Line #6 NightmareFuel/AphexTwin


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_aphextwin_cometodaddy_255.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:'''I... WANT YOUR SOUUUUUUUL!\
3	I... WILL EAT YOUR SOUUUUUUUL!''']]
4
5	Music/AphexTwin: Strange, [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic brilliant]], and a master of ''[[NightmareFuel scaring the hell out of people]]''.
6	----
7	[[foldercontrol]]
8	[[folder:''Selected Ambient Works Vol. II'']]
9	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF7162Veqag Radiator]]'', a disjointed, almost jaunty tune that genuinely does feel like it belongs in the soundtrack of some prestige psychological thriller. It somehow perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being ''[[ParanoiaFuel watched]]'' and ''[[StalkerWithoutACrush stalked]]''. Did we mention this is only the ''second track on the album''? It is thankfully followed by the SugarWiki/SweetDreamsFuel that is "Rhubarb."
10	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofGXo6ClCnQ White Blur 1]]'', an unsettling haphazard mishmash of bell noises, creepy rumbling, and reverberating vocal samples. Thank god it's only 3 minutes as opposed to the usual 5-8.
11	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYRCmsDjT50 White Blur 2]]'' takes this up to eleven, consisting of nothing but a looped psychedelic riff interspersed by a creepy distorted laugh and occasional muted whispers, it keeps going like this for 11 minutes. You could've stuck it in a ''VideoGame/YumeNikki'' level and nobody would be able to tell the difference.
12	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgE9qqjbZYg Hankie]]'' takes that creepiness of tracks like ''Spots'', mentioned below, and takes a bigger step further with atonal, almost screechy synth strings and a mood that feels like a poltergeist exorcism GoneHorriblyWrong.
13	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgybhhTEAKo Grey Stripe]]'' is a piece that starts out with piercing wind sounding like it's blowing across a desolate wasteland, while punctuated with ghostly wails and moans. Then the wails become more piercing, and are joined by odd sci-fi sound effects, and then metal crashing and shrieks take over. A noise that sounds like a very distorted chainsaw comes in, and the track ends on beeping sci-fi noises. It's a mix of sounds that you'd expect coming from a haunted house or in an old-sci fi/horror movie.
14	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5Zsn6tJ2MY Window Sill]]'', which is subtly off and unnerving in a hard-to-explain way.
15	* Many of the tracks are quite akin to something out of ''Franchise/SilentHill''. Case in point, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBU3uAzRejs Grass]]''.
16	* Interestingly, most of the creepy tracks are the ones related to nature; ''Grass'', ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfpCwdXpq1Q Mould]]'', ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATzlzPLMUhc Tree...]]''
17	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ET1vST_xKc Stone In Focus]]'', which is focused around bass-heavy rumbling and surprisingly tonal synth wash while featuring a clock's ticking noises playing in the background and some creepy synth melodies throughout the entire track. It's like a [[DarkerAndEdgier darker cousin]] to ''Rhubarb'', and it sounds like "[[AndIMustScream floating out in deep space without any way to return home]]".
18	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tLzCPyBoso Spots]]'' is a creepy DroneOfDread with some voices heard in the background. Creepy by itself, but then you find out what WordOfGod says those voices are.
19	-->"Someone I used to know, you know who you are, worked as a cleaner in a police station and kindly pinched me a police interview tape. It was with a woman who murdered her husband, it's the background audio in this track."
20	* And then there's the final track, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfqKXWKOg-g "Matchsticks"]]'' - wailing, echoing synths that push DroneOfDread [[SerialEscalation BEYOND eleven]]. This is considered to be the most haunting track on the entire album, which is saying ''a hell of a lot'' given what's already been listed.
21	* Several unreleased ''Selected Ambient Works Volume II'' tracks:
22	** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4RBdyLPeZI Stabbing Interview]]'' appears to be an earlier version of "Spots" from the actual album, but with even MORE echo, disturbing noises and muffled human screaming. It sounds like it's rotting and falling apart!
