Childhood Utopia

What is it with Warp artists and their obsession with childhood? Squarepusher's overactive practical jokes, Boards of Canada's seventies soccer kids getting lost in the suburbs, Autechre homing in on the pure feeling of childlike wonder and Aphex Twin, somehow even when pushing 30 resembling a smart kid more than anything approaching an adult. On the new album 'Lornaderek' is nothing more than James' parents singing happy birthday on his answering machine. After a couple of listens you start to realize how essential it is in prying open 'Drukqs', how it in some way feels naïve and uncanny at the same time: his parents sounding more like singing fairy tale bears, his mother congratulating "my little 28-year old son". The message is positioned between 'Drukqs' most melancholic tracks, the slow organ of 'Qkthr' conjuring afternoons lost in childlike reverie, while the beautiful 'Btoum Roumada' is the sound of snow falling, slowly returning the world to its original magical state. Elsewhere, as on the manic jungle track 'Ziggomatic 17', samples of old videogames blast their way through the whirlwinds of beats.

Why this obsession with the child? Does it have a relation with technology (the sampler, the videogame)? Are we certain that our memories of youth are real? Or is it just a generational fascination: the feeling that the general naiveté of the seventies conduced a temporary children's utopia, now lost forever? Or is it more of a continuation of a certain Romantic sensibility that values the magical perception of the child as the true way to see the world?