Video Savant: Aphex Twin's “Equation”

Ah, they don't make 'em like this anymore.

This 1999 cut (on the B-side to the world-beating Windowlicker 12,” whose title track was hailed by this writer as one hell of a sex aid) is one of Aphex Twin's weirder creations (which is really saying something).

The title is a long-ass mathematical equation, which you can view here. The music itself is as hard to figure out as said equation is for numerophobes to solve. This is Richard D. James at his most madly scientific, hermetically experimental and brilliantly inscrutable. “Equation” is the score to a modern dance... for alien insects. It is also, by the way, the sound caroming inside OC Weekly's music editor's head while dealing with particularly stressful deadlines.

If Aphex drops this piece during his DJ set at Coachella (he performs there April 25), expect spontaneous copulating to break out—among the calculus geeks in the crowd. Everybody else will likely be searching the skies for UFOs.