Windowlicker: История и анализ культового трека Aphex Twin

"Nannou"
| released = 1999 3 22|R&B 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, which was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Video. 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. Pitchfork included the song at number 12 on their list of the "Top 200 Tracks of the 90s".

"Windowlicker" has been described variously as "uncompromising cyborg R&B", "hip hop written in the language of glitches", and "eerie lounge porn music"; Heavily digitally processed and rhythmically rearranged breakbeats prominently appear in the song's backing track. 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. 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. Additionally, Daft Punk credited "Windowlicker" as an influence on the direction of their stylistic approach on their 2001 album Discovery.

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. 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".

The "Windowlicker" single contains its title track and two B sides. Track two, commonly known as "[Formula]", "[Equation]", or, as translated on the Japanese edition, "[Symbol]", due to its actual title being a complex mathematical formula (""), has a very experimental sound. Track three, "Nannou", dedicated to his then girlfriend, is made up of wind up music box samples. As of 2001 "Windowlicker" had sold over 300,000 copies.

"Windowlicker" received positive reviews from critics. AllMusic gave the EP 4/5 stars. In September 2010 Pitchfork Media included the song at number 12 on their list of the "Top 200 Tracks of the 90s". and HelpAphexTwin 4.0 (2003). A remix entitled "it's a richJAMs World" appears on V/VM's HelpAphexTwin 4.0 (2003). "Windowlicker" also featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto V, on the fictional radio station FlyLo FM. Miss Kittin performed Run Jeremy's remix of "Windowlicker live" at the Sónar festival and included it on her album Live at Sónar. 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. The "Windowlicker" cover was featured in a cut scene from the 2000 film High Fidelity. A. G. Cook made a "note for note" cover of Windowlicker in 2017 as part of the PC Music compilation Month of Mayhem. "Windowlicker" is played almost in full in the 2018 Gaspar Noé film Climax. The ending section of "Windowlicker" is featured in the 2006 film Grandma's Boy.

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.

The "Windowlicker" video is also included in QuickTime format.