Spike is Best

I remember when this song first came out how distinctly it sounded old school in a fresh sort of way. I think it struck everyone that way. Gotye sampled Seville by Luiz Bonfá which perhaps gave the song that seed.

The reason the song was and is so good is because it gives you that classic space, which is the one thing lacking in today's music. I know it's a cliche to talk about how all the music today sucks. If the cliche is not entirely true it is certainly partly true, and it's because the music lacks this sense of space, of giving the listener space. Every single second has to be slicked up and overcrowded with production values, and in all of it, where is the one person doing the math? Nowhere.

That's why I like Aphex Twin. I don't actually listen to electronica in general, but with Richard James, even in the pieces of his I don't like there's always this sense that he has done his math, and the math is in the composer's listening. There is the sense of space, and of things in their right place. If you listen to the song by Gotye you can understand it's the space that gives the song its intensity, its captivating quality.