...I Care Because You Do

The cover features an oil painting of Richard D. James's (Aphex Twin's) face — his broad, slightly unhinged grin rendered in classical portraiture style. The painting technique is traditional, almost Old Master-esque, but the subject matter is deeply unsettling: James's smile is too wide, too knowing, and slightly sinister. The contrast between the formal, high-art medium and the irreverent, confrontational subject creates an image that is simultaneously funny and disturbing.

The self-portrait-as-oil-painting concept served multiple purposes. It satirized the conventions of fine art (the grand tradition of painted portraiture applied to an electronic musician who made aggressively experimental music). It mocked the conventions of pop star imagery (instead of a polished photograph, a deliberately uncanny painting). And it established the Aphex Twin's face — specifically, his grin — as a recurring motif that would define his visual identity across releases.

James's grin appeared on multiple subsequent releases, including Richard D. James Album (1996), where his face was morphed onto the bodies of others, and in music videos like "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker," directed by Chris Cunningham, where the grin was digitally mapped onto children's faces, women's bodies, and other figures to deeply unsettling effect. This consistent visual element made the Aphex Twin one of electronic music's most recognizable — and most disturbing — visual presences.

The album itself is a collection of intricate, abrasive, and beautiful electronic compositions that range from ambient to hardcore breakbeat. James, a Cornish musician known for his reclusive lifestyle (he reportedly lived in a former bank vault) and his prolific output (he claims to have hundreds of unreleased tracks), used the painted portrait to suggest that his music was more like fine art than commercial product — while simultaneously mocking the pretension of that comparison.

The painted-grin image became the most recognizable visual in electronic music, rivaled only perhaps by Daft Punk's helmets. James's commitment to a consistent, unsettling visual identity — using his own face as both brand and weapon — influenced countless electronic artists. The cover helped establish Warp Records' reputation for combining cutting-edge music with innovative visual art.