sorea rea blog: Lamborghini Murcielago Sketch 2002

Lamborghini Murcielago Sketch 2002

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The name of the single comes from the derogatory British term "windowlicker", meaning a mentally handicapped person. The term is also a direct English translation of the French term faire du lèche-vitrine, meaning "window shopper", a second meaning played up in the song's video.

Lamborghini Murcielago Sketch

2002 Lamborghini Murcielago
The artwork for the single was created by Chris Cunningham, with additional work by The Designers Republic.

Lamborghini Murcielago Sketch

"Windowlicker" consists of James' voice modulated on computer, mixed with his trademark breakbeat snare rushes, drum samples, and mixed choir-like singing, resulting in a smooth yet erratic song, its last minute escalating into an extremely distorted wall of bass. Also included is a sample of James' French then-girlfriend speaking in her native tongue saying J'aime faire des croquettes au chien, translating to "I like to make dog biscuits".

Lamborghini-Murciela.

The single has two b-sides. Track two, commonly known as "[Formula]" or "[Equation]" due to its actual title being a complex mathematical formula (ΔMī¹=αΣDi[n][ΣFij[n-1]+Fexti[n̄¹]]), has a very experimental sound. Track three, "Nannou", dedicated to his then-girlfriend, is made up of wind-up music box samples.

Lamborghini Murcielago Sketch

Lamborghini Murcielago Sketch

Viewing a spectrogram of the second track, with the frequency axis in a logarithmic scale, reveals hidden images of James' face that were apparently synthesized as sound by Aphex Twin for the express purpose of being discovered in this manner.

2002 Lamborghini Murcielago

2002 lamborghini murcielago

2002 lamborghini murcielago
A spectrogram of the first track, "Windowlicker", also reveals a spiral at the end of the song. This spiral is more impressive when viewed with an X-Y scatter graph, X and Y being the amplitudes of the L and R channels, which shows expanding and contracting concentric circles and spirals.

2002 Lamborghini Murcielago

2002 Lamborghini Murcielago

The effect was achieved through use of the Mac-based program MetaSynth. This program allows the user to insert a digital image as the spectrogram. MetaSynth will then convert the spectrogram to digital sound and "play" the picture. According to an article on the website Wired News, photographs run through the program tend to produce "a kind of discordant, metallic scratching".