For most people, …I Care Because You Do is the other Aphex Twin album, the awkward middle child between Selected Ambient Works Vol. II and Richard D. James Album, and in some ways, they’re right. This 12-track record was a sort of adolescent growth spurt for RDJ, insomuch that it found him eschewing conventional genres and production methods to focus on less traditional forms of electronic music. James was beginning to lose interest in making tracks with synths, drum machines, and other physical instruments, perhaps because he felt confined at the time by their inherent limitations. He hadn’t yet moved on to computer-based production, though, so some of …I Care Because You Do is the sound of a budding genius trying to break free from the confines he’d grown tired of. Though it was largely recorded around the same time as SAW II and Surfing on Sine Waves, Aphex Twin’s third official album zooms in closer to the man behind the machines, which might go towards explaining why it’s the first of his releases to feature an image of his face on the cover.

Starting with the crunchy broken beats of “Acrid Avid Jam Shred” and closing out on “Next Heap With”‘s anthemically dour orchestration, the 12-track, hour-long LP deals as much with strange sublimity as it does blistering noise and haunted electronics. The relentless “Come on You Slags” and brutalizing “Ventolin” hold their own up against rough-edged beauties like “Mookid” and “Wax the Nip,” but few can compare to the vision that is “Alberto Balsalm.” The song hints at the future of Aphex Twin perhaps more so than RDJ’s infatuation with string arrangements across …I Care Because You Do, as it captures the carefree romanticism, affable musicality, and otherworldly sound design that Richard D. James Album was built on. Even if this album is something of an awkward middle child, its frequent bursts of confidence and ingenuity make it a phase worth revisiting as much as the matured eras that followed.