For the many listeners who knew Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, only through his two volumes of Selected Ambient Works, 1995's I Care Because You Do came as a surprise. The placid synthesizer melodies were still there, but from the very first track, they were tempered by strange, clanging breakbeats and squealing electronics that seemed to sear your very cilia. If this was ambient music, it was some industrial-strength version that owed more to the Italian Futurists' "Art of Noises" than to Brian Eno's sonic wallpaper. Shrill filters give the album its signature screech on tracks like the caustic "Acrid Avid Jam Shred" and the even more corrosive "Ventolin." (The latter is named for an asthma medication linked to recreational use and abuse, but its piercing sonics are so harsh, it's hard to imagine it as anything but cautionary.) Across the album, James draws liberally from dance music's various subgenres to often thrilling effect, as on "Come On You Slags!" or "Start as You Mean to Go On," which lace discordant, continental techno with jackhammering jungle breaks. But James' harmonic ear is light-years beyond than that of his peers, as he displays again and again with programmed string-like… read more »