23	** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCqCegy6Ybk Chopped F Beginning]]'' is a [[DroneOfDread drone-focused track]] which is very akin to the official soundtrack of ''VideoGame/HalfLife1''.
24	** If ''White Blur 2'' isn't scary enough, think again. ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9MMHhQvKSc Th1 (evnslower)]]'' is downright even worse than the penultimate track itself. It's filled with abrasive drones which sounds like if you're a SoleSurvivor of an Arctic exploration gone wrong with no way to return home.
25	[[/folder]]
26
27	[[folder:''...I Care Because You Do'']]
28	* The album cover itself is a painting of James giving an [[SlasherSmile unnerving smile]].
29	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbJq2aANCyQ Come On You Slags!]]'' has an exceptionally creepy, anxious main melody.
30	[[/folder]]
31
32	[[folder:''Richard D. James Album'']]
33	* Like the album preceding it, this one features James' signature SlasherSmile, except now it is 1) combined with a KubrickStare, and 2) ''an actual photograph!''
34	* The intro to ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqTKOq8DmWU Milkman]]'' is a garbled recording of a man speaking in what sounds like a foreign language. It turns out it's English, but run through a ring modulator to make it unintelligible. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw46dn01J0Y Until one YouTuber decoded it.]] (Warning: {{NSFW}} and NauseaFuel, with a side of ClusterFBomb.)
35	-->"It popped out like a motherfucker; you should have seen the git. He screamed and he winced, and his eyeball, it... I remember I was, like, [[EyeScream fucking his eye up]]. And I, I thought, ''Shit, I'd fucking better not press too hard with my fucking two-inch hard cock.'' So it quivered on it, it dripped down my fucking cock. and I thought, ''That's good'', and I swear to myself, ''That's fucking good.''"
36	** Creator/DavidFirth's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-knOGoRYhE0 fanmade music video]] for the song takes it to a whole new level, as it features a deformed lunatic who [[OffWithHisHead beheads the titular character]], [[ILoveTheDead fondles his corpse]], goes on a rampage by slaughtering everyone within the neighborhood, guns down the milk man's wife [[SerialEscalation and does the same to her husband]]. To make things even worse, her son shows up with a horrified expression... [[WouldHurtAChild only to get shot by the said lunatic]], right before [[AteHisGun he turns the gun to himself]] ([[MyGodWhatHaveIDone presumably out of guilt for his actions]]).
37	[[/folder]]
38
39	[[folder:"Come To Daddy"]]
40	* The video (pictured above), once described by Music/DaveGrohl as "the most terrifying music video ever", follows a group of children. Not just any children, though -- each one of their faces is replaced by the identical grinning visage of Richard D. James. They terrorize a desolate industrial wasteland whilst a distorted face (belonging to James) on a TV howls about how he wants your soul. The most memorable aspect of the video, however, has to be the tall, white, skinny, demonic ''[[HumanoidAbomination thing]]'' that crawls out of the TV at the song's climax and screams in an old lady's face.
41	** In fact, the demon served as the inspiration for [[Manga/SoulEater Asura]].
42	* The brief non-song segment in the video where the song stops entirely to couple slow-mo footage of the children skipping and [[SoundtrackDissonance lullaby music]] is bound to have an eerie effect.
43	* Those same smiling kids are depicted on the song's single cover, although some of the fear is alleviated once you see [[FunnyBackgroundEvent the kid on the far left doing part of the Bloods gang sign]].
44	* Not to mention the song itself contains a [[CarefulWithThatAxe 34-second long anguished scream from the very depths of Hell]].
45	[[/folder]]
46
47	[[folder:"Windowlicker"]]
48	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBS4Gi1y_nc Windowlicker]]'' isn't quite as scary as "Come to Daddy," but it's still freaky in its own way. In probably one of the biggest examples of FanDisservice in music video history, the video is full of scantily-clad women...[[ButterFace that all have Richard's smiling face pasted onto them]]. Plus there's another woman in the video who is horrifically ugly with a deformed, bucktoothed face that inspired an equally eerie sketch by Creator/HRGiger.
49	** WebVideo/BennettTheSage was so creeped out by the video that he placed it at #1 on his list of the Top 10 WTF Music Videos:
50	--->Hey, wanna never sleep again? ''Too late!''
51	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYAZnQmffg Equation]]'', off the "Windowlicker" single, has become more well-known for its Easter egg than the actual music. Near the end of the song, the music is taken over by a series of noise sweeps. Feed that noise through a logarithmic spectrogram, and you get [[https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/aphex-twin-face-equatoin-formula-windowlicker-hidden-secret-image-embedded-in-music-spectrograpm.jpg?w=800&h=471 this distorted image of a smiling Richard]], fittingly nicknamed the [[NightmareFace "Demon Face"]].
52	** What's even weirder is amidst the general atmosphere of noise, at around the 5:24 mark--right before the Demon Face appears--there's a sound that's eerily similar to a little girl moaning.
53	[[/folder]]
54
55	[[folder:''[=drukQs=]'']]
56	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQxB8qIqoPE Gwarek2]]'' is a highly unsettling musique concrète piece that was used in the credits of ''Rubber Johnny'' to make an already eerie shot gazing out of a window into a barely-lit night even creepier.
57	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gFKfxIBrKA Gwely Mernans]]'', a track full of dark rumbling noises and atonal piano pads playing in the background. What's even more creepy about it, beyond it giving off this overwhelming sense of dread and paranoia, is that its title is Cornish for "death bed".
58	* The spoken-word interlude ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hiy4x_6tUGk&ab_channel=AphexTwin-Topic Aussois]]'', a random excerpt of what sounds like an innocent conversation between two kids across the room from the microphone. The lack of context to what they're talking about (assuming that they're talking about a dance), the poor sound quality, and the fact that the audio just ''stops'' [[NothingIsScarier and goes completely silent for 6 seconds]]...
59	[[/folder]]
60
61	[[folder:Other Releases]]
62	* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L_ZEXhDQzo This promo video]] for ''26 Mixes for Cash''. It's [[NothingIsScarier completely silent]] and features a series of pictures of Richard with the face of each picture morphing into the next. The faces get more and more disturbing as the video goes on (including the aforementioned faces from ''Windowlicker'', ''I Care Because You Do'', and ''Richard D. James Album'').
63	* At some point, Richard was commissioned to write a song for a Virgin Airlines commercial, and he responded with ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXKXCqAaEqs Aphex Airlines]]'', 6 minutes of abrasive noise. While he likened it to the sound of a jet engine during takeoff, Virgin rejected it on the grounds of it sounding like ''a plane crash''.
64	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXOgc2p5HyQ At The Heart of It All]]'', Aphex Twin's Contribution to [[Music/{{NineInchNails}} Nine Inch Nail's]] remix album ''[[Music/TheDownwardSpiral Further Down The Spiral]]'', is a gritty, industrial track that feels unnerving in how simply hopeless and desolate it feels.
65	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BGdYTD3l1Y 13 Barbarella On Microdots]]'' is pretty unsettling, which sounds like the auditory equivalent of running away from a [[AxCrazy killer]] armed with an axe in a dark forest, ready to chop you down to pieces.
66	* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRvfxWRi6qQ Rubber Johnny]]'' -- A short film created by Cunningham over three years using several Aphex tracks that stars a deformed teenager in a wheelchair who can twist his body to an inhuman degree. Think ''Film/{{Eraserhead}}'' set to a rave track.
67	** The short film originally existed as a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOwrF9E06a4 30-second commercial]] for ''Drukqs'' (Cunningham liked the idea so much that he decided to expand it) that runs on NothingIsScarier, as there's no context given for the visuals, and it's not even labeled as an Aphex Twin commercial until the final moments.
68	** The short film's DVD comes with a 42-page book containing photos of the film's protagonist Johnny that portray him as less of a human and more of a [[BodyHorror horrific, twisting, somewhat humanoid mass of skin and flesh]]. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oQCmu6-thQ Here's a peek at what's inside.]] '''Warning: absolutely {{NSFW}}!'''
69	[[/folder]]

Context NightmareFuel / AphexTwin