris Cunningham, who had also directed Aphex Twin's previous music video, "Come to Daddy". It is a ten-minute long parody of contemporary American gangsta hip-hop music videos. In the video, two foul-mouthed young men (a Latino and an African American) in Los Angeles are window shopping for women (referred to in the end credits as "hoochies"); the French term for window shopping is faire du lèche-vitrine, which literally translates to "licking the windows". Suddenly, a ridiculously long white limousine (38 windows in length, including 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. James, displaying a hyperbolic amount of wealth and power, emerges with his signature fixed grin. The two women, among others, accompany James in his limousine while their faces morph into James' own likeness, and are later joined by a woman with a horrifically ugly, buck-toothed, deformed face, which was later illustrated in a sketch by Swiss artist H. R. Giger titled "The Windowlickers".[7]

The James's faces aren't digitally morphed on the women. Masks and make-up were specifically designed by the production, to achieve the desired morphing effect.

The cast for the dialogue intro of the clip are Marcus Morris, Gary Cruz, Marcy Turner and Chiquita Martin.[8] Filming was done in the Los Angeles area. The locations are as follows:

There are 127 uses of profanity in the dialogue segment of the video (which is under 4 minutes), including 44 uses of the word "fuck". This averages to more than one use of profanity every two seconds. The video was released as a VHS single, containing both uncut and censored versions (the latter being referred to as the "Bleep Version").[5] It was also nominated for the Best Video award at the BRIT Awards 2000, alongside videos by Supergrass, The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, and eventual winner Robbie Williams.

The full "Windowlicker" video is restricted to being broadcast only during the nighttime on most music television channels. A bleeped-out version of the video exists, and MTV Two even made a daytime version, with all the opening dialogue removed (the censored version starts with the arrival of the limousine) and some of the video's more shocking images are also removed. In 2008, MTV Networks Europe was fined by media regulator Ofcom for several breaches of its broadcasting code, including airing the uncensored version of the "Windowlicker" video before the 9pm watershed.[9]

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic [10]

"Windowlicker" received positive reviews from critics. Allmusic gave the single 4 out of a maximum 5 stars.[11] The single was named NME's Single of the Year 1999 in its year-end charts. James sent NME the following missive in acceptance:

Smart! Thank you very much for voting for my track/s. I've had a very good year as usual, although it was very intense, getting on a really big roll, writing new stuff constantly, really looking forward to isolating myself next year even more! Hope everyone has a totally boring New Year's party, overdoses on everything and chokes on their own vomit on the bathroom floor, make sure you lie face down just before you pass out!
Signed, Pritchad.g.kraymes.

In September 2010, Pitchfork Media included the song at number 12 on their list Top 200 Tracks of the 90s.[12]

Remixes and samples

A remix of "Windowlicker" in the acid techno style, entitled "Windowlicker, Acid Edit", is available on the remix compilation 26 Mixes for Cash. Another remix of "Windowlicker", entitled "WINDuckyQuaCKer", appears on V/VM's HelpAphexTwin/1.0 (2001)[13] and HelpAphexTwin 4.0 (2003).[14] A remix entitled "it's a richJAMs World" appears on V/VM's HelpAphexTwin 4.0 (2003).[14] Run Jeremy (an alias of Danish producer Anders Trentemøller) also made his own remix of "Windowlicker". Beardyman performed a live version of "Windowlicker" as part of his Edinburgh show in 2009[15]

Miss Kittin performed Run Jeremy's remix of "Windowlicker live" at the Sónar festival and included it on her album Live at Sónar.[16] Elements of "Windowlicker", including its heavily distorted outro, were sampled by American musician Girl Talk on his track "Get It Get It", from his 2010 album All Day.[17]

Samples of "ΔMi⁻¹ = −αΣn=1NDi[n][Σj∈C[i]Fji[n − 1] + Fexti[n⁻¹]]" can be heard on the song "54 Cymru Beats" from Aphex Twin's 2001 album Drukqs.

Use in media

"Windowlicker" was featured in the 2006 film Grandma's Boy and in several episodes of the BBC motoring series Top Gear. A version of "Windowlicker" is used in the Voyage mode of Lumines Electronic Symphony, and another is used in the Dior Haute Couture A/W 2012 runway show.

In 1999, the song featured in the second episode of the second series of Cold Feet and featured on the accompanying inaugural soundtrack.

