Very Cool People ☻
home with you - This song's album — MAGDALENE — which I have covered before as an album of the week, is extremely emotional. This song does not disappoint. This song was written when twigs was in a lot of pain; emotionally and physically. She was still recovering from her relationship with movie star Robert Pattinson, who starred in Twilight, and she also had uterine tumors called fibroid tumors; both of which are indirectly mentioned in this song.
In these lyrics, which she described on the song's Genius page, she humorously refers to her fibroid tumors as fruits. She also describes how even breathing caused her pain. Even though she was in so much pain, she did not use pain killers to alleviate her pain. She says that she was "very cautious what [she] put in [her] body. [She didn't] want to put painkillers in." After her laparoscopic surgery, she was only on pain killers for a very short time. She was given some to take home to ease the pain, but she preferred to not take the medications. Even though she was in immense pain, she was still able to "maintain her grace". I also interpret the "Breathe in, breathe out, pain" lyric about being able to recover from pain quickly and keep up appearances so that no one else knows that you're struggling, as to not bother them.
In these lyrics, she describes how having a lot of anything can lead to the risk of more being taken away, compared to only having a small amount. "More money, more assets, more problems, [the] more you have to lose. It’s all in ratio."
I could honestly keep going on about the lyrics in this song, but this is already pretty long, and I'm very close to crying, so I'll leave this entry here. Below, I've provided some choice lyrics.
This makes tears well in my eyes. I literally cannot. "Breathe in, breathe out, pain."
Drukqs - This album is one of my favorites of Aphex Twin's. This album is very sonically diverse, with tons of borderline breakneck breakcore tracks, heavily juxtaposed by the many serene, almost ambient tracks. Drukqs may not be the longest Aphex Twin album (its runtime being 100:41, only eclipsed by SAW II, with its runtime at 166:53), but it can certainly feel like it at times. Though its quick genre changes can make you feel like you're in the middle of a tempest (someone please get my TOOL reference), I love being able to hear all of the amazing things Aphex Twin is able to do as a producer.
One song in particular that I'd like to highlight is QKThr (don't try to pronounce it, you might go tongue-tied). Now, you may hear this song and think that it's eerily familiar. For years, this song has been used as a background track for many "fail" or "funny moments" videos (as well as Alberto Balsalm, but it's from a different album so I won't be covering it here), but I think this song is very emotional. The instrument that sounds kind of like an organ and kind of like accordion is called a harmonium; alluded to by the track's alternate name, "Penty Harmonium". I think it sounds like an organ that has to breathe, and that makes this song kind of sad to me: It sounds very sorrowful to me, as if someone was weeping from grief. I feel like this song is about sadness, or something that can cause an extreme sadness.
This album has some amazing tracks for lovers of electronic, ambient, noise, piano, and contemporary classical genres; as well as those who venerate music as an art form in general. I suggest you give this album a listen if you like any of the mentioned genres. ☻
est. March 26, 2025