Tear Jerker / Aphex Twin

• Here's a famous one: "Rhubarb"! While comforting, it also carries a current of loneliness.
• The songs on Selected Ambient Works Volume II can be split into two halves of categories - one half is pure Nightmare Fuel, while the other half is this.
• "Avril 14th" and "Jynweythek", with both being desolate piano pieces on drukQs.
• Even besides "Rhubarb" mentioned above, "Lichen" and "Stone in Focus" are also ambient SAW Vol II pieces that can bring feelings of sadness.
• Richard made the Aphex Twin name as a memorial of sorts to his older brother, also named Richard, who died at birth. The Girl/Boy EP cover is a picture of his grave decorated with flowers. And likewise, "Girl/Boy Song" is a pretty heavy listen despite being a thematically and aesthetically whimsical track.
• The utter Sweet Dreams Fuel that is "Flim" and "Fingerbib".
• "Piano Un10 It Happened" is yet another desolate piano piece.
• "Blue Carpet", which sounds like it came from the ending of Five Nights at Freddy's 4 but more synth-focused.
• "Crying in Your Face" from Analord 4 features a recurring sample of what sounds like a voice saying "I don't want my friends to die."
• The ambient synth piece "qu 1" is sad enough on its own, but add the fact that Richard announced his father Derek's death shortly before releasing it, and the song's cover art is a picture of Richard as a child with Derek, and it's devastating.
  • If that wasn't sad enough, some of his replies to listeners on SoundCloud elaborated more about the passing. According to Richard, he watched his father die, his mother said that she'd rather die of COVID-19 than go on without her partner of 62 years, and he had a realistic dream of him several days after his passing.
    "He was very relaxed and was just talking normally to me, standing there in the house right where I was asleep, I was so frozen scared and thought maybe he had started rotting or something and he then started to fade so i accepted what was happening and just hugged him, he stopped fading, I could smell his smell and feel his chest, was just like being awake...apart from he was about 10 years younger."
  • If you download the song from his SoundCloud, you can find a message hidden in the metadata:
    See you on the other
    side dad
• "Nanou2" from Drukqs, which consists of gentle piano notes that bring to mind the feeling of having lost something or someone, particularly at the end.
• "IZ-US" from the Come To Daddy EP. The somewhat detuned synth chord progression gives this track a feel that is both warm and distinctly melancholic.

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