The "Windowlicker" cover was featured in the 1999 movie High Fidelity.[18]

"Windowlicker" is also part of the Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack and appears on the FlyLo FM in-game radio station.

Track listing

All tracks written, produced and engineered by Richard D. James. The original single was released on 12-inch, two separate CDs, a special edition Japanese CD and VHS.

CD1 and 12-inch vinyl

WAP105CD/WAP105
No. Title Length
1. "Windowlicker"   6:07
2. "" (commonly referred to as "[Equation]" or "[Formula]") 5:43
3. "Nannou"   4:13
Total length:
 16:03

CD2

WAP105CDR
No. Title Length
1. "Windowlicker" (original demo) 2:37

Japanese version

WPCR-10328
No. Title Length
1. "Windowlicker"   6:04
2. ""   5:43
3. "Nannou"   4:22
4. "Windowlicker" (demo version) 1:57
5. "Windowlicker" (end-roll version) 1:07
Total length:
 19:13

Chart positions

Chart (1999) Peak
position
Australia (ARIA)[19] 70
Denmark (Tracklisten)[20] 15
France (SNEP)[21] 60
Netherlands (Single Top 100)[22] 63
New Zealand (Recorded Music NZ)[23] 33
Sweden (Sverigetopplistan)[24] 53
UK Singles (Official Charts Company) 16

References

  1. ↑ "Aphex Twin - Brit Awards". Brits.co.uk. Retrieved 11 November 2014
  2. ↑ "Electronic Music Mailing List Archives: idm - Re: Dissecting Windowlicker track #2". Archived from the original on 21 February 2008.
  3. ↑ Kahney, Leander (10 May 2002). "Hey, Who's That Face in My Song?". Wired News. Retrieved 20 May 2009.
  4. ↑ Kahney, Leander (2002-05-10). "Hey, Who's That Face in My Song?". Wired. Wired. Retrieved 2013-08-08. Aphex Twin, who has been described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music," appears to have sneaked the digital image of a devilish face into at least one of his songs.
  5. 1 2 "Warp / Records / Releases / Aphex Twin / Windowlicker". Warp. Retrieved 5 June 2009.
  6. ↑ "Interviews". Pitchfork.
  7. ↑ "Windowlicker artwork created by H.R Giger, 1999.". Retrieved 2012-07-06.
  8. ↑ "Windowlicker Credits". Aphextwin.nu. Retrieved 2012-05-02.
  9. ↑ Sweney, Mark (4 June 2008). "MTV fined £255k for offensive material". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 March 2009.
  10. ↑ Bush, John (1999-02-23). "Windowlicker - Aphex Twin". AllMusic. Retrieved 2012-05-02.
  11. ↑ Windowlicker at AllMusic
  12. ↑ "Pitchfork Top 200 Tracks of the 90s". Pitchfork.com. 2010-09-03. Retrieved 2012-05-02.
  13. ↑ "V/VM - helpaphextwin v1.0". V/Vm Test Records. Retrieved 18 March 2009.
  14. 1 2 "V/VM - helpaphextwin v4.0". V/Vm Test Records. Retrieved 18 March 2009.
  15. ↑ Beardyman - Live in the Underbelly: The Full show. 19 January 2010 – via YouTube.
  16. ↑ Miss Kittin - Live At Sónar Discogs. Retrieved 2010-07-16.
  17. ↑ "Girl Talk - All Day Samples List". Illegal-art.net. Retrieved 2012-05-02.
  18. ↑ Aphex Twin High Fidelity cut scene. 25 May 2006 – via YouTube.
  19. ↑ Ryan, Gavin (2011). Australia's Music Charts 1988–2010. Mt. Martha, VIC, Australia: Moonlight Publishing.
  20. ↑ "Danishcharts.com – Aphex Twin – Windowlicker". Tracklisten.
  21. ↑ "Lescharts.com – Aphex Twin – Windowlicker" (in French). Les classement single.
  22. ↑ "Dutchcharts.nl – Aphex Twin – Windowlicker" (in Dutch). Single Top 100.
  23. ↑ "Charts.org.nz – Aphex Twin – Windowlicker". Top 40 Singles.
  24. ↑ "Swedishcharts.com – Aphex Twin – Windowlicker". Singles Top 100.

External links

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