Any other listeners of Aphex Twin on here? It took me a long time for me to like him, but I can now that i've found a few gems. A lot of his material is "out there" and it's difficult to enjoy, despite it's compositional and experimental complexity. There are a few very enjoyable tunes out there though, and my top 3 have to be:
1. Flim -- a friend of mine jokingly described it as kirby music. He then proceeded to be hooked as it grew on him and now it's one of his favorites. This one is gold. I also recently found a cover by a jazz trio called The Bad Plus, which I think is very interesting.
2. IZ-US -- the first song of his that I liked, and it's definitely worthy of top-3. It's a lot like flim, and for some reason it's been grouped with flim a couple times on the aphex twin forum (
http://aphextwin.nu/). It's got a very nostalgic sound, something you can find more of by Boards of Canada, though I don't like their stuff as much as these aphex tunes.
3. Finally, Blue Calx -- it's very minimalist, ambient, and has an incredibly tranquilizing effect on me. I can be in the most frantic mood and it'll do something powerful as soon as i hear the first notes. I highly recommend this one. It also does a great job of showing the versatility of Aphex.
So if you've got an open mind and are interested in breaking the Aphex entry barrier, I think these top 3 would do good things for a newbie.