Windowlicker

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

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".

A logarithmic spectrogram of "ΔM_i⁻¹ = −αΣ_n=1^ND_i[n][Σ_j∈C[i]F_ji[n − 1] +Fext_i[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.

Single release

The "Windowlicker" single contains its title track and two B-sides. Track two, commonly known as "[Formula]" or "[Equation]" due to its actual title being a complex mathematical formula ("ΔM_i⁻¹ = −αΣ_n=1^ND_i[n][Σ_j∈C[i]F_ji[n − 1] + Fext_i[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

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; the French term for window shopping is faire du lèche-vitrine, which literally translates to "licking the windows". They come across two women (referred to in the end credits as "hoochies") who repeatedly turn down their advances. 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, at which point the song begins. The two women, among others, accompany James in his limousine while their faces morph into James' own likeness. When they emerge from the limousine's sunroof, the young men try to woo them again but fail. The men arrive at an area where James and a group of women bearing his face are dancing together, and they receive leis from two of the women. Their attention is eventually drawn to a dancing woman turned away from them, but she turns around to reveal a horrifically ugly, buck-toothed, deformed face (which was later illustrated in a sketch by Swiss artist H. R. Giger titled "The Windowlickers"), much to the men's horror. The video ends with James' women dancing on Santa Monica Beach while James pops and sprays a bottle of champagne.

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. 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"). 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.

Reception

"Windowlicker" received positive reviews from critics. Allmusic gave the single 4 out of a maximum 5 stars. 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.

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) and HelpAphexTwin 4.0 (2003). A remix entitled "it's a richJAMs World" appears on V/VM's HelpAphexTwin 4.0 (2003). 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

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.

Samples of "ΔM_i⁻¹ = −αΣ_n=1^ND_i[n][Σ_j∈C[i]F_ji[n − 1] + Fext_i[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.

"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.

CD2