Wiki
-
Release Date
5 October 1997
-
Length
8 tracks
Come to Daddy is a 1997 EP by electronic music artist Richard D. James, commonly known as Aphex Twin. "Come to Daddy, Pappy mix" — often simply called "Come to Daddy" — is one of Aphex Twin's best-known songs. The album peaked at #36 on the UK Singles Chart.
James describes his work like this:
“ Come to Daddy came about while I was just hanging around my house, getting pissed and doing this crappy death metal jingle. Then it got marketed and a video was made, and this little idea that I had, which was a joke, turned into something huge. It wasn't right at all. "
Not all the tracks featured on this EP are the industrial style of the first track. "IZ-US" features mellow synth tones with jazz style drums. Each mix of "Come to Daddy" is completely different, the "Little Lord Faulteroy mix" is a calm track with bizarre vocal samples that ends up resembling nothing like the original track and the "Mummy mix" is, in a way, a remix of the song "To Cure a Weakling Child" from Richard D. James Album. The other tracks also have their own style, most notably "Flim", an upbeat song with a cheerful melody and Aphex Twin's signature complex polyrhythms. The song "Funny Little Man" features, at the end, a PlainTalk voice offering anal sex, among other things.
Though Aphex Twin rarely uses vocals in his work, six of Come to Daddy's eight tracks feature vocals. Because of this and the hit single title track, this EP is generally considered his most pop music work.
Come to Daddy's packaging features stark black letters against a white background. All the information, tracklistings and lyrics are printed the same way, and only two images are present, both photographed by Stefan DeBatselier and digitally altered by Chris Cunningham, using James' face on children. James has used his likeness as the artwork on five of his releases: The …I Care Because You Do and Richard D. James Album albums, the Donkey Rhubarb and Come to Daddy EPs and the Windowlicker single.
The cover of the out-of-print second CD, with its white lettering against an orange background, makes reference to the fact that "To Cure A Weakling Child" had been used in a television advertisement for Orange. The advertisement used an edit of the album version; a radically different remix appears on the EP.
The track "Come to Daddy, Pappy Mix" is also heard twice in the film 8mm starring Nicolas Cage, and the music video can be seen in part on a television screen in Dino Velvet's office. Also is heard in the movie CKY2K.
"Come to Daddy, Pappy Mix" is in the Xbox 360 driving game Project Gotham Racing 3. It is also found on the Playstation 3 racing game MotorStorm: Pacific Rift.
"Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" was also used as the 4th song in the soundtrack of Π (film score) and appears in several scenes of the movie each time the main character repeats his monologue.
The accompanying music video of title track (released in October 1997) was directed by Chris Cunningham and filmed on the same council estate where Stanley Kubrick shot many scenes in A Clockwork Orange. The scene is shot around Tavy Bridge Shopping centre, Thamesmead, which is now being knocked down. Much of the dark underground car parking is now gone.
The video opens with an old woman walking a dog in a grimy, industrial setting. The dog urinates on an abandoned television lying on the sidewalk, causing it to sputter unexpectedly into life. This unleashes an evil spirit from the set, accompanied by a gang of small children, all of whom bear the face of Richard D. James donning a demonic grin, who appear to be the inhabitants of the abandoned buildings. The children go around wreaking havoc, trashing an alley and chasing a man into his car.
At one point, the monster (played by Al Stokes) is birthed out of the television and screams in the old woman's face. After this, he gathers the children around him in a manner reminiscent of a scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The acclaimed music video was voted 17th greatest music video ever by Q magazine readers, and was positioned number 35 in 100 Greatest Scary Moments, as voted by Channel 4 viewers in 2003.
* Come to Daddy has been covered by The Dillinger Escape Plan on their EP Irony is a Dead Scene featuring Mike Patton.
* The song "Flim" was covered by jazz trio The Bad Plus on their second album These Are The Vistas.
* Belle Orchestre have covered Bucephalus Bouncing Ball live.
* A remix of "Come To Daddy (Pappy Mix)", a remix of "Flim" and two remixes of "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" were done as part of V/Vm's Helpaphextwin series.
* The computerized voice at the end of "Funny Little Man" was sampled by Placebo on "Evil Dildo", the secret track on their second LP Without You I'm Nothing.
Album descